We arrived back in Phoenix last night around 6:00pm. The pilot announced that it was 111 degrees as we were approaching the airport. What a shock after three weeks of temperatures in the 60s!
It was a great trip. We met a lot of friendly and helpful French people, who don’t deserve their reputation of hostility towards Americans. If you approach them respectfully they will reciprocate likewise.
Annecy in the foothills of the Alps was wonderful. Gisele and I are talking about going back there sometime and spending a few weeks, perhaps taking classes at a language institute.
Normandy was very moving, and prompted me to read “The Longest Day”, about the D-Day invasion. There is a lot of history in the area, and plenty of museums to display it.
The excesses of Versaille, the enormous estate built by Louis the 14th, helped me understand what pushed the French people to revolution a few years later. So much opulence while the people were starving in the streets. While there are still great inequities of wealth in the world, democracy tends to reduce the ability of a head of government to grab all the wealth for himself.
With the excepting of having my phone picked from my pocket, the time in Paris was also pleasant. The mass transit system there is among the best in the world. You can generally catch a subway within a 5-minute walk of wherever you are and end up within 5 minutes of where you want to go. Of course, you may walk over 5 minutes within a station going from train to train. My main complaint about Paris is the size of the hotel rooms.
Gisele would probably go back to France every year, but there are too many other places in the world I haven’t seen, or would like to see again, so I don’t expect this to become an annual pilgrimage for me. But I’ll be glad to go again some year, but let me get over jet lag first.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Richard // Jun 8, 2013 at 12:12 pm
It sounds like you had a great time. Once was enough for me, but that was 43 years ago. I imagine things have changed some……
2 Mom // Jun 8, 2013 at 8:14 pm
I’ve always heard that the French don’t like Americans, but like some other nations. You do realize that Gisele was a huge asset, don’t you?
3 Donna // Jun 9, 2013 at 8:03 am
What a great trip. If Glenda and I make it to Europe someday, France is on our agenda. I would love to visit some of the places you mention.
Welcome home!
4 Daryl // Jun 9, 2013 at 8:34 am
Mom, I received the same friendly and generous response whether I was Gisele or not. Of course, she helped greatly with communication.
She also helped me with the proper pronunciation of some key expressions, and I think that helps too. They take pride in their language and Americans tend to butcher it to unintelligibility.
5 Daryl // Jun 9, 2013 at 8:37 am
Donna,
All of the ladies on our tour chose Annecy as their favorite location of the trip. Of course if you go to France the first time you have to visit the sights and sites in Paris, but Annecy is a great place to see another side of the country.
6 Les // Jun 11, 2013 at 8:56 pm
Glad you are home. We liked traveling in France also and think the people are very nice, especially in the small towns. Learning some French would help I am sure. People in little towns tolerated our limited French very well, partly because they didn’t know any English I guess.
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