LOIRE VALLEY
Today we travel from Rome to the Loire Valley in France, a trip which involves a train transfer in Paris at the Gare Montparnasse station. We heard no English in the station with 100% of the announcements in French.
We had a long layover and situated ourselves at a nice cafe in the station. We’d just finished a vegetarian pizza and waited in anticipation for an obscure chocolate dessert when a military dude with large weaponry entered and hollered something French and profound which I didn’t understand at all. Everyone jumped to their feet and made for the exit. I asked the young women next to us what the heck and they explained someone had left suspicious luggage in the station and we all had to evacuate.
We stood outside in the rain while sirens wailed and police wearing ammo vests filed inside. I heard more announcements far beyond my French comprehension so I read body language instead. Eventually we all got ushered back indoors and it was like nothing had happened.
Soon another announcement caused a mass of travelers to do an about-face and scuttle off. I knew just enough French to ask the older couple next to us if we had another emergency. The woman said it was only a change of train destination. The husband joked it was a bomb. I reminded myself that the French have a different sense of humor, remembering Jerry Lewis.
Our town in the Loire Valley, Amboise, is warm and charming, exactly what we’d hoped for. You get the sense that the place pulses with tourists in high season, with its many ATMs, restaurants, hotels, and shops. But for now, peace reigns, just what we needed. Jim and I love a break in the countryside between big city visits.
Our hotel, built in the 17th century, served as home for King Louis XIV’s main horseman. As recently as the 1990’s, our room in the carriage house held dental offices; we feel very comfortable here.
This morning at breakfast some other Americans sat next to us, a rare sight, so I struck up conversation with them. The dad told me that his daughter lived in Portland—but the other Portland—as in Maine. We laughed. He said she moved there during the summer of 2020 during our “social unrest,” as he put it. We nodded. Her friends questioned whether it was a safe place to move.
I read our hotel’s information placard and discovered the marvel of laundry service for E 20 (about $22) per bag. Staff handed me a grocery-sized plastic sack with a promise to wash and return everything to our room within 10 hours. I packed that sucker full. Seven hours later, I found our clean and professionally folded laundry on our bed. I think someone ironed my underwear. Vive la France.
We just returned from our Loire Valley tour where our driver, Pascal, took us to the chateaux of Chenonceau, Cheverny and Chaumont Sur Loire, names Jim still practices (ask him). Disneyland-sized parking lots, especially at Chenonceau, suggest mighty crowds in high season.
French kings constructed these enormous pleasure palaces in the 15th and 16th centuries as shows of power and wealth. Ironically, such over-the-top grandiosity helped fire up the peasantry towards Revolution and the overthrow of royalty, not to mention 17,000 beheadings. In years since, many of the chateaux have opened their doors for public visitation.
During WWII, officials at the Louvre needed a safe location to secure their most beloved art treasures from approaching Nazis. They successfully hid Mona Lisa and other masterpieces in an outbuilding of the Cheverny château, among other places.
Like most of our drivers, Pascal wanted to discuss Putin’s recent Ukrainian aggression (“Il est terrible”) and the resulting gas prices. As we drove through the Loire Valley countryside, he educated us about the chateaux and the surrounding areas. Pascal pointed out some trees with balls of mistletoe growing in them. I asked if the mistletoe tradition of kissing came from France and he laughed. “No, we never need an excuse to kiss in France.”
Pre-season plus Covid has kept numbers of chateau visitors down to a trickle. People in the tourist industry seem pleased we’ve come from America, like crocus buds poking our heads through the musty soil of Covid.
Pascal said that “nobody” had signed up for tours yet, but he believed that would change soon. Monday, in fact, signals the first day of no masks or vaccine requirements for most places (except trains, planes, hospitals), almost exactly like in Oregon.
We’ve had to flash our vaccination cards everywhere. Most places give a cursory look at our American CDC cards and wave us through. Some gatekeepers scrutinize our booster dates like Putin when he worked the East German Berlin gate in the 1980s, though surely puzzled by how we transpose our months and days in America.
At times Jim has considered venturing out on his own but we both have concerns about letting him loose with his Covid card. If he lost it, we couldn’t check into a hotel, eat in a restaurant, visit a museum, ride a train, or board a plane.
We toured Leonardo da Vinci’s house today, our first under the loosened restrictions. Strips of red tape on the ground instructed us to keep Covid social distance. I whispered to Jim, when they removed the tape, would it leave adhesive or gouges behind, scars that would serve as pandemic markers for future generations?
I imagine it: “These marks in the stone floor commemorate the pandemic back in 2020-2022 when we made people stand apart, but we went a little overboard with the superglue affixing our warnings underfoot…”
In the next room, I encountered a staff worker crouched on the floor, tackling her first red tape strip with limited success. Afterwards we visited Amboise’s Saint Dennis church, built in 1107. A woman welcomed us warmly before returning to her task of scraping moss and debris from the front steps.
PARIS
Moving from Amboise to Paris, we didn’t have to show our vaccination cards at the Saint Pierre des Corps train station or even pass security. The station had a big plastic bin filled with used masks. Painted white circles dotted platforms, admonitions to social distance. Yesterday they reminded travelers how to stand and keep your hands to yourself, kindergarten-like. Today they’re obsolete rules, Covid relics, painted pockmarks of history.
On the train, I checked Facebook and read of our friends Al and Janice Tizon’s trip to Paris. I texted Janice and asked if they were still there. She responded that Al had a speaking engagement at The American Church tonight before their flight out in the morning. I asked if we could attend. She said absolutely yes.
Arriving in the Gare Montparnasse station, we hired a taxi because we thought it would be easier to locate than an Uber. Though technically within walking distance of our apartment, our suitcase wheels may not have survived.
I handed our taxi driver a paper with our address, but she diverted us through neighborhoods in the opposite direction, seemingly aiming for the reddest of lines on Google maps. After a few minutes, Jim and I held up our phones high enough for her to see and repeated the address loudly enough for her to hear. She immediately veered toward our apartment. What should have cost 7 euros ended up 17, but we didn’t have the energy to argue. The driver also robbed Jim of his joy, at least until he got a good nap and Parisian meal in him, anyway.
Our friend Robert is allowing us to stay in his Paris apartment while away in Greece. Robert and my little sister, Melanie, were neighborhood best buddies as little kids, regularly hanging out at each others’ houses. Jim and I had rented one of Robert’s apartments in early March of 2020 but had to abort our trip eight days early due to the onset of the pandemic. Robert generously offered us this make-up trip. I thanked him for his hospitality and he said no problem, that he considered us “neighbor siblings.”
We hired an Uber to The American Church, a place I’d been curious about for years. What a delight to meet Janice and Al there, or as Janice said, “This is surreal!” Al had a dinner event before his talk but suggested Janice join Jim and me for a stroll to the nearby Eiffel Tower. The tower twinkled on the hour as we approached, sprinkling even more magic on this providential rendezvous in Paris with my dear childhood friend.
Al had already spoken at two Sunday services at the church, but tonight’s was a smaller talk with a question and answer session. I understand Al’s popularity as a teacher and a speaker even better now. He’s open, engaging, positive, kind, and connected with his listeners. And he got me thinking, as the best of speakers do.
The church used paper plates to serve a dessert that looked like mini Costco muffins with canned pears. Instead I dug into freshly cut pears and chocolate brownies—warmed—with a tart berry dip. So simple, so delicious, so perfect, so Parisian.
Like in Rome, we see few foreigners and no tour groups. Instead we encounter plenty of locals and students enjoying their new-found freedom from lockdowns, curfews, masks and other Covid regulations. We‘ve spotted few of the usual con artists and their tricks, at least the obvious ones. We imagine that the scammers, whom we’ve heard mostly come from parts east of the border, had to scuttle home during the height of the pandemic because they had no tourists to heist. Undoubtedly many of these tricksters currently plot their return, but in the meantime, we don’t miss their assaults.
At the Petite Palace, I held open a large glass door for an older woman with a cane. She asked me in French if I knew where the special exhibit was. I used up all my best French phrases at once by saying “I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I don’t speak French.”
She pointed to me, smiled, and said in French, “Oh, but you DO speak French!” I laughed.
COVID DREAMS
On our European trips, we often stay in apartments for periods of time partly to pretend we’re locals—taking out trash, purchasing groceries, doing laundry. My friend Joyce suggested I’d captured today’s European experience in a profound way when I caught its latest coronavirus variant.
Our days of walking, stair climbing, and wading through crowded museums couldn’t explain away the muscle aches that overtook my body. When my throat starting hurting, we pulled out our Covid tests. Mine read positive. Jim, asymptomatic, came back negative. We looked up CDC guidelines and timelines and reconfigured the rest of our trip according to its protocol.
First we contacted Robert who assured us we could use his apartment longer, no problem. We called Delta and at no small expense delayed our flight home. We then texted our kids and our Bible study groups and a couple other family members.
I developed a cough, runny nose and mild fatigue. I lost my voice and had trouble sleeping. Jim laid out a regimen of over-the-counter medications for me, alternating Tylenol and Advil, which I took religiously for a couple of days. My muscle aches quickly resolved. My throat, however, worsened to the point where at times swallowing nearly made me cry.
Jim took excellent care of me, never once demonstrating anything but kindness and understanding. He entertained and encouraged me. He fed me, did dishes, washed bed linens and pajamas, and even deciphered our French microwave and washer/dryer.
Our kids and their spouses all responded with love and concern. Juan Carlos, our physician son-in-law, had recently worked in a New York Covid ward and now helped Jim track my medications and progress. Daughter-in-law Anna offered to fly out to Paris to care for us.
In case my health took a serious dive, Jim and I reviewed the location of the neighborhood hospital and how to phone the French version of 911. I learned that Covid cases count as mild unless you suffer high fever or struggle with breathing, which I never did, thankfully. Fortunately, my throat soon improved, leaving me mostly just tired. I’d not exited the apartment or my pajamas for multiple days.
With my body on the mend, Jim tackled my mental health: I needed some fresh air. We ambled over to the nearby Luxembourg Gardens, masked and distanced, and located some chairs where we sat in the sun. It wasn’t really anything yet it was everything.
I just missed my books. I sent Jim down to Paris’s famous English bookstore called Shakespeare and Company. Annie, who knows my taste better than I do, provided a list of novels for me, but Abigail at the shop didn’t have them in stock.
“I can find some good ones in the same genre, though,” she said, temporarily shutting down her register for the hunt, eager for the challenge. “She’ll like these ones,” Abigail concluded, handing Jim three books. He pulled out his credit card.
Since I’d turned the corner on Covid, Annie mused, “Convalescing in Paris? I can think of worse things. Sounds romantic.” Our friend Lori expressed her support and concern before suggesting I’d gone continental in my Covid experience.
I sit here in Luxembourg Gardens again, a place I’d visited many times in the past either to check off a tourist box or pass through on my way someplace else. Today I do nothing but linger, like other Parisians around me. Luxembourg provides the outdoor space few have in their city apartments.
Thirty feet away, an American student group pauses as their teacher explains the culture of park sitting. The teenagers snap photos of me lounging in my green metal Luxembourg chair, just another Parisian matron on her garden break.
I try to identify the yellow flowers at my feet. Primroses, Jim decides. The sun shines. We’re trapped in Paris in the spring.
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Post-script: I stopped journaling at this point, too cranky to document our journey anymore. After several more days, spendy flight changes, medical consultations and testing, transportation strikes, and five hours sitting on the tarmac at Dulles airport during a wind event, we made it home safely. I ’d never been so grateful for my own bed. Until very recently, anything Parisian triggered me such that I couldn’t finish this story, but I think I ’m finally game for a macaroon or chocolate croissant. And okay with not setting foot in France again for a good while.