My First Blog Entry

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So Charlie and I are headed to France. Having spent every vacation together in Spanish speaking countries where I can easily communicate our needs, this will be the first foray into a country with a language neither of us know.

Charlie will be fine. As he says, he’s used to feeling completely in the dark about things while traveling. I’m the one that will have the wake up call, as he reminds me with obvious satisfaction.

“You’ll be wandering the streets of Paris, looking for someone to explain something to you in English. It’s been days since you heard the language and you feel lost and lonely. You will find someone who is willing to speak English to you and your relief is palpable. Then along comes someone who is fluent in French and those two will begin to converse in that language while you stand there dumbly. Welcome to my world.”

I’m sure he’s right. I loved speaking Spanish and even when someone in our travels was proficient in English, I would prefer to speak to them in Spanish so that I could use my Spanish. A bit selfish, I realize now. I was always so anxious to demonstrate that we were able to communicate in the native language that I failed to remember that really only one of us spoke the native language. My bad.

We’ve not ventured onto the European continent, preferring to spend our time in Latin America—when I was living in California, because I was poor and it was within driving distance. When living in Minnesota because we were cold and it was warm. Besides, we could take a wonderful vacate in Mexico for a third of what it cost to go anywhere else. We loved the Latin American cultures and landscapes and ultimately, the people.

I am really quite excited though, about this trip. We’re leaving in May for a twelve day trip. Althought we’re not city lovers, we’re headed to Paris for one reason only: we know it is the BEST city in the world and it would be criminal to pass it up. So we’re planning on spending four days in the city and then renting a car and heading south. We’ll drive through the Loire Valley, taking a couple of days to do this and then settle in the Dordogne (Perigord Noir), with our base in Sarlat, having rented a studio apartment there for a week. From there our plan is to explore this region as thoroughly as we can in a week. After that, we drive to Bordeaux, drop off our car and take the TGV back to Paris, heading out the following day.

I’m curious to hear of any suggestions anyone might have regarding our plans—we know we can’t see everything. We’re not the types to plan the whirlwind tour of the entire country. We have settled mainly on Paris and the Dordogne. We threw in the Loire Valley drive just for a bit of spontaneity (even though I’ve asked Charlie to plan that leg and find us a good B&B or similar locale for one night).

A little about us: Charlie and I have been married for ten years, been together for thirteen. We’re empty nesters who had planned on retiring in about five years and wanted to spend a good deal of time traveling. We now find our retirement nest eggs severely depleted and are probably looking at work for another ten years. As a consequence, we’ve decided that our travel should not wait. We can’t save life for when we retire, can we? The time is now.

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