We were among the first to deplane in Paris a little after seven in the morning (about one in the morning EDT. Good luck on avoiding jet lag!) As we approached the entrance to the terminal, I saw a guy standing in the jetway behind a wheelchair and holding up a sign with my name on it. With delight I hopped in the chair, and he rushed me along with Embry scurrying to keep up. We whizzed past a long line of several hundred groggy passengers waiting to get through passport control and paused at the security station at the end where there was no line and the wheelchair escort handed our passports to the official, who stamped them and in we went to the baggage claim area. I looked at my watch. Less than ten minutes since we deplaned! Hey, I concluded, we have stumbled upon the Holy Grail of air travel. The only apparent qualification required is disability. Yet I do not believe we even had to show doctor’s orders. I could not help wondering how long it would take for perfectly able people to figure this out.

The wheelchair escort patiently waited with us for our bags to arrive, pulled them off the belt, and then rushed me and the bags to the taxi area with Embry in pursuit. I wasn’t even aware we were going to take a taxi to Orly where we would meet Andrew’s flight since we had plenty of time to take a bus; but before we had a chance to discuss it, our bags were in the trunk of the taxi, and I was sitting on the backseat with Embry. Off we went. The charge for the hour-long ride was something like 40 Euros. Well worth it.

We had four hours to kill before Andrew’s plane landed, which we spent mainly in an Orly airport café, sipping coffee, munching on croissants and people watching, which from prior experience I understood to be the number one recreational activity in France. Now I should point out that France is hardly a mystery to us. Embry lived in a Paris suburb for four months with a French family when she was twelve and attended French grammar school and another three months with the same family over the summer when she was sixteen. In the mid 1980s she also spent six weeks in Paris doing research for her PhD on the French health care system. Over the years she has remained especially close to her older “French sister,” Marielle, now in her late 80s, who lives in an apartment near Notre Dame, which is where Andrew, Karen and our granddaughter, Sadie, will be staying. Andrew also spent most of a summer with the same family when he was a teenager as did our daughter, Jessica. Marielle’s son spent one summer with us. Andrew studied in Paris for his junior year abroad. Everyone in the Howell family except me is fluent in French and we are all Francophiles.  So you might say we have a French connection. Part of the motivation behind Our Last Big Trip is nostalgia. Sadly, this will likely be the last time we visit France.

The takeaway for me waiting for Andrew’s plane to land was how diverse the people were in the airport. While this could be due in part to the Olympics, certainly France is now far more diverse than it was a dozen years ago. There were many people of color coming and going and lots of women wearing Muslim headscarves.

While the main purpose of the trip, of course, is to see some of the Paris 2024 Olympics, the plan was to come a few days early allowing us to visit Martine, who was the first wife of Embry’s older brother, Mike, (artist and poet who died last December at age 88). We are very close to her children, our niece and nephew, and still consider Martine part of our extended family. Martine is French; and while spending most of her teaching career in the United States, she retired to France about twenty years ago and now lives with her partner, Bernard, in Britany, the northwest part of France close to the British Chanel. Andrew had volunteered to be our driver and tour guide for the first four days, allowing us to reunite with our dear friend. At our advanced ages, it would have been a heavy lift to pull this off by ourselves. He rented a car at the airport and then drove us first to the famous tourist destination, Mt. Saint Michel, then to Rennes, a charming town of around 250,000 and about half way to Quimper where Martine lives.

The magical island of Mt. Saint Michel did not disappoint though it was quite crowded.( I intend to post some photos.) Neither did Rennes, a beautiful city with a medieval core where we spent two nights and one full day touring the old part of the town. The small, “garden hotel” (25 rooms max) where we stayed was quaint and well located but with no frills. The elevator could barely accommodate  three people, and the units were barely large enough to accommodate a double bed—but no complaints from us. We strolled along the cobblestone streets and ancient sidewalks, enjoyed what Andrew  described as likely to turn out to be the best meal of the trip—a six course, delicious extravaganza with paired wines, extraordinary service, and hardly any ambient noise—and stumbled upon a fabulous light show celebrating the Paris Olympics on our way back to the hotel.

What stands out most to me about the drive to Britany were the beauty of the countryside, the lack of any billboards or advertising on any of the major highways or back roads, and the two ancient villages we visited along the way. The first was completely by chance. We were curious as to what the villages were like that we had been seeing from a distance along the toll road to Britany, took an arbitrary exit and within a few minutes were sipping wine and having a delicious lunch in a café on a small, cobblestoned courtyard facing a church that looked to us like a relic from the Middle Ages. The second excursion Andrew had chosen from his research because it included a restored castle and elegant gardens. We were one of only a handful of visitors roaming through the ground level rooms and corridors of the giant Gothic structure with portraits of former owners, armor, and medieval furniture and situated along a winding, small river. Then off again to Quimper with a brief stop along the way for lunch at a beachfront café facing the Atlantic Ocean. We reunited with Martine and Bernard around dinner time and fully enjoyed our time with them, although way too short with only two nights and a full day.

So what is it about France that makes it such a magical and alluring country, which the Howell family  has returned to again and again over the years? The country is far from perfect and has had its ups and downs—the excesses of the Catholic Church and the aristocracy beginning in the Middle Ages, the bloody French Revolution, Napolean, the class (and racial) divisions that persist, and the sellout to the Nazis in World War II. The country has had its share of cultural snobs. Graffiti persists here as it does in the U.S. and so many countries. Yet it is hard not to make comparisons with French sensibilities and our way of life in the U.S.  Start with the French countryside. Drop dead gorgeous.  All of it. No billboards or advertising along the major toll roads or the winding country roads, no signs of abject, rural poverty which are prevalent in so many other countries and in locations in the U.S. Where are the mobile homes and the shacks in disrepair? Where are the abandoned junk cars, the fast food joints, and big box stores sucking the life out of the village centers? (McDonalds, Burger King and Starbucks are now in France  but not so much in the villages.) Where are the sprawling subdivisions, the regional malls, the vast parking lots and the giant warehouses? As one with a master’s degree in urban planning, I can’t help mourning what I would call lost opportunities in the U.S. In a word, France puts us to shame.

Now,  to the Paris and the 2024 Olympics….