When I booked this airplane ticket I was of course aware of the date and it’s significance. And while I tend not to fly on 9/11, I was more interested in getting back to the U.S. than in being superstitious. I flew on 9/11/01 into NYC with a couple of Hasbro colleagues, landing just 15 minutes before the first plane hit the first tower. It was an impossible day, and difficult to emotionally process for a long time. 16 years later and despite all the other tragedies since, it still has an impact on all of our consciousnesses. But I am flying today because I’m ready to get back to the States.
And quite fittingly, I was exposed to multiple quotes about travel as I walked through the airport, and watched the screen in the seat in front of me. So many of them so meaningful.
“The road is life.” Jack Kerouac
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust
“Nothing develops the intelligence so much as travel.” Emile Zola
“The impulse to travel is one of the more hopeful symptoms of life.” Agnes Repplier
This part of my “year of travel” was quite different from the first 5 months I had in the Pacific. It could’ve been that there were weeks spent with friends that made it less of a “journey” and more of a vacation. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I had been to both England and France before. Maybe driving through France gave me some independence that I didn’t have when I relied on public transport to get me everywhere. I also didn’t meet or talk much to/with anyone despite dining alone and connecting occassionally with a tour. It wasn’t any “less” than the first leg, just very different.
So my reflections are more about the countries themselves and what it was like to visit them than about the meaningfulness of the experience. Perhaps traveling became such a way of life that the novelty of it had faded.
First stop: UK. England doesn’t have the kind of summer I like. I truly don’t even think they should call it summer. It needs another name altogether, reflecting the gray skies and chill in the air and daily rain. The gardens are amazing as a result of all that rain — and the hillsides have those impossible shades of green everywhere. But, while beautiful one needs a different wardrobe to enjoy it!
France is the size of Texas, so driving 2,563 miles is roughly like driving between El Paso and Houston 4 times, which of course would be quite boring, and not recommended. My route took me from the Normandy coast to the Cote D’Azur and from the Loire Valley to the mountains of the Occitaine region and finally to the Basque coast, with cultural and geographical changes in every region. It was fascinating.
The French language courses that I took for 7 years beginning when I was 12 served me well, despite my lack of use in the decades since. Clearly what they say about learning languages at a young age when the brain is fresh and pliable is true, as I was daily surprised by my vocabulary. My pronunciation was no better, but the immersion approach is really the way to get a language to begin to stick! And I did get quite good at saying “Merci, au revoir” when leaving a store or restaurant, almost like a native.
Driving alone was the challenge I had set for myself on this trip. (In the Pacific it was taking public transportation everywhere). While it took me awhile to figure out how Penelope (my GPS friend) worked, despite my initial issue with the toll booths, and once I had figured out which nozzle was diesel, it all was pretty easy. So now my confidence in both driving and taking public transportation in foreign countries has soared!
The food and wine were of course excellent, but very much focussed on bread and cheese. So if you’re gluten- or dairy-free it’s a bit of a challenge. If you eat anything, it’s wonderful. And while California has banned foie gras, the French seem to enjoy it at any meal possible. And I will definitely miss the warm goat cheese on toast in a salad.
So now I will spend a week in RI with my sister and brother-in-law, adjusting to at least one US time zone before finally resting my head on my own pillow next week. And so this post officially wraps up this section of the iamoffagain blog. Until my next adventure.
“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.”