(Posted on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes)

Back in September, we spent a couple of days in Lourdes.

It was at the end of our second week in France – we were there from a Saturday afternoon to a Tuesday morning, having arrived from a week in this great gite outside of Montignac.

How did we get there?  We drove, of course – this being the part of The Trip in which I had wheels.  I do enjoy travelling by train, as well, but there were times I regretted not having a car later – not in Paris, of course, but in Italy.

(I had not obtained an International Driver’s License before leaving.  You don’t need one to rent a car in France, but it’s required in Italy.  I hadn’t planned on driving in Italy, anyway, but once we arrived, I wished I had – I would rather have had a car for the couple of weeks before Rome.)

(There’s a smaller, regional airport that serves Lourdes, in case you want to fly straight there.)

So we left the gite on Saturday morning, and headed down to Lourdes by way of Toulouse.  I stopped briefly in Toulouse – I could see the IKEA from the road, and I was just curious to see if it was any different from an American IKEA.  Nope.  No difference.  At. All. IKEA on Saturday?  Mobbed, chaotic and stressful – everywhere around the world.  Globalization!

As I wrote on my other blog, Lourdes was not was I expected.  I expected it to be both tackier but also more picturesque, if that makes any sense.  I guess I was expecting a more intensely commercial Assisi (not that I had been to Assisi at that point..but..).

Yes, it’s wall-to-wall religious souvenir shops, but it didn’t feel much different than any other pilgrimage site in than respect.  No more or less tacky.  But although it’s a nice enough town, it’s not picturesque.  It’s a practical, busy place in which the only remnants of pre-20th century life seem to be the Chateau and the churches.

Yes, it was crowded, but not horribly so.  I imagine there are feastdays and seasons in which it’s truly mobbed, but late September, it wasn’t.

There’s not lack of hotels in Lourdes, of course.  I think I read that it’s got the most hotels per capita for any place in France. Maybe Europe.  We ended up at La Solitude.  

All Lourdes hotels are set up to receive guests from all over the world.  Hotel staff are multilingual and very helpful.   They’re also set up for pilgrimage groups  - and the disabled – which means your chances of finding a more spacious-than-normal-European-hotel room are pretty high in Lourdes.  Ours reminded me of the “penthouse” rooms in a Residence Inn (without the kitchen).  It was two stories, with two beds and a bathroom on each floor.  It was perfectly fine, and the hotel even had a pool on the enclosed roof.

Bathing in a different kind of water in Lourdes

This hotel had parking, and it was certainly the most unique parking experience I’ve ever had.  The garage was underground and when the doorman pointed it out to me, I had to blink because I honestly couldn’t see how I was going to get down there, even with my tiny car.  First, you turned off the main road into what looked like, at worst, a sidewalk, at best an alleyway, scattering pedestrians as you go.  A sharp turn to the left and down you go into the pit, which turns out to be a space that might accommodate twenty cars – at most – and all parked in very creative ways.  It probably took me ten minutes of back and forth to squeeze into a space, praying to Our Lady of Lourdes the whole time that she might somehow protect my rental car from scratches – or from scratching someone else.

Needless to say, I didn’t dare move it until it was time to leave three days later.

As I said, Lourdes is a busy, busy place.  It’s busy not only with pilgrims but also at times with football fans.  There was a match with an Irish team while we were there, and the Sunday night of our stay, the Irish fans sang – and cursed – LOUDLY – late into the night at one of the bars on the river here.  Sound carries well in French nighttime air, although the boys said they never actually heard a thing.

While in Lourdes, we visited the Shrine, attended the nighttime processions, went to the grotto, touched the waters of the grotto, prayed, went to Mass, went to the church where Bernadette was baptized, toured her home, toured the Chateau.   There are, of course, other, more touristy things to do – wax museums and plays and such.  We did not bathe in the waters.  But you can find out about that here.

Food?  Yes, Lourdes has food, but none of what we managed to find was memorable.   Shopping?  Most of the souvenir shops sell identical goods, with a few exceptions – the place where I bought this being one.  (La Maison de Chapelet – 1 rue de Petits Fosses – no website)  The woman who owns it paints these sweet little pieces and makes her own rosaries.  She said to us after we made our purchases, “Now you can go home and say you have something that is actually from Lourdes – not China.”

Indeed.

Oh, and just know that if you want to approach the Grotto – that is, actually get up there and touch the water – you will have to leave your dog behind.  We were behind these two for much of the line until right up to the entrance, when the dog was turned away…

There are other museums in Paris besides the Louvre!  You’ve heard of some of them – and some perhaps not.

With a month in Paris, we were fortunate enough to have plenty of time to explore a variety of museums, large and small.  Some lived up to the “hidden gem” hype, and some didn’t.  A couple amazed me.

• The two museums that most tourists turn to after or even instead of the Louvre are the Musée d’Orsay and L’Orangerie.  I’ll be honest and say that while the d’Orsay building is a stunner (a converted train station across the Seine from the Louvre – sort of), I found it almost unbearably crowded and the Impressionists holdings…not amazing.  Not as amazing as I had expected, at least.  I appreciated seeing what Rouen Cathedral canvases of Monet that are there, had completely forgotten that Arrangement in Black and Grey No. 1 - aka – Whistler’s Mother – hung on one of its walls – and was completely moved by Monet’s Camille on Her Deathbed and could have remained there for a long time pondering it and what it evoke except for the little boys standing about, wondering and asking what this was.
• I found L’Orangerie a more relaxing and interesting experience – perhaps because we arrived less than an hour before it closed and therefore it wasn’t very crowded!  What interested me most there was the Soutine exhibit – he was the subject of one of the volumes in my parents’ considerable art book collection, and his work has stayed with me ever since first encountering it in those books, and it gave the boys a lot to talk about.

So…beyond that…what is there?

Plenty!

I’ll say right off that there were a couple of smaller museums which we never managed to visit, even with all that time, and I regret it – never got to the Musée Carnavalet or the Museum of Magic (although reading the reviews of the latter now...I guess we didn’t miss much after all!), for example. But in this post and the next, I’ll talk about some interesting surprises.

This was a stunner.  And a complete shock, in a good way.

I’d read about it, you see, and thought, “Reproductions of architectural features? Really?  How interesting can that be?  After all, we’re in FRANCE, surrounded by the REAL THING.  Plaster models? What is this, Epcot? Okaaaaay….”  But then reading some more, I started to get intrigued, and finally, on a Sunday, we ended up there sort of at the same time as the Speeds..and…wow.

Now, this is not a tiny, quirky museum.  It’s HUGE  and quirky, one of several museums in the Palais de Chaillot (built for the 1937 International Exhibition)  across from the Eiffel Tower.

What it is – is this:  The first floor galleries feature casts – not small-scale reproductions, not models under glass  - but casts of major architectural features of French buildings, most Romanesque or Gothic, and mostly religious in nature.  Other floors hold rooms and rooms of reproductions of medieval stained glass and frescoes.  The highest floor has a fascinating, sprawling exhibit on contemporary architecture.

A brief history of the casts:

The Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine owns a large collection of plaster casts of historic monuments, most of which were made in the late 19th and early 20th century for the Musée de Sculpture Comparée (Museum of Comparative Sculptures). This museum was founded in 1889 by Viollet-le-Duc – known for his restoration of the Notre-Dame - and opened in the Trocadéro Palace, which was later demolished to make place for the current Palais de Chaillot. After the International Exhibition of 1937 the collection found a new home in the Musée de Monuments Français, now part of the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine.

The casts are arranged in chronological order starting from the 12th century and ending at the 18th century. They show statues and sections of important French buildings such as a portal of the Chartres Cathedral, a pillar of the Strasbourg Cathedral and the portal of the 12th century church of Saint-Fortunat.

But first…should you?

No, it’s not a crazy question to which the answer is an astonished, “Of course! In Paris? You have to do the Louvre!”

Do you know what?

When you travel, you can do anything you want.   ANYTHING! There is plenty to do in Paris, the Louvre takes a good chunk of time, even done minimally, and if you’re not that interested in art, period or have other, less crowd-afflicted destinations that interest you..no, you don’t “have to” do the Louvre.

We met a family – a couple and teen daughter – who had spent 4 days in Paris and concluded that they didn’t like it.  That it was the least favorite part of their 6-week European trip.  Why?  Partly because they found it dirty (I didn’t – and they were from New Zealand, which I concluded must be very clean), and partly, I think, when they told me what they’d seen, because they tried to cram all the popular and iconic tourist activities – incliding the Louvre –   into those four days, they didn’t know how to use the public transportation, and they just felt that their time in Paris had been spent running around the city only to stop and wait in a line for a couple of hours here and there.   To see the things you “have to” see when you’re in Paris.

Now, most of the time. the “have to sees” are that for a reason.  The Eiffel Tower is iconic, yes, but deservedly so.  It’s a fascinating, thought-provoking structure.  But even that?  It can be appreciated quite well without ascending, although that definitely adds to the experience.

The Louvre, and specifically the Mona Lisa are the center of most tourists’ Paris expectations.  Again, with good reason – it’s huge, has an amazing collection and a fascinating history that is in itself a helpful capsule of the history of Paris.  But it’s also a daunting site, especially when you walk by and see the line snaking out of the entrance pyramid.  Personally, I would say that if you’ve only got half a day left, you see the line is long and you’re not an art person and there are other sites you really want to see  - don’t feel “obliged” to dive in.  You can go to Paris without going to the Louvre.

BUT…if you go..here’s what we experienced.

• We went four times in the almost five weeks we were there.  The first time was late and we didn’t have much time – I had misread the closing times and thought we had three hours, when we only had 45 minutes.  The second time was probably our most substantive. 
• I bought a museum pass once – for a time period in which I planned to hit a lot of museums.  I don’t know if it paid off financially, but it did in terms of line time – not so much at the Louvre, though, as at the Musee D’Orsay and L’Orangerie.  The thing about the Museum Pass is that it is good for consecutive days – so in order to get your money’s worth, you will be doing a lot of museum-going on those days. It can end up being a trap.
• The thing about most Paris museums, including the Louvre, is that children are free. It makes planning and revisiting a lot easier for families, I think.  You just don’t have that frantic, “WE HAVE TO SEE EVERYTHING NOW BECAUSE WE PAID ALL THIS MONEY SO JUST KEEP GOING” feeling.   I missed that – free admission for kids – in Rome.
• Your first step is to buy a ticket.  You don’t have to buy your ticket at the Louvre itself.  You can buy them online and pick them up at any number of sites in Paris, or just walk into one of those sites (a store) and buy it there. One of the more visible and easy to find chains at which to buy tickets is FNAC – which is sort of like the French Best Buy, with the addition of huge book sections.  There are several in Paris, very easy to find.
• If you want to buy tickets at the Louvre itself, the best spot is the gift shop that is in the mall under the Louvre called Galerie du Carrousel.   There is hardly any line, and if there is, it moves quickly.  Just know that they only take cash.  No credit or debit cards.  Only cash.
• There are also a slew of automated ticket machines in the Carrousel underground courtyard – those lines tend to be long, too, especially on busy days, even though there are so many machines. I think it is a factor of people just not knowing how to use them.
• Buying tickets isn’t the big hassle – going through security is. That’s where the lines are.  My experience wasn’t bad.  We entered through the Galerie three times, and the lines were either minimal or had maybe thirty people in them, and they moved quickly.  The one time we entered at the Pyramid, the line coming out was quite long…but it was for those who didn’t have tickets.  We already had tickets, so we walked right in into a quick security line.
• Take note of opening hours.  They say the crowds tend to be lighter in the evenings, but we never went in the evening, so I can’t say.
• Now: the crowds.  They are pretty intense, especially, I think, late morning to mid afternoon.  And take note of this:  PAY ATTENTION TO THE SCHEDULING OF FRENCH SCHOOL HOLIDAYS.  They are frequent, and not just during the summer.  The third time we went, with a visiting friend, it was a Monday and the crowds were unreal.  Unlike anything we’d experienced.  Ridiculous.  Then I realized, looking at and listening to all the French children and families, that it was the first Monday of the All Saints’ break (late October -early November).  It was like being in Washington on the Fourth of July weekend.  I wouldn’t recommend it.
• There are audio/visual guides which are on Nintendo 3DS systems.  I didn’t use it, but my sons did, of course.  They found them easy to use, but I don’t know if you will!

• You’ll need a map.  The museum is huge, and spread out in several wings.  The maps will give you the location of notable iconic holdings – so if all you want to see is the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo – you can fly right there.
• Eating?  Eat before you come, especially if the museum is crowded.  There are some eating spots, but we found the main cafeteria too crowded and by the time we got there, they were also running out of food. As in: we waited in line at one station where they were advertising pizza, only to get up to the front after 20 minutes to be told, “No pizza. It’s finished.”  (“It is finished” is what, I’ve found, French and Italians say in English when an item has run out. )  So…would it kill you to put up a SIGN?
• There’s a food court in the Carrousel mall, but it’s quite expensive (except for McDo’s, of course), and there’s not a lot of cheapish (for Paris) food directly around the Louvre. Across the river, you’d do better, and down in the park there are crepes and such.  But really – go with a full stomach.
• What should you see? Whatever you want.  There are some things you won’t see at the Louvre.  You won’t see contemporary art, and you won’t see many Impressionists – they are at other Paris museums.   You will see a good, helpfully arranged collection of European painting from the Renaissance through the Early Modern period.  You’ll see some huge masterworks like The Coronation of Napoleon and The Raft of the Medusa.  Magnificent sculpture.  Most intriguingly, in my mind, though, are the Louvre’s antiquities – especially Egyptian and Near East.
• I was deeply impressed by these, and I’m generally not an antiquities person.  The arrangement and depth of the Louvre’s antiquities collection was revelatory to me.  I learned a lot and was moved at times – by, for example, the collection of Egyptian statuary depicting spouses seated together, occasionally with a child at their feet.
• These were a surprise to find and a huge hit. 

• The Code of Hammurabi!
• Let me put it this way. Let’s see.  If you are a painting person, have had a lot of exposure to art in various museums and have no burning desire to see anything in particular in the Louvre’s painting collection – no Medusa, Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks, Napoleon or Vermeers, and don’t have a lot of time and would like to see other things in Paris..I wouldn’t feel awful about skipping the Louvre.  It’s a commitment, it’s probably going to be crowded and there are so many wonderful smaller museums in Paris that are more relaxing experiences.
• But even so…that Egyptian and Near Eastern collection is quite something. And aside from the crowd snapping photos of Hammurabi’s code,  your wandering will be far less hemmed in than it is in other galleries.

• Not that the other museums in Paris are all empty, either.  I actually found the Musee D’Orsay to be a bit more harried than the Louvre, even on its worst day.  The room with the Van Goghs, especially  - it was small and one had to move through in a tightly packed line.
• It helps to get a good guidebook before you go – and there are many, and some for kids. I’ll add to this post later with some suggestions.

We had seen these at an Archimboldo exhibit in Milan, but it was great to see them again – my kids love Archimboldo.

Guess what this crowd is doing….

Three recent day (or…early afternoon) trips:

1. Sloss Furnaces.

One of the places I drive by almost every day, sometimes twice.  It’s a relic of what brought Birmingham into existence: the confluence of coal, iron ore and limestone that made the steel industry possible here.  It’s interesting to know that after the business was shut down 40 years ago, one of the options for the space was to simply…tear it down.

It might make a certain amount of sense.  What use does this sprawling, rusting hulk have?  Rather an eyesore, yes?

Perhaps, but when I imagine the Birmingham landscape without it, what’s missing is more than smokestacks.  What’s missing is history.  It’s our version of Roman ruins.  Without the now-quiet machines resting next to I-20, it would be too easy to forget those early days, the hard, dirty, backbreaking work, the immigrants brought into do that work, all of which brought this city into existence – thriving existence, for a time.

We’d been there before, to a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream that was produced in a huge shed area there, but never toured it.  If you’re a local it is absolutely worth it, and not just because it’s free!

You can begin the tour by viewing a short (maybe 15 minute film) that is okay, but could use an update.  There are guided tours available at certain times, but a useful pamphlet makes a self-guided tour easy and informative.

Basically, you just wander.

Amid silent machinery, listening and looking for ghosts of fire and steam, black coal and glowing molten iron.

Ghosts that remind us how hard and long strong men worked.

Struck me as potentially a little treacherous, but in the era of endless caution. liability hysteria and overbearing protection, I appreciated the trust.

2) Cherokee Rock Village is a bit more than an hour northeast of here.  We ventured up there a couple of weeks ago, when it was still warm.

Just climbed and looked down and around.  It’s a popular spot for climbers. I imagine that it’s busy on weekends here.

Someday we’ll come back, a bit more prepared with food and such.  Apparently Horse Pens 40, which is a little closer, is also good for rocks.  We’ll check it out once it starts warming up here…maybe in a few weeks? (Just rubbing it in…sorry) 

On that weekday afternoon, there were just a couple of other parties there – two sets of parents with small children, and then two adult men who were working with remote control trucks. They were there before we arrived, and still going at it when we left two hours later: maneuvering those little vehicles over rocks, seeing how vertical they could get them and still go.  An odd way for two middle-aged men to spend their day, but who knows how odd my preoccupations would seem to outsiders…

3) Helen Keller!

One of my first memories of Alabama was this: Driving into the state over four years ago and seeing a billboard for Helen’s birthplace in Tuscumbia.  The sign read: “COME SEE WHAT SHE COULDN’T.” 

What? 

I think that campaign was short-lived, the “edginess” designed to just get folks’ attention, but our recent trip didn’t indicate any lack of visitors.  On the Saturday before Christmas, there was a steady stream, and our guide indicated that it’s pretty popular with Japanese tour groups.  Our guide who was a lovely, sharp elderly lady who did a great job with the children.

Tuscumbia is a little south of Florence and as such not near a major interstate – you’d have to drive probably an hour from I-65 to get there.  But – along with other sites in the area, it would definitely be worth it.

Now, there’s not a lot to the site. It’s all still pretty simple.  The farmhouse is beautifully preserved, with each of the rooms holding artifacts and pictures, and a back room (maybe it was the kitchen) being a small museum, where you can see things like THE ACTUAL KEY.

Helen’s parents’ bedroom, downstairs, with some of Helen’s clothes.

The statue is a replica of the one currently standing in the US capitol.

The water pump is between the house and the smaller cabin where Annie Sullivan took Helen for a couple of weeks in order to get her away from her family’s indulgence.  In the film, it seems as if it were further away in some woods somewhere, but it’s actually right next to the main house, which makes the feat  - riding Helen in a carriage for a couple of hours so she would think she was staying at a distance from the house – all the more impressive.

We’d watched the film the day before, and read a couple of short books on Helen’s life, which is certainly remarkable.  More than remarkable, really.  As was the life of her teacher, as well.

Just a little spot in northwest Alabama – and you think about the impact Helen Keller’s work had on the lives of the disabled all over the world, which started right here.  I guess this could go under the “pilgrimage” label, too, then.

The Paris apartment was the first accommodation I pinned down, way back in March or April.  Partly because those accommodations go quickly, and secondly so I would have a greater incentive to stay in the game and not back out.

I had never been to Paris before and studying the map still didn’t give me a complete sense of where would be best to stay.  For you can study all you want, but it’s nothing compared to being on the ground in the city, understanding how public transportation works and what a neighborhood actually feels like.

The apartment was in Montmartre, and it turned out to be a spectacular choice.  When you think “Montmartre” you might just think “artists” and “Sacre Coeur,” but you might also think “sleaze” since the area around the Moulin Rouge is known for its sex shops.  Thanks to Google Streetview I could do a good check of the neighborhood – which was a few blocks away from the Moulin Rouge - and it was advertised as a “family apartment.”

Nothing to fear.  It was a great apartment, very non-touristy neighborhood, grocery store next door, three boulangeries on the block, fine restaurants everywhere, ordinary take-away food everywhere, the Metro down the block, two good bus lines, Sacre Coeur up the hill, and every once in a while..parades.

The Drehers stayed on the other side of town, right next to the Luxembourg Gardens, and that definitely has its advantages as well.  But all in all, we were good where we were – and the management company is really the best.  

From Paris we took the train to Lausanne, where we stayed in this hotel – Hotel des Voyageurs -  for two nights.  As is the case with everything in Switzerland it was expensive – sort of insanely expensive when compared to what you’d get in the US – even in a larger city – for the same price.  BUT it was super clean – just immaculate – well located, and the breakfast was fine.  Still, I’d rather stay in an apartment than in a single room with three beds….I wasn’t sad to leave.

Then it was almost a week in Padua in this great apartment.  As I’ve said before, I had envisioned that we’d be staying in Venice for this part of the trip, and I am SO GLAD we didn’t.  Padua was great, and this apartment was perfectly located right next to three major piazzas and a couple of bustling markets.  2 bedrooms, one with a full/queenish sized bed, the other with a twin and a trundle.  Public tranportation very convenient, and once you actually get to the train station (a fifteen minute walk or 5 minute tram/bus ride) it’s about 30-40 minutes to Venice.

One more hotel…this one in Assisi.  Hotel Pallotta. Assisi is small, of course, so you really can’t go wrong on location, unless you have mobility issues, and then I’m not sure you want to be in Assisi at all.  So yes, this was well located.  The room was, once again, clean, with very attentive housekeeping.  It was, however, tiny with a ridiculous bathroom.

Europeans are known for having creative shower arrangements which are often puzzling to Americans because the enclosures may seem insanely…non-enclosed.  This is almost a self-parody of “Weird European showers that spread water everywhere” because, well…that’s what it seems designed to do.  Granted, given the limitations of this building which was undoubtedly not originally a hotel, and probably built about 400 years ago, the challenge to even construct an ensuite full bathroom was considerable.

Finally – Rome.  This is the 3rd apartment in which I’ve stayed in Rome, and it’s right around the corner from first, back in 2006,  right off the Borgo Vittorio near the Vatican.  Many people prefer to stay on the other side of the Tiber – near Piazza Navona or the Spanish Steps or the Coliseum  - and I originally thought I might do the same this trip, since I never have.  But the prices were higher over there, and I could never find one that was the right size (a friend would be coming over, so we needed more space) at the right price with enough positive reviews.

So I shot back over the river and found this one, which was spectacular.  Highly recommended.

A few notes about all of the accommodations:

• All of the apartments had washing machines, but only one had a dryer (not unexpected in Europe).  I did some airdrying, but in most places,I found a nearby laundromat in walking distance, took the wet clothes over there, spent a couple of Euros and 30 minutes, and got the job done.
• La Four a Sel had full laundry facilities in a separate building for all guests.
• All except Tennessus and La Bobiniere had Wi-Fi (that’s a requirement for which I look ), and all were pretty dependable connections except for the Assisi hotel. I couldn’t connect to that one except for in the common area.  Those thick stone walls are a signal killer, and not everyone has heard of the concept of the wi-fi booster.
• I booked the Paris apartment in the spring, but everything else I booked the last couple of weeks in October for November stays – even the Rome apartment.

What the great rentals on this trip had in common wasn’t just the physical comfort and convenience available – they were all owned and/or managed by really helpful people with a passion for making the guest’s stay great.  Lovely, lovely people, at every stop!

Row 1: La Bobiniere, Tennessus
Row 2: La Solitude in Lourdes, Tennessus, near the Uzes apartment
Row 3: Appy, La Four a Sel

So, where we did we stay, and how did I find these places, most of which turned out to be gems?

Second part first, please.

Researching vacation rentals gives (gave) me a weird sense of satisfaction and pleasure.   Note the past tense.  That’s because, not surprisingly, this trip pretty much satiated me on that score for a while.  Don’t get me wrong.  It was a good trip.  A great trip!  But the initials “V” “R” “B” and “O” situated even in the same sentence are, at the moment, making me twitch.

Part of the reason I usually (not immediately post 3-months on the road) enjoy the Rental Huntit is probably close to the same reason I like looking at real estate, even when I’m not looking for real estate.  I like houses.  I like seeing how other people arrange the space in which they live, I am intrigued by home design and since I am not 100% satisfied with where I live (as much as I like it), I do think that a part of my enjoyment derives from imaging myself – us – in that space, doing what people who would live in that space would do.

The criteria?  Location, price, space and proximity to areas in which two boys can blow off steam.  Here’s more about my “technique” in this post. 

So…where did we stay? Here’s how it worked out for September – from 9′/11, when we arrived, to 10/3, when we landed in Paris for the month.

1. Tennesus Castle.  A labor of love.

How fitting that our first accommodation on this trip was a place restored and maintained by expats (British) – the first of many we would meet, people who had left home, found a passion abroad and were living it.  Every one of them inspired me.

So, yes, this is a real, later medieval castle, carefully and faithfully restored.  We stayed in the “Sentinel’s Chamber” in the keep.  It was one huge room – I slept on the bed, and there were two comfortable trundle mattresses for the boys.  The bathroom was small, but sleek.  We had the choice of having our breakfast breads brought to us – which happened without asking the first morning – or served along with everyone else downstairs.  I went down the other two mornings we were there (the boys were still recovering from the trip), and met some of the other guests: a couple from New Zealand on a trip celebrating the husband’s retirement from the police force, and a Swiss couple and their adult son, there visiting a nearby relation.

The room – complete with a bit of armor – was fun enough, but what made it almost perfect was the grounds.  Tennessus is a working farm, so cattle made their morning and late afternoon appearances, sheep streamed through on their way to greener pastures, and pigs were kept nearby, always ready to chomp some spare apples from the orchard across the way.

Oh, and the moat. With a rowboat.  Can’t forget that.  A definite highlight.

There was really no better way to begin our trip than a stay in a REAL LIVE CASTLE. 

2.  The next major destination – the first real object of the trip, actually  - was Puy du Fou.  When I first reserved Tennessus, I had thought we might use it as a base for Puy du Fou.  But upon reflection and further map study, I determined that might not be a great idea – it was just a little too far for comfort, and boy – that night I was driving back from Puy du Fou at 11 pm in the dark, in France…I was glad I only had about 20 minutes to go instead of the hour it would have been to Tennessus.

So, where to stay?

Piece of cake, I thought.

I thought wrong. 

For what I neglected to remember was that the weekend we were doing Puy du Fou was the last weekend for Puy du Fou’s massive nighttime shows that encompass and explain the entire History of France (from the perspective of the Vendee).  The park is open a few more weeks, and then re-opened at Christmas, but not for those nighttime shows (something I understood as I experienced it…it was cold….)

So what does that mean?

It means..that my attempts to find a room for that weekend were sort of like it would be if you were trying to find a good room in Miami on January 7, 2013 – if Miami were a lot smaller.  Okay, forget it.  You get the concept.  I stupidly waited until about a week and a half before we needed the room, I was dealing with mainly folks who spoke not a word of English, and really – this is one of the few times I started to panic.  I honestly thought I might not be getting a room, and I would have to backtrack and stick with Tennessus for those days, which I really didn’t want to do because of the expense and the distance from the park.

But..ah!  La Bobiniere came through!

It was lovely – an older farm complex which is gradually being transformed into gites.  Our end had two bedrooms, a slick bathroom and a very spacious downstairs living and kitchen area.  The proprietors spoke barely any English, but we could communicate well enough.  The breakfast was  great, with preserves produced right there on the farm, and so on.  We didn’t spend a whole lot of time there – only two nights – but it served its purpose very well.

3.  Then it was down south and east to La Four a Sel – another accommodation run by British expats making a go of it in France.  It’s composed of a few houses (2 or 3 – I can’t remember) and a few discrete rooms.  We stayed in “La Mimosa” – which had two bedrooms upstairs, good living and kitchen space and a large bathroom downstairs.  It’s just north of Montignac – oh, I suppose I should explain that part of the trip, shouldn’t I?  After our exposure to western France, we shot down to the Dordogne for several reasons, but mostly because on this roamschooling adventure, I was trying to be a little logical about it all, so I thought we’d start in an area known for its excellent prehistory artifacts and sites – Lascaux and so on.

So in all of that searching, La Four a Sel turned up and seemed like the right place for us – and it was.  Grounds to explore and play on.  A river.   A cornfield through which one could walk to the small village nearby.  A dog.  Wonderful hosts who (ahem) spoke English and were tremendously helpful.

Here’s the thing.  Sometimes people are hesitant to stay in vacation rentals rather than hotels because they fear they will miss the support and help of a hotel staff.  I can see this if you’re talking about renting a cabin in the middle of the Black Forest.  But if you find a gite or apartment operated by a local who speaks your language, they can give you plenty of advice – most of them are in this business because they like helping travelers.  They love the area in which they live and the love introducing you to the best of it.

Are we done yet? Er, no…we’re just getting started.

4. Then it was down to Lourdes.  First real hotel of the trip.  This was tricky.  Lourdes, of course, is full of hotels. No lack of hotels in Lourdes.  But I had no idea what any of these hotels were like.  I’d never stayed in a hotel in Europe before, and all I knew (or thought I knew) was “small.”  As in, much smaller rooms than I’m used to.  I didn’t want to spend a whole bunch of money, but nor did I want to be stuck in a closet with two boys wondering why they were stuck in a closet with me, surrounded by rosary peddlers.

We did pretty well.  We ended up here – at  La Solitude.  The room was good-sized, obviously set up for situations involving groups of pilgrims.  Our room was two levels – two twin beds on each level, with a bathroom on each level as well.  It sort of reminded me of Marriott Residence Inn “penthouse” rooms, just not as big.  The staff was, as you would expect, multi-lingual and helpful.  The hotel is located quite close to the Shrine.  There’s even parking, which was an experience in itself.  I drove past the tiny street that holds the hotel’s entrance twice, really not believing that I was expected to drive in there.  So I didn’t. I (amazingly) found street parking, and we walked over from there.  I asked the clerk, “So, where do I park?” and he told me to drive up to the door and then into the garage – which involved a sharp turn (after I’d driven over a few pilgrims on what really did not seem like a street, and I say that as a person who has driven in Sicilian hill towns), a descent, and then me taking several minutes to study what, at first glance, seemed like a completely full parking garage, but eventually revealed one spot – if I turned this way and that and then this way again and backed into it….

Oh, but there was a pool!

5.  Appy!

Appy is in the Pyrennees.  I think 23 people live in Appy.  26 while we were there.

Now you are really going to ask…how..did you find this????

As far as I can reconstruct it, my thought process went like this:

We will be in Lourdes.  Lourdes is close to the Pyrenees. I wonder where we could stay in the Pyrenees.  What would that be like?  Oh!  You can ride donkeys in the Pyrenees!  Look! Here’s a gite connected with people who raise donkeys that you can ride! Let’s go there!

So we went to Appy!

This was a great little gite.  Really nicely restored and refurbished with a good design eye.  Just from tooling around this part of France for a few days, I detected a definite off-the-grid-boho-vibe among the younger inhabitants.  As I said, this gite was very nicely designed, and came complete with homemade apple juice and copies of Persepolis on the shelves.

I will admit that by the end, I was a little tired of the hassle of driving up and down the winding roads to get anywhere – I was ready to ditch the car completely by the end of it – but oh, my, those views were worth it.

6. Uzes!

This was the “Roman Gaul” part of the roamschooling adventure.  Again, I went back and forth about this one – should we stay in Arles? In Nimes?  Finally I stumbled upon Uzes, and I was very glad I did, especially after going to both Arles and Nimes, which were fine, but Uzes was better.  It was smaller, but not tiny. It had a wonderful medieval vibe.  And the apartment was great.  This one.   Two bedrooms, one upstairs, one down.  Owned by an artist (another British expat), it was almost perfect (except for the water pressure in the bathroom, which was pretty bad, unfortunately….).  A great location, right in the middle of town.  You could walk everywhere, and on Saturday, the market spread out right under your window.  Marvelous.

Next up…the rest of the trip’s accommodations

Here’s our trip:

(Click on it for a larger version)

CRAZY.

Forgive the non-interactive, Paint-produced map.  I tried a couple of online map-making tools, and got extremely frustrated.  The best one let me make the map and then demanded 10 bucks a month to preserve it.  Google Maps wouldn’t cooperate. Couldn’t do lines properly, couldn’t figure out how to delete random markers that kept appearing. So much for that.  So it was back to Paint, hence no sweet interactivity, with icons you can click on and such.  I guess I’ll just have to TELL YOU.

1.   We arrive at CDG at 7:30 AM on 9/11.  (Yes)  I picked up the rental car and drove to:

2.  9/11- 9/14  Tennessus Castle.   From 9/14-9/16 we were here and went here.  Got back in the car, drove, and ended up

3. 9/16-22 here.  then down to…

4. 9/22-25 in Lourdes. Then…

5. 9/25-28 in the Pyrenees

6. 9/28-10/2 in Uzes.  Then back up north.  A night in Fontainbleau, return to car at CDG, then

7. 10/3-11/6 in Paris. No more car. So after that, on the train to

8. 11/6-8 in Lausanne.  Train to…

9. 11/8-14 in Padua

10.  11/14-17 in Assisi

11.  11/17-27 in Roma…

…and now here we are…

Tomorrow I’ll run down all of the accommodations.  They were mostly great. Except for the whole “shower above the toilet” thing in Assisi. 

(Most of this was planned before we left.  Except for November, which I really didn’t start pinning down until October since, as I mentioned before, our departure date was always an open question.  I felt badly, though, when at one point – in Assisi, I think, Michael said, “Mommy, next time we do this, I think it would be a good idea to plan where we’re staying before we come. Okay?”)

— 1 —

As I said, we’re back, and here are some quick takes before I settle down to do more thoughtful blogging:

We’ve been back three days now, and I’m finding that our body clocks are more challenged by re-entry into the US than they were by transitioning to European time three months ago.   We are all wiped out and catatonic by 6:30 pm (after midnight Europe time) and up with the sun by 6-7 am.  Which is good, in a way, because our late starts have been a source of perpetual frustration to me even before the trip, but still.  I would like to be able to stay up past nine, myself, being a grown-up and all.

— 2 —

Before we began the trip, I had  good, general plan for the roadschooling aspect of it all.  By the end, as is often the case, the plan had given way to the “throw pasta against the wall and see what sticks” pedagogical vision.   Next week, we’ll settle down and start going through pictures and brochures and booklets that we picked up along the way to review and rehash, but I suspect their educational take-away from this trip will be a surreal mash-up of Roman arenas,  Metro and train schedules,  saints’ relics, Napoleon, trying to sort of the .05 Euro pieces from the .10 pieces to the tune of cashiers’ sighs,  and  Caravaggio. (He killed someone? REALLY?)

— 3 —

During the France part, my greatest personal  challenge evolved into one centered around the pronunciation of “oui.”  What I discovered is that the French (at least Parisians) , in casual conversation, do not pronounce it, “Wee.”   Just as Americans punctuate conversations with , “yeah” and “yup” and “uh-huh” instead of “yes” all the time, the French do this fascinating  thing with “oui” that involves  not moving your lips and making most of the sound come through your nose.   It sort of sounds like “uh-weh,” but not really.   I knew if I were ever going to be mistaken for a French person, I would have to master this.  Never happened.

— 4 —

Speaking of language, I find Italian incredibly intimidating and really don’t think I could ever learn it, but sometimes I would like to just for the experience of speaking it  impassionately.   To be able to lean into someone and speak Italian really quickly with great flourish is something that would satisfy my soul, I think.

— 5 —

We didn’t do this trip alone.  I had three different friends come over  at various times, and it was great.   For me, it was a relief to have other English-speaking adults around in general,  as well as really great to have others with whom to share these experiences.  Dorian  (the designer of this blog, by the way) brought Speedlets to Paris, and my kids really appreciated having similarly-sized compatriots around.

— 6 —

The next trip?  Not any time soon.  We are back into ordinary life now with basketball, scouts, homeschooling,  and 2^nd grade sacraments…so we are pretty tied down until May, which is fine.   Excellent, in fact.  We won’t be doing any long tours like that again, and as I planned it, I knew it would be a one time thing.  It was a thing at all for a reason -  I wanted to wrench us out of our routine, get into home education in a dramatic way that wouldn’t allow any of us (aka me) easy retreat back to school, and just…see stuff.    I don’t regret the (almost) three months at all, but it’s not something we need to do again for that length of time.

— 7 —

Running wild on the streets of Pompeii

And I guess I should mention that the boys were fantastic travelers.  They have adventurous spirits and curious minds and hardly ever complained (other than the ways they usually complain).   Only during those last few days did our energy flag a bit – we were not struggling, but life hit a definitely lower key, we hit a wall – not hard, but still, it was a wall –  and we were all just ready to come back…and here we are!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Well, we’re back.

It’s all just very, very strange.

We were gone for almost three months, had all kinds of adventures, saw some of the great sites of Europe, burrowed as deeply as we could into French and Italian life for the very short time we were there, it seemed as if it were going on forever…

…and the first morning we were back home, I sat here at this computer and thought…Did that really happen?

Because sitting there, it seemed as if we had never left.

Time and space? Weird things.

My travel blogging plans didn’t exactly go as planned. I had thought that I would be able to blog every day, filling up these archives with once or twice-daily posts.  That didn’t happen for a few reasons:

1) I didn’t have internet everywhere, especially the first few weeks.  Once we hit Paris, it was all wee-fee all the time, but before then it was sketchy, so I got out of the habit.

2) I could never, ever get these boys on a decent sleep schedule.  Our days tended to run late,  partly because that’s the way European life runs.  They hardly ever got to bed before 10, and by that time, I couldn’t think, and I could never get myself going early enough in the morning to be productive before they rose.  So it was a wash.

3) As soon as we left the US, I started fretting about the security of my home. I have an alarm system, the house is in an older neighborhood where houses are built quite close together, lights were on a timer to go on and off at night, and the car was in the driveway, but still…my neighborhood has its share of break-ins and petty crime, and I started wondering about the wisdom of offering ill-intentioned strangers a day-by-day travelogue of us three thousand miles away.

3) This last one I didn’t realize until I was on the plane back.  We didn’t go hard-core tourist every day, but still…most days I spent a lot of brain energy contemplating what we should do that day or the next, mapping it all out, and then trying to work in some relevant homeschooling.  All of that left very little mental room for writing in this space or any other – even my own journal.  But as soon as we lifted off the ground in Rome, that mental space opened up without me even trying.

So we’re still unpacking our suitcases, which is a chore, but I’ve just started to mentally unpack the trip…which is not.

Little bit of a delay in Philadelphia.

Still here….

— 1 —

 As I’ve mentioned a few times, I really enjoyed Padua.  After visiting Venice, I was glad we weren’t staying there, not just because of the Acqua Alta, but also because Padua was such a lively place, and lively, not with tourists, but with ordinary people.  Perhaps too lively the morning we left, but that was…unusual.  I also felt a little claustrophobic wandering in those Venetian alleys  - they’re narrow the buildings are a few stories high, it’s super quiet because there’s no vehicular traffic, and hardly anyone lives there  I’m big on atmosphere, that’s true.  I like misty, moody and melancholic – how could I not, since that’s practically a self-description?  I thought I was, constitutionally speaking a Venice person before I went there.  But as it turned out, I much preferred Padua, where the streets were busy with pedestrians and bicyclists from dawn to late evening, where markets bustled, and where I could see a little bit more of the sky.

Padua

Quite honestly, that surprised me.  I had assumed that we would stay in Venice for a bit when I started thinking about this trip, but the difference in cost eventually tipped the balance for me.  I found myself quite relieved that things had developed that way once I’d spent time in both places.

— 2 —

The only negative about Padua was that the panhandlers – I’m not going to call them beggars – were pretty aggressive.  The most aggressive I’ve encountered in Europe.  You walk by a guy propped up against a wall and he reaches out and touches you, “Signora, signora….”  he says.  You stop to look in a store window, and they come right up to you, hands open.  They try to sell you small packs of tissue, for some reason.  I wasn’t crazy about that.  There were times it almost verged on the menacing.

Someone just wrote me that begging is illegal in Assisi, and it struck me that yes, this is the first place I’ve seen on this trip with no beggars…

— 3 —

Home/roadschooling is going fine. I guess.  They know a lot about St. Anthony of Padua, St. Francis, the French Revolution and the Roman Empire, and they could give you a tour of Paris on the Metro system unassisted and they could probably figure out a train schedule from point A to point B almost anywhere in western Europe and wouldn’t do too badly on a bus either. So I guess they’ve learned something…

Doing his job.

— 4 —

We’re in Assisi now.  I re-read Fr. Augustine Thompson’s great biography in preparation, and continue to return to it as we see more of the St. Francis sites.   I’m grateful for the opportunity to really deepen my experience of St. Francis.  I feel as if I knew nothing about him before, and that was probably almost true.

— 5 —

I will be staging my own anti-austerity protest against this Italian hotel bathroom.  I had read reviews of the hotel that praised it in general, but deducted points for this arrangement.  I confess that I really didn’t understand the descriptions well enough.  I had no idea it was….like this.

Self-cleaning, indeed.

— 6 —

I would say that one of the greatest inventions of recent years has been the harnnassing of radio waves or whatever that enable tour guides to speak to their groups via mikes and headphones, greatly reducing the din in major sites.  I would say that, and of course I just did, but I do regret the fact this great invention makes it that much more difficult to eavesdrop on college professors speaking in your language who are explaining interesting things, like the frescoes in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis.  Thanks for what I heard, Prof!

— 7 —

 And…

More Padua. Just because I liked it.

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!