Looking Back at Our Voyage Through France

While looking at old photo albums, I came across a narrative I wrote about our trip through France in the mid-1990s. I’m looking forward to reading about this trip myself, as I copy it into this blog. Rather than reading ahead, I decided to re-discover the vacation over a series of days, just as we lived it. I started with a long pre-amble, which is a good reminder of how it feels to be traveling to a new land for the first time. I was definitely more naïve back then.

After an outstanding trip to the United Kingdom, where we visited England, Wales and Scotland in a week, my wife and I began considering where our next European vacation should be. Julie’s father had always enjoyed annual trips to Germany, but we decided to begin our discovery of the continent with France.

Like about everyone who considers visiting France, Julie and I heard numerous stories about what the country and its people were like.

Many songs, novels and movies extol the overwhelming beauty of April in Paris. We had seen Kodachrome photographs and impressionist paintings of sidewalk cafes, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. We heard about the atmosphere that inspires artists, writers and lovers. Julie and I have never been fans of big cities, though, and how different could Paris be from London or New York City?

We also understood that the French people were rude to vacationers who dared to enjoy the beauty of their country. In fact, the French hate Americans, or so we heard. We thought we might be heading to the France Chevy Chase found in National Lampoon’s European Vacation.

French cooking carries a reputation for delicious meals from the exotic hors d’oeuvres to cream sauce-flooded entrees to high calorie desserts. Of course, how much can you trust someone who eats frog lets and snails, even if escargot does sound more appetizing than garden slugs?

We wondered how much of a barrier language would be, and whether we could learn enough French to communicate our basic needs.

What would it be like to drive in France? I definitely found it challenging to drive through the United Kingdom in a right hand drive car with a manual transmission. We thought we knew the language in the UK, but we had difficulty interpreting the signs. We knew that in France they at least drive on the right side of the road.

France would be expensive, we were told. Tips for service would often be included in the meal prices to assure the waiters got tipped regardless of how rude they were. Value added taxes ensure that tourists provide monetary support for the government.

We knew that France would certainly provide interesting memories, but we could only hope the trip itself would be interesting in a pleasant way.