June 6, 2022
“The French air cleans up the brain and does good - a world of good”
- Vincent Van Gogh
It took two days, three plane rides, two trains and one long car ride to finally begin Episode XII. We are in France with one of our more ambitious agendas of travel than we have attempted previously. We usually avoid renting cars. If our destination has a good public transit system, it is usually preferable to avoid the hassles of having a car, It is much more immersive to take a public bus or train and you do not have the challenges of constantly trying to find a place to park.
Not so this time. We wanted to spend this trip almost entirely outside of Paris. France is an immeasurably rich country filled with many sites beyond the eternal city that are often passed over because their is so much to do in Paris one rarely has time. To accomplish this goal, you need a car.
France is about the size of Texas. It is the largest country in Western Europe with a population of around 60-70 million. Most of it is rural. We are planning a long road trip circumnavigating the country. This journey will take us from Normandy to Monaco and eventually around to Strasbourg working counter clockwise. You need a car. So we are empowered with an epic manual transmission, 4 cylinder, small, under powered, white, French Peugeot to make the trip.
Tonight, exhausted from our long travel day we arrived in Normandy. For Parisians, this area is an arrondissement or subdivision of the greater city. It is a 2-3 hour drive west of the city and is popular for sweeping coastlines, half timbered villages, medieval cities, and rolling green pastoral countryside. It is also one of the very few places in Europe where Americans played a pivotal role in its history.
I offer this appetizer to the journey ahead.
Everyone has their favorite thing to do while traveling. For some, it is adventure and risk. Others enjoy looking at well known sites. For me, I enjoyed my favorite this evening.
We arrived at a bed and breakfast in the Normandy village of St Martin de Boscherville near Rouen. We had read about the location on line. If you did not have a tip, you would never have known about it. It is not terribly easy to get to and took driving through a winding path of roads to find. (Google maps is amazing).
The B’n’B is a seven room inn built out of an old 19th century farmhouse in the shadow of an 11th century Benedictine church. The village is filled with the types of homes you would only see on some movie set. We found thatched roofs with Iris plants growing out of the pitched tops, crumbling stone walls adorned with Roses, Lavender, Black Eyed Susans, Sweet Peas resembling small purple orchids, and much more. Over head circled Sparrows and Jackdaws whose wings would glint in the sunlight as they whirled and dove. In the bushes Common Wood Pigeons cooed and called out everywhere.
We had dinner in the courtyard overlooking the 800 year old church as the sun faded in the west. The hostess served home cooked breast of chicken with a light mustard tarragon sauce with a well balanced carafe of dry white wine. A chocolate baked dessert followed that vaguely resemble what we would call a brownie, but it was lighter and infinitely more elegant. It was adorned with real whipped cream and strawberries from her own garden.
The whole thing was a fantasy.
I was really sleep deprived during the whole thing. My brain was so starved for rest that I am not sure if the entire thing was some delusional dream.
As I woke up the following morning I has happy to find out it wasn’t a dream.
And we are just getting started. We are going to need a car.
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