17 March 2007

Why we travel to France...

I found this on a forum I participate in on the Internet. The author is John B. (oakvilleonca), whose photoblog is at http://lightandshadow.my-expressions.com/.

Why we go to France:

To drive small cars fast on well-maintained narrow roads and to enjoy getting lost in remote hamlets;

To have two-hour lunches and three-hour dinners... but not on the same day;

To see and listen to children play;

To sit under the plane trees;

To watch men play boules while the woman exchange village news;

To see four generations having lunch together in the local restaurant;

To look through our wine glasses at the setting sun;

To go shopping for clothes for our grandchildren and have people oooh-and-aaah about our luck and choices;

To see elderly folk out on the patio of a castle that has been turned into a retirement home;

To overhear a child say to his parents that the cows eating the lush grass by the stream were gourmandes.

To marvel at the produce and presentations at the local weekly markets;

To note the farmer in blue coveralls and a black beret driving a monster grape harvesting machine while smoking a Gitane and talking on a cell phone;

To visit two young artists and to buy some of their paintings to decorate our home;

To absorb and try to retain memories of some of the results of a thousand years of civilization;

To admire the skills of stonemasons;

To stay in B&Bs or rented houses and get to know a little more about the way of life;

To wonder at the range of human possibilities: automatic toilets to holes;

To watch old 2CVs tilt wildly while driving on mountain roads;

To recall seeing an arm stick out from a pup tent in the streaming cold rain and wondering how wet they will soon be;

To see people taking home pastries in little ribbon-tied boxes for Sunday lunch;

To smell the cooking in narrow lanes;

To admire the flower pots and gardens;

To have works of art placed before you even in modest restaurants;

To see a woman arranging flowers as we walked by her window;

To be amused at the tolerance, care, and attention given to dogs in restaurants;

To visit the cemeteries and to think about the lives others have lived;

To come upon flowers placed at a spot where a soldier was killed during the war;

To see a small discrete sign in a remote area that gives directions to the nearest auberge:

To marvel at the vista of tiled roofs, churches and patchwork fields while flying over France;

To experience the infinite variations of the Gallic shrug;

To see cats sleeping on warm stone window sills.
I guess a lot of us could add a few lines to this list.

6 comments:

  1. I'll start.

    To eat things you'd never consider eating at home because you know that, here, it's going to be good.

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  2. To exchange "bonjours" and "bon soirs" with the people you meet and to see friends greet one another with les bises.

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  3. To remind yourself that there is more to life than work.

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  4. To order coffee from my seat on a train, expecting to get a caffeine boost and nothing else, and receive a quite drinkable brew made fresh right in front of me.

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  5. The smell of fresh bread.
    The incredible variety of delicious cheese.
    The ritual of "Bonjour madame, Au revoir madame" when entering and leaving shops.

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  6. I don't travel to France anymore; I live here. So it's hard to add anything to this already very complete list.

    But I can say that I have, on a few occasions, eaten five-hour lunches that morphed into three hour dinners. "Don't try this in your own home."

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What's on your mind? Qu'avez-vous à me dire ?