Dreaming of France: Is a trip in my future?


I’m so used to looking back on this blog. Back on my own life. Back on my childhood, my adolescence, my multitude of careers. Back on old boyfriend’s and long-ago romances. Back on my mother’s life and her death, my own life as a mother. It seems I rarely look forward. Which, let’s be honest, can’t be an entirely good thing. It’s weird then that something from the past actually has me looking forward. 
Photo Source: freeinfosociety.com

 Last Friday’s blog post about my recent discovery of my grandfather and my great-grandfather’s service in World War I has me actually planning for the future. Okay, planning is not quite right. But I am tooling around online, at least musing about a trip to both France and England. My British great-grandfather is buried in France, near to where he died at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, in September of 1916. My grandfather fought in the same historic battle. Doing the quick math makes this coming September the 100th year anniversary and while I don’t know if there are plans for some sort of ceremony, my hunch is there will be.


I learned the location of his grave at the Guard’s Cemetery in Lesboeufs, France, the row, the number of his grave in that row. When I tearfully tell my husband and our son about my great-grandfather, they both say we should plan a trip. It’s about two hours north of Paris. The last time I was on that side of the Atlantic we stayed in Prague while my husband shot a film; we took our son who was in the second grade for a two week trip. They’ve both been to Europe in the intervening years; my husband for work, my son on a senior trip, but I haven’t been back since. I immediately go into a negative headspace. I don’t say it out loud but I can’t believe it will happen. There’s the money. And then there’s the planning, something I don’t seem to be terribly good at. It’s Monday of Christmas week and my gift shopping has only just begun. I bet some of you were finished before Thanksgiving. 

Do I want this trip to happen? I know I can make it happen if I do. If I really, really do. Like in the 80’s when I was really broke and made a ‘treasure map’ pasting a picture of myself in front of the Eiffel Tower. I made it happen. 

 I can at least start the research process in earnest, look up airfares and develop a broad budget for the trip, prod my son to make sure he gets his lost passport replaced. Plan to at least start to put away some moolah every week to make it feasible. We don’t have to stay at the Savoy in London or the George V in Paris. We can do it on the cheap, avoid the priciest touristy restaurants, pick up fresh bread, cheese, yogurt at local markets for lunch, save our sous for a decent dinner. 
Paulita in Paris

I’ve got an old client from my real estate career who turned into a friend. Veronique moved back to France a few years back and is actually getting remarried today, I’d love to meet her new husband and see her again. My blogger friend Paulita, author, francophile and frequent visitor to France, is planning on moving there with her husband in 2017. While our dates won’t align, it would be fantastique if they did!

Is this my New Year’s resolution? Plan to visit France, to see my great-grandfather’s grave? To walk along the Seine at midnight? To pop over the channel to London so I can see the house where I was born and my husband can see Sherlock Holmes’ house on Baker Street? To have a shandy with our son in a real 16th century pub? 

 Resolution might be putting too fine a point on it, but it’s definitely something I’m looking forward to thinking about. Thanks Paulita, for the inspiration.
Linking up with Paulita at her Dreaming of France meme.

Popular posts from this blog

Pretty French Postcards

Image
Pretty French Postcards My trip to France with Mindy in '89 was very different from my visit with my sister Nancy, sixteen years earlier, when I was twenty and she was just sixteen. When Mindy and I stayed in Paris, we stayed in a newish hôtel in the business district, an area called la Defense. Modern, comfortable, the kind of place that catered to business travelers. We could have been anywhere. Paris, France. Paris, Texas. New York City. What the hôtel lacked in character it made up for in amenities. A real front desk. A fax machine. A bar off the lobby. A bidet. The place that Nancy and I stayed at in the Pigalle had a fading painted number on the crumbling wall outside, a round black bell you pushed so the cranky old concierge, a French woman straight out of a novel, could open up and begrudgingly show you to your room, eyeing you suspiciously all the while. We barely knew what fax machines were in 1973 but if we had, our little no-name hôtel wouldn't have h
Continue Reading »

Above Ground on the London Underground—Day 46: White City

Image
If it's Friday we must be back in London.   Every Friday I take a virtual walking tour ‘above ground’ on the London Underground. Using  my Tube guide & my fitbit® device, my goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day roughly following along the Underground route, reporting back here on Fridays with my findings.  Here are the previous days . This is Day 46. Today we’re walking from the Ealing Broadway underground station to White City. The trek is 4.2 miles which should clock in at just about 10,000 steps.  Back in 1908, the area was transformed from Shepherd’s Bush farm land into the location for the Franco-British exhibition and the 1908 Summer Olympics. Called the white city because of the white cladding of the ornate exhibition buildings, the area was used for the Japan-British exhibition in 1910, the Latin-British exhibition in 1912, and finally the Anglo-American exhibition in 1914 when WWI put an end to it. After that the White City was left to fall into disrepair and ult
Continue Reading »

Above Ground on the London Underground—Day 18: HELP! I’m nowhere near Abbey Road

Image
I’m taking a virtual walking tour ‘above ground’ on the London Underground. Using  my Tube guide and my fitbit® device, my goal is to walk at least 10,000 steps a day roughly following along the Underground route, reporting back here on Fridays with my findings. I'm back on track, following the Piccadilly Line. This is Day 18. Today I ’ m heading out from Boston Manor Station ,  that beautiful example of art deco architecture, taking an inbound stroll along the Piccadilly Line route.  Passing South Ealing my plan is to hit Gunnersby Park in Chiswick, where there’s a lake—do all British parks come with lakes? are there ladies of the lakes too?—a history museum, a ‘small mansion’ and several other ‘historically significant buildings’ including a folly or two.  Follies are those imaginative little structures that don’t do anything except add a magical touch of interest to a garden. From the French for stupidity, a folly suggests some real purpose, but lacks it comp
Continue Reading »