Years ago, Americans were anathema to
Parisians . . . which they let us know with cranky stares, by pretending they
didn’t grasp English, or by deliberately fouling up whatever we asked of them. Back
in the day, they were so chilly to us Yankees they frosted up our attitudes, making us eager to leave and
resolved never to return.
The few times Rob and I went, we got
out of Paris as
fast as possible. Trouble is, we never ventured into the friendlier parts of
the country.
Years later, along came our various grown
kids who’d become world travelers. Among them we heard nothing but enthusiasm.
“Mom and Dad, you’d like Paris
now, and the countryside is great—the people super
friendly. You gotta go. Plus you never get a bad meal in France.”
Thus it finally happened. After granddaughter
Jamie did the research, Tracy
booked a villa in Nice—with photos that convinced us now is the time.
But first we had to get there—meaning
coping with one of the several European airports from hell—Charles de Gaulle in
Paris. Since
Rob is now 91, and I’m right behind him, we agreed, “Who cares about pride? Let's sign up for wheelchairs!" Which we desperately needed—not only for those miles-long, madly confusing corridors, but also for avoiding long no-chair waits in endless lines. Which may be the
single benefit of being . . . well, old.
Two wheelchairs marked “Wills” waited
at plane’s exit—and we were pushed by a tall, handsome man from Cambodia
(complete with charming smile), and a Parisian woman. As they rushed us down
corridors, they chatted nonstop--in French--and clearly knew all the tricks of
the airport. Sometimes, at first, they even talked to US. For that matter, we
began noticing that all the airport personnel were busy talking pretty much all
the time.
We spent at least an hour with those
two, and before long the four of us were fast friends. The woman opened her
phone--“my daughters,” she said, pointing--and the man stood by looking
pleasant. At the end, when they saw us off to a distant section of the airport
. . . “There’s your van,” they said—the
lady leaned close and kissed both my cheeks. For me, that hour was one of the trip’s
highlights.
Next, Airfrance to Nice. Soon we spotted
the rest of our family—Tracy
and Paul, Jamie, Mike, and baby Eva, plus Dane and Zhanina. “We all found each
other!” we exclaimed. Then came the ultimate surprise—the road to our
villa. The route was straight up, a lane
hardly wider than a bicycle path, with barely room for one car and spiced with at
least four radical hairpin turns. (I
never could have driven it, because to drive you have to remember to breathe). At last, near the top of the mountain, the
path dumped us in the villa’s carport.
(Because our 7-seater van couldn’t
accommodate everyone, Rob and I calculated later that Mike must have driven
that harrowing road no fewer than 20 times.)
The second surprise was the villa
itself. We kept saying, “Wow!” because we’d just entered an imposing, artistically
decorated great room with huge windows overlooking, in one direction, the
garden with swimming pool, and in the other, the Mediterranean
Sea, outlined by millions of red-tiled Nice-ian roofs.
For awhile Rob and I just stood there,
awed by the room and its incredible views.
“I can’t believe this!” I said. It
turned out the rest of the villa was just as magnificent—two oversize baths,
two king-bedded rooms and one kids’ room—the latter logically assigned to Rob
and me. (Not since our honeymoon days
have the two of us slept with elbows in each others’ faces. But we got used to it).
To our further surprise, in the amply-furnished kitchen, the owner reminded us to look in the oven, where she’d left
us two roasted chickens for our first-night’s meal.
Only as I got used to the living room
did I notice a kind of metal fireman’s pole—with triangular steps rounding the
pole and poking out in every direction, leading to a loft above the kitchen. Up
there was a bed for a fourth couple. The
steps looked so dangerous that nobody—certainly not Rob or I—were willing to
climb them to satisfy any lingering curiosity. Only Dane and Zhanina were willing—and
baby-free enough to be capable—of climbing the pole to get a night’s
sleep. As it turned out, a fourth couple
was limited to two choices—the narrow living room couch or the spooky round and
round trek to the loft.
From the start, we were captivated by
baby Eva (who, at three months, sported a full head of dark, seemingly-coiffed hair,
plus a sweet smile), by great meals cooked up mostly by Paul and Jamie, by
family card games, by some TV—in English—and by hours spent on the veranda gazing
in wonder at the endless view.
We soon learned that the villa’s pool
had an interesting feature. It was a jet pool—meaning you could press a button
and set in motion a sideways current.
Within the current the swimmer could stroke full out, yet remain in one
place. Fascinated, we watched as Tracy
stroked and stroked, yet never made any progress.
Rob and I left the villa only once—to
sit on shaded, oceanside
benches where we spent a few hours watching a parade of scantily-clad swimmers
. . . in general noticeably thinner than their American counterparts.
I lie.
Each of us took a separate trip with other family members to the nearby
grocery store. In my case, for long moments I stood in that French store frozen,
not knowing where anything was, but worse, unable to read the words on any
containers. If I’d been willing to
search, I might have found the milk and eggs. As it was, utterly baffled, I
barely moved down the aisles. Also, I was leery of my shopping cart. The red carts
were small, three-wheeled and tippy, meaning I quickly got into a dangerous
lean which could have sent the cart crashing to the floor.
The week went by quickly and
beautifully. After lots of minutes spent gazing into Eva’s eyes, of watching Tracy spend hours bouncing
on a huge green ball trying to get the baby to doze off, of long sessions
watching excellent family ping-pong, of devouring tasty American meals, of some
truly competitive card games, of numerous crazy attempts to achieve a “family
picture,” it was time—one morning at six a.m.--to leave.
The trip home was not arduous, but in
the end, curiously gruesome—meaning we were “up” for some 27 hours. We did find a miracle wheelchair pusher in Dallas, who managed to
maneuver TWO wheelchairs with one set of hands.
But thanks to Rob’s malfunctioning business-class cubicle on American
Airlines, and my inability to nod
off . . . and after a two-hour storm
delay in Dallas,
we arrived home zonked.
The best part was finding granddaughter
Kelly and her son Oliver, waiting for us at John Wayne airport.
Would we do it again? You bet. But only if the owner agreed to
furnish the third bedroom with a queen bed. And by the way, if our weird-tasting meals on
the home-from-Paris portion of the trip were typical of French cooking, I can
attest that the country’s cuisine is greatly overrated.
