Touring Provence, France – Part 1

Town or country?

Looking at a trip to France, we struggled with the question. We’re not big travelers, and we had saved four years for this excursion. Our sons are within spitting distance of going off to college, so we knew this would likely be our last big family vacation.

So: Town or country? As a restorative after a long Western New York winter, did we want the seductions of the big city or the good fresh air of the provinces? We decided to do both – a week in Paris, a week in Provence.

And the winner is – well, we’ll get to that shortly.

* * *

Careening down the highway to Paris in the hotel shuttle, we saw three stopped cars in quick succession, and their drivers – men – relieving themselves against the retaining wall. So our first impression of the world’s most cosmopolitan city was, uh, urological.

Our hotel was in the Bastille district, largely a garment district. There we saw: crazy drivers, lots of graffiti, lots of motorcycles, most everyone smoking and hardly anyone fat.

We also saw: Notre Dame, Saint-Chappelle, the Conciergerie, the Palais du Justice, the Sorbonne, the Musee de l’Armee, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Pont Neuf, the gardens of the Tuilleries, the Princess Diana memorial near the tunnel where she died, Napoleon’s tomb, the Picasso museum.

We ate: duck, croque-monsieur (a kind of inside-out grilled cheese sandwich), French pizza, lapin (after the waiter helpfully made bunny ears by way of explanation), and American-style food, including pathetic wings, at the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory, an earnest but ill-fated attempt to reproduce American culture. (At one point the waiters and waitresses stopped work and performed a line dance to some 50s “Grease”-style song. You wonder what the French think America is all about.)

We rode the excellent subway system continually and were reminded how public transportation can be the circulatory system of a great city.

We went to a Web cafe to send e-mail, and struggled with a keyboard whose letters were in unusual places. We bought some juggling clubs at a place called, humorously enough, Poupees Fantastiques. We saw the Eiffel Tower at night and marveled at its golden lace. The teenagers ogled slim stylish French girls; the parents pretended to be young lovers again.

We ducked occasional rain and huddled against temperatures in the 50s. April in Paris, we learned, is no sure thing.

You don’t know fear until you’ve