Well, it’s March, and for my husband and me, that means our annual trip to France. Each year during spring break we spend a week in France. We chose a different destination, but always stop to visit friends in Normandy.
A few years ago, we chose the walled medieval city of Carcassonne as our destination. Carcassonne is in the south central part of France, so we decided to include a visit to see our friend Martine who lives in that area. Whenever we travel in France, we always rent a car to get around. This particular year, we were driving from Normandy to the French region of Lot.
We spent two wonderful days with Martine. We toured Carcassonne, its castle and its cathedral. We sipped wine and ate crepes! Carcassonne is one of the most beautiful sites in France and is rich in history. Martine is a wonderful cook, so we ate very well during our visit.
Our journey home was via Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, so we headed north early one morning. As with all of our driving adventures, my husband takes the wheel and I take the atlas. He’s the pilot, and I am the official navigator. As we were driving, I was looking at the map and noticed that the road we were on was not very far from Lascaux, the site of prehistoric caves and some of the best examples of prehistoric paintings. Not far, indeed, by looking at the map, we were less than an inch away!
Somehow I managed to persuade my husband to take a side trip to Lascaux, and the shortest route that I had found on the map was through some, what we would consider, “county” roads. Well, our county roads are not quite like French county roads. These were more like long driveways. At one point we thought we were in the middle of a farm. The buildings surrounding us looked like large barns with a few small houses interspersed. We were actually in the “downtown” area of one of the region’s villages!
Finally, we saw two children on bikes. They couldn’t have been any older than twelve. My husband told me to “ask them how to get to Lascaux” “They wouldn’t know,” I said to him. “They’re kids!” But he pulled the car over anyway, and I was forced to get out and ask these to children for directions.
I got back in the car and told him to just keep following the same road. “Is that what they said?” Of course it wasn’t! They were clueless and hadn’t ever heard of Lascaux!
We made it to Lascaux, toured the replica caves (the original caves have been sealed because of damage to the paintings from human foot traffic), and headed to de Gaulle airport for our flight home. We still laugh about the back roads of France and our journey down that long driveway! Our adventures in rental cars continue, and I will always be the navigator and the translator! I wonder what surprises this year’s trip will bring us, but it’s sure to be a bon voyage!
This blogpost appeared as my column, "The Empty Nest," in the Frederick News Post on Sunday March 3, 2013.
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