It has been very hectic since Eleanor and I returned from France. First, there was the funeral for Eleanor's mother, and then attending to myriad family matters that were both necessary and melancholy. We also did some things with the kids whom we had not seen in several months, of course, and it is always a delight to spend time with them. I had missed their smiles and hugs and now I was close enough to get all of those I wanted. And what joy that is. I also got some work from one of my long-term clients and immediately began to write proposals and to help design some programs. Then we drove home and started to catch up on things here, as I continued with the proposal writing. Max has now come to accept that we will not leave him again so is more at ease. We have seen or talked to most of our friends here and have had some fine meals with others talking about the trip. We did our taxes, which makes me more dedicated to my consulting as I have to find a means to pay for them. And we got our photos processed and printed and even organized in a book. That is something. Our kids, who have lived with their parents' projects only half completed for most of their lives, will know full well what an astonishing accomplishment this really is.

Part II -- Some General Observations

All of this settling in has meant that I have neglected the final chapter in the Journal of Our Adventures in France. I have been thinking about how to attack this coda for some time as I hope it will be a decent summing up of what for us was such an extraordinary time in France. Certainly, it cannot be another ponderous chapter. Rather, I want to give some snap shot images of what most impressed us about the trip and how we think we will remember it over time. So, with fear that David Letterman may take umbrage at using his idea of a Top 10 list, let me begin.

The Most Memorable

This is really easy, although there are so many candidates. This has to be arriving at the house in St. Cirq for the first time. I had been planning the trip and arguing about it with Eleanor for so long, and now I was here. It was simply too much to believe. Brian Kennedy and I had taken delivery of a car in Bordeaux, made the drive to Le Bugue and then followed the directions from there to St. Cirq. I remember asking myself as I drove up the lane toward the house what I was getting myself in for, what would this adventure be like, and would Eleanor have a good time when she arrived. But as we got to the green gates, opened them and then drove in and parked, I saw The View for the first time. It was simply exquisite and for the first time I knew this was going to be 6 months of pure serendipity. And it was.

What will we remember most? Here is a partial list. The land and its people stand at the very top. The beauty of the place is just stunning and not to be believed, really, until one experiences it firsthand. It is so quiet and peaceful that it just envelopes one's existence there. It is hard to explain to someone what this means. I thought before I left I would be bored at times but never once did this happen, and for me, over a five month period, this is almost unheard of. Then there are the French themselves. They were invariably friendly and helpful, proud of their country and happy we took the same delight in it as they. They assisted me with my French but only in the nicest and most helpful way, occasionally laughing good-naturedly at some pronunciations that made what I wanted to say impossible to follow. "What do you want to say," they would ask, and then, when I finally wrote down the word I was trying to use, they guffawed and said, "oh, this is how you pronounce it." And, as some words are simply impossible to pronounce correctly, at least for me, I needed all the help I could get. These two things, then, the land and the people, are what will stay with me as I think about this trip.

We drove a great deal while we were in France, and it behooves me again to say how good the French road system is. Not only is the highway system, whatever category, wonderfully maintained, but the signage is exemplary. It made driving around, even with the surprises thrown at us at times by the quality of French drivers, great fun. Now that we are home and driving around California, I am even more impressed by what we found in France. The road system is really of very high quality, indeed.

The same thing can be said about French cuisine and wine, of course. It is, in fact, impossible to think about France without thinking about these two things. And the passion with which the people approach these two things. We saw this everywhere. Mealtime is really a social occasion and to be shared with the entire family when possible. We saw this many times, but never with greater force than the meal we had with our friends in Paris in early January. The French work very hard but they also know how to relax, and mealtime seems to be a part of this. My concern is that in France's move toward tighter economic integration with the rest of Europe and the fierce competition this aspect of its social life will be lost, just as it has been here. I hope not, as this passion for food and its place in French life is one of the things that seems to me to most characterize the French and their approach to life.

The Least Memorable

This is also easy. It has to do with the continuing problems we had with the house. As I have said elsewhere in this Journal, rural France is REALLY, REALLY rural, and problems will arise with houses that are over 100 years old and some of whose conveniences may have been modern at one point but no longer are. As things turned out, I should have learned a technical vocabulary before I left, but who would have ever thought I would need to know how to describe problems about the septic system to a plumber, or understand his explanations of the difference between a petite and grosse problemme and which kind of problemme could wait for a more convenient time to fix (they both could, as it turned out, and the meaning of "a more convenient time" was always his interpretation, not mine). Or how to deal with electricians about the electrical system that popped fuses and then had terminal melt down after the kids arrived for Christmas. This at a time when I wanted above all else for things to go smoothly. Then there was the last great event, the last straw, la problemme catastrophique in February that sent us to a new house for our final week in the Dordogne. It all got to be a bit too much, frankly, something akin to the Chinese water torture. But it does not take the edge off the trip as we look back on it, and at times makes us laugh a bit. Perhaps in a year or two we will be able to manage more than a pathetic little smile. At the time, however, I pulled out more hair than I could stand to loose and boned up on French expletives that were only rarely deleted. More vocabulary to learn. But the wrong kind.

The Most Fascinating

There are several things that meet this standard. One certainly has to be the increasing mix of English and French which produced some wonderful oddities. Another is the fact that when I spoke English to some French people with whom I dealt they often asked me to speak more slowly. This is, of course, the same request I made of them when the tables were turned. We all made that wonderful leap of faith that just because we both spoke the other's language reasonably well we did not have to pay any attention to the speed with which we spoke. If truth be told, neither Eleanor nor I ever thought we spoke English fast, and I am sure the French with whom we spoke felt the same. A third was the commitment of so many resources to producing foie gras and the gavage that fattens up the geese and ducks that produce it. It is extraordinary and everywhere one goes in this region of France one sees acres and acres devoted to this pursuit, and the number of stores selling their own kind and brand seems unlimited. My only problem with it all is that, not being able to digest it, I had to forsake it in all its manifestations. What a pity. Another fascination is the extraordinary contradiction between French being some of the most impatient people on the planet, as evidence by their driving, and their waiting patiently behind a car that is double-parked as the driver is in a store doing business. It seems like such a duality. Here, of course, people can be equally impatient, but try double-parking sometime and you will not have the same response from American drivers as you will encounter in France. I forgot myself just after arriving home and double-parked as I ran in to buy a paper. People were really rude, and the police did not like me much either as they threatened me with a ticket with a look of bewilderment as to why I would ever try something like that in their town.

The Most Fun

Certainly the most fun we had was sharing our adventure with our friends and family. This began with the arrival of the Meuters and Roberts in October, continued with the Maynes who came in early November and whose visit was followed by Thanksgiving with the Garners and Korvases in Paris (the holiday was supposed to be spent in St. Cirq, but a strike on the French railway and dreadful electrical problems at the house prevented that). Then came Matt and Kristen Farrand and Eleanor's sister, Liz, for Christmas, and finally our niece, Lisa, in February. What a delight it was to share with these people what we love about France and the Dordogne and the simply extraordinary time we were having. Yes, it was the coldest winter in 50 years, we were told, and it did snow several times. But none of this took away from the magic of our trip and the great delight we took in sharing it with our friends. I cannot imagine the trip without the unbridled enthusiasm of the Meuters and Roberts, the more leisurely pace we had with the Maynes, sharing Paris with friends who were making their first trip there, the youthful embrace of the land and its beauty by our son and his bride, and then having Lisa there to help us through a very difficult time for Eleanor and me. It is one thing to experience something like this trip by ourselves, and quite another to experience it with friends who took such delight in the hunt for new things to do and see. We opt for sharing our adventures with friends as doing so lends some astonishing coloration to the warp and woof of the pattern being woven by our daily lives there.

The Most Beautiful

The sight of Eleanor coming through the doors of the customs area at Charles de Gaulle. How wonderful it was to see her. She had come after all. Limeuil and its bridges that sit at right angles. La Roque-Gageac, that spiritual part of the planet that has such a tight hold on me; the sight of Rocamadour clinging to the side of the mountain; Monpazier and its astonishing central courtyard; the gardens and breathtakingly spectacular views of the Dordogne Valley from the Chateau and Parc de Marquessac; Domme, an old bastide, and its views of the same valley; the valley below the house; the colors everywhere that snapped to life as the sun rose each morning and which greeted us no matter where we drove. And of course there is the French people themselves who welcomed us with friendship and warm hospitality. We found this with most everyone with whom we dealt, our banker in Sarlat, the two Mme. Lacostes, M. and Mme. Jean-Francois Regnard, the merchants in Le Bugue, and the ticket agent at Gare St. Jean in Bordeaux who, just before we left France, was so patient with us as we went through a complicated exchange of tickets. But there were so many others, so many people who made our trip and time in France so very special. Where did the French ever get their bad rap? That is one of the great mysteries to me. There are also our friends, John and Liesbette Wiley, whose humanity and good nature shine through the adversities that life has thrown them in recent years. We stay in telephone contact now that we are home, and it is always wonderful to talk to them and wish we were close enough to visit. And there are Frank and Denise Liller who added so much to our time in Le Bugue. They are very special people and our good friends.

The Most Surprising

I can still remember going into the Intermarche at Christmas time looking for some heavy cream for the dessert I was making for Christmas dinner. I was at a loss to know what to get as there are so many kinds of heavy cream. I wanted to be sure to get the right product as nothing could go wrong, not that night, not that dinner. Therefore, I decided to ask one of the young women who worked there, the one who was taking English classes each day. When I asked her to show me what she used to make whipping cream at home, she took me to a display of cans and handed me one. Shake and press the spout, the directions said, for perfect whipping cream. This could not be, I thought, a product like this coming from a can, in France? Never, I thought. So I pressed her. What did she use at home to make crème chantilly, I asked, and she pointed to the can. Now, for the first time in my life, I knew that nothing was sacred. But with a little Bourbon it tasted great on top of my bread pudding soufflé. Then there was the welcome surprise to find so much great wine for so little money. That really was easy to get used to and one of the pains about getting back home.

The Most Exciting

Nothing can match driving in France, especially after not having driven in Europe for many years. The mania to see how close drivers can come to your back bumper without really touching, the constant test to see how fast their car will go, the ungodly passes they make against every rule of safety and common sense (to say nothing about the danger they cause to innocents who may be hurt if there is a crash). But nothing can match the sight of the old woman learning how to drive as she was coming around one of those sweeping curves that make the Dordogne such a wonderful place to tour, with her eyes being shielded from the afternoon sun by the hand of her driving instructor as her car barely adhered to the road.

The Best Restaurants

There is no clear winner here, as there were so many. Yet, this being said we must also say that being in the area during the off season meant that many of the restaurants that had been recommended to us shut for the winter and would begin opening up again about the time we left, or later. Therefore, we did not get to sample many in Le Bugue or the surrounding towns. There were a few open, however, and here are two of them we liked, the Restaurant de Chateaubriant in Les Eyzies, where the Roberts, Meuters, and Farrands celebrated Eleanor's birthday, and the Restaurant La Tour du Tourny in Sarlat, where we had many good meals when we went to the bank or to town just because we both liked it there so much.

There was, of course, the extraordinary restaurants at the two resorts we went to for some R&R -- Le Vieux Logis in Tremolat and the Chateau Grand Barrail in Saint-Emilion. Better meals are hard to find and very worth the price they charged. In Bordeaux we went back to the Brasserie Le Noailles every time we were in town and as the people got to know us we were treated well. It was there that one of the waiters became so infatuated with our niece, Lisa, and in the process made this one of the most memorable meals of the entire trip. Near Bordeaux, in Libourne, is the Bistro Chanzy, which we went to after having dined at the Chateau Grand Barrail the night before. What a relaxing place with simply great food that is wonderfully priced. This place is not to be missed.

In Paris it is hard to get a bad meal, something that can be said about the entire country, really. Paris is a small city and it is easy to get around. Thus, one can choose a restaurant in any part of the city and get there with relative ease. We particularly like Le Bourdonnais, located in the hotel where we stayed. It is really fine dining and I hosted the dinner the night the Korvases arrived. We ordered the Chef's Surprise, which came with a really surprising price tag. But it was worth it. We always go back to Le Petit Marguery in the 16th district, as this is one of our two favorite restaurants there. It is terrific, but usually very smoky. Near to the hotel where we stayed this trip, Hotel la Bourdonnais, which is terrific and wonderfully situated, is another favorite of ours, Le Maupertu, that has a 138 FF fixed price menu that has to be the best value in Paris. Sophie, the hostess/waitress/part owner is superb and makes one feel at home immediately. She also knows some English, which makes figuring out the menu easier. What a grand place this is. We did not get back to La Petite Tour in the 16th, and it is well worth trying. It is small and reservations are recommended. We will go there the next time we are in the city.

In Amsterdam we found a nice new restaurant named !Zest. We went here a couple of times and were delighted on both occasions. It has a rather Italian menu that I prefer and we liked this place, upbeat and just noisy enough to make lunch really fun, enough to make us return the next time we are in the city.

So take a bib and eat your heart out the next time you go to France. It is simply terrific to be in a country that has such passion about food and dining (not just eating, mind you, but dining). Now, if they could just get rid of those damned cell phones during the meal hour.

The Greatest Disappointments

There are not many of these, we are happy to say. The two that dominate our thinking in this regard is not being able to get to Switzerland to see our two good friends who live in Zurich, the Rogners and the Gohls. They are such nice people that they act as a magnet, drawing us to their great country for a visit. Try as we might this time, we just did not make it. The Rogners went to Atlanta in December and January to see their new granddaughter so we did not go then, thinking we would go in February and see both Felix and Carla as well as Martin and Urusla Gohl. But, that turned out to be impossible due to our need to return home sooner than expected. But this serves as a reason to go back to Europe soon. We also did not get to Brussels to see our friends Danielle and Marcel Libchaber. Danielle has been a good friend of the Farrand family for many years and we have always seen her when we have been in Europe. But, as with our friends in Switzerland, we will have to wait to see her the next time we are there. Finally, we were set to fly to London in mid-February for 10 days with Jo and David Mayne but had to cancel because of the need to return home for the funeral. We were really saddened by that as they are about the greatest people in the world and we wanted to have them show us around their favorite city. The strange part about not getting around as much as we wanted was our belief that as we planned the trip we would travel to Greece, Italy, and, perhaps, Spain. However, the Dordogne held our attention throughout and, if truth be told, we could have spent the entire six months in the Perigord Noir and never have seen all there is to see. The Rogners and Gohls understood this when we spoke to them and encouraged us not to worry, just saying that we must begin our next trip in Switzerland before heading to other places. Now, that sounds like a good idea.

The Hardest Things To Get Used To

There were several, and most of them small. The top of the list, however, loomed large on too many occasions, and that is the number of strikes that occurred while we were there. The trains, airlines and their various unions, doctors, the unemployed in Marseilles who demanded a year-end bonus of $600 (no, I am not kidding), students, metro workers, and others who took to the streets. They all seem to be taken in stride in France in a way that would never happen here. To the outsider this seems a bit strange especially when one considers that the majority of French workers do not belong to unions. Yet, most sympathize with what the unions want to accomplish, and preserve, so they do not beseech the government to take action, as we would here with Taft-Hartley. These work actions did disrupt things for us several times, but there were ways to work around them and as this land belongs to the French it is there life and it is hard for me, as a foreigner, to get too upset. Eleanor and I are just happy the strikes did not inhibit the travel plans our kids had for Christmas.

Then there is the noon to 2 or 3 PM closing time for businesses of all kinds, markets, stores, gas stations, most everything. In one sense this is a terrific tradition as it also applies to school kids and they go home for lunch with their mothers and fathers. That is nice, I think. In another sense, however, the tradition was hard on us as we never seemed to get going in the morning until about noon. I had my daily rituals of splitting the wood for the day, would check and write e-mails and work on the journal, and other things. Then, Eleanor and I would have breakfast and get dressed. Any shopping would have to wait until later, and if we wanted bread for breakfast, a pain au chocolat we would have to wait until the stores opened again. We got caught by this closing the entire time we were there and we never did build it into our internal clocks.

For Eleanor, one of the things she always found hard to get used to was not having the independence to do things that she has here at home because she did not know the language and therefore had to rely on me for help. I had hoped she would learn something about the language as this would have made it easier for her, but she didn't and, in reality, I thought this would be the case. Language became an issue for me as well, not French but English, as I found that I missed speaking and listening to English. This is one of the reasons that the people who emigrate from their homeland to somewhere new so amaze me. They give up what is familiar, what they know, to go to someplace new to start over. What bravery this takes, even though there may be compelling reasons for the change. I do not know if I could do it. I wonder about that.

Other little niggling things are the price of gasoline (about one dollar a liter) and what we paid for electricity, made all the higher because of the cold winter. This was offset by the cost of wine, however, but as I consumed more of it than I did gas I was the winner in this trade off. It is one I'd gladly make any day.

Part III -- Credits

A trip such as this one cannot be undertaken without incurring some debts along the way. So let me give a plug here for those who helped me and to whom I owe a debt of gratitude.

1. Patrick Lang and his associates at the Frontera Design in Chico, California did the design of the Web site and acted as web master while I was away. I did the monthly journals and then e-mailed them to him to post. He was good-natured about it and did a great job. In short, he was a delight to work with. He can be reached at patrick@fonteradesign.com if you need someone to design web things for you.
2. Melanie van Doorne and her sister, Pam, at their travel agency, Murray Hill International, were just spectacular in helping me throughout the trip, first with leasing the car we had and then with air tickets and general advice. They have extensive experience in Europe and are now looking for a place for us to rent for two or three weeks next spring in Provence. These are true professionals who I recommend highly. Reach them at Melanie@mhinet.com. They are in New Jersey, but the world is a seamless place these days so give them a chance with your travel plans.
3. The people at American Express on more than one occasion stepped in and helped me find medical treatment when I needed it. Yes, I pay dearly for the card I carry, but they earned every penny on this trip, and never once did they let me down. It is very easy to complain these days about a decline in customer service, as that is true in all too many cases. But that was not my experience with the staff at American Express. In a word, we are impressed.
4. The staff at United Airline was wonderful. They always went out of their way to be helpful when I had to change my flight reservations home. But, in truth, my entire dealings with United people were extraordinary. They got what I needed, made sure that the changes were made and I knew about them, especially in that last, trying week before leaving for home, waved fees because it was the considerate thing to do vis-a-vis this early departure, and in all were thoroughly professional. I am theirs for life.
5. This is not a credit but a comparison. Just as United Airlines was great Air France was dreadful, and it is an airline I will never fly again. Uncaring, cold, unconcerned, and egregiously rude are words that can be used to characterize their treatment of us as we tried to get credit on tickets we could not use to visit the Maynes in London due to the need to return home for the funeral of Eleanor's mother. The note from the funeral home attesting to her death was quite literally thrown back in my face by a supervisor with the words I should have taken out insurance for a circumstance such as this. Take my advice. Fly any other airline but this one.
6. David and Colleen Snitch of Simply Perigord were people on whom I came to rely when I was in St. Cirq. Although they did not have a formal arrangement with Mellen Candage to step in and help when a need arose, they were always ready to help when they could. They were terrific and we owe them a lot, especially in those last few days when we were getting ready to leave. They did not let us down once. If you are looking for a rental in the area, look at their web site at www.simply-perigord.fr.
7. Mme. Lacoste was this wonderful old woman down the lane from us who did so much to help us. She is a delight and a wonder to behold. When we needed wood, she got it. When we needed an electrician, she called her son, Raymond, and made sure he came, even on Christmas Eve. We would have been lost without her assistance and good-natured approach to things.
8. Eleanor and I have a great cyber friend, Jim Guignard, who was really instrumental in helping this plan to get off the ground and then, when we were in France, to keep my mind straight. I forget how we started chatting about what I wanted to do, but I am really happy we did as I do not think the trip would have been possible without his wise counsel. He has rare insights and shared them with me in a way that produced only positive results. So, we owe him a great deal, and we hope to begin repaying that debt when his wife and he will visit us in early June. How nice it will be to put a face with a voice (we have chatted on the phone but never met) and an e-mail pal. What a world we live in today.
9. Mellen Candage rented her house to us at a very reasonable rate. This made it financially possible for us to go and to stay there as long as we did. I did earn the rate, I have to say, because of the work I did there and helping to be sure that what was done to fix the problems we had with the plumbing and electricity were completed satisfactorily. This all got to be a bit too much at times, but never so much so that it took away from the trip, at least as we look back on it now. And there was The View. The Silence. The Serenity. The almost complete sense of being at peace. These are things Eleanor and I came to cherish, and we miss them more than we thought we would.
10. Finally, there is my wife, Eleanor. I have said many times in this journal that she did not want to come on this trip at all and especially for 6 months. But she came and was such a trooper and so enthusiastic once she got there that it is hard for me to describe. She was the one who read the tour books and made the agendas of what to do and see. She was the one who forced me away from The View and into the car so we could find all those wonderful things to see. She could have thrown in my face all the problems we had with the house and being there in the winter and the cold. She never did. She could have thrown in my face all her warnings about what would happen if my stomach acted up and we had to get medical attention. She never did. There was one wonderfully poignant scene during a particularly tough period when the problems with the house were really ganging up on me and my stomach was giving me fits. She was in the bedroom and as I came in she started crying. She came up and put her arms around me and said how sorry she was for me that these things were detracting from the enjoyment of a trip about which I had spent so much time thinking and planning. We have grown closer and closer over the 32 years we have been married, but we were never closer than at that minute. This trip, no matter the vicissitudes we faced, has done wonders for our relationship and that is never a bad thing.
11. A special credit goes to the trip itself. On a scale of 1 to 100 it was a 98. Would I go again? Would I do it again, you ask? In a heartbeat.

Part IV -- Conclusion and Farewell

This really is the end of this journal. We have been home now for nearly two months and that is really hard to believe. And just a bit depressing, for me but not for Eleanor. So to pick up my spirits I have been planning the next trip. Two or three weeks in Provence and another week in the Dordogne seeing old sights and friends and finding new ones. I will have worked hard enough by then to be able to afford it I trust. We hope you have enjoyed this journal and it has made you smile at times and got you in the mood to go to France and have as much fun as we did. Eleanor and I send you our best wishes for a happy and fulfilling life.

Oh, yes. We will have a photo gallery uploaded in the next couple of weeks so you can put a face with a name and see some of the places we visited. And, just as important as that is, look back here next March and April and see what we are up to then. It will be fun.