Growing Old With Travel
Faithful readers may remember our ill fated trip to Scandinavia and the Baltics which included eleven flights, 13 separate lodgings and four cases of pneumonia (2 each). Upon reflection, we decided that perhaps we should modify our travel modalities before we killed ourselves. We consoled ourselves that this wasn't really "old" travel but rather the more worldly "slow" travel so often touted by travel sages. Our introduction into "slow" travel was the adoption of wheel chairs in airports. Years ago when Michael's knee went he got a wheel chair. The chair pusher would race through the airport (they work for tips a lot) and I would jog after them panting and pleading with them to slow down to no avail. I gave up and got a chair too. It wasn't just that we were getting old and creaky but every major airport has felt obligated to drop the equivalent of a suburban mall in the center of their airports thus doubling (at least) the distance to any gate. So, that was the first concession.
We decided that flitting from city to city with little to no control over our schedule really wasn't doing it for us. You're sick? Too bad. You're tired? Too bad. Your travel mates are hideous? Too bad. So, our next decision was that we would find a location that we liked with lots to do within a couple of hours, rent a house, lease a car and stay put (at least house wise, for a number of weeks). Our third decision was that we had to minimize the number of flights due to the horrendous experience air flight has become. So one stop over max.
Armed with our new set of resolutions we began our journey to the Dordogne region of France. We flew to Dallas and visited with Michael's sister and her husband for a couple of days and then took a direct flight to Paris (see one stop rule). We picked up our lease car (not a rental and a great deal) and headed to Tours where we'd spend the night and then off to the house that was to be our base for five weeks.
We've been to the Dordogne (also known as the Perigord) several times of varying duration and think it is probably the most pretty and interesting region of France. So we decided to play it safe on our first "long stay" in a place we knew we'd enjoy.
The house was wonderful -- which is important if you're going to be there for weeks. Michael's pictures will tell the tale. Our neighbors were the best. Sheep are really underrated as neighbors. They are quiet, provide ambience and show you copious love if you come to their fence with a stale, rock hard baguette. Our other neighbors were Sigrid and Jean-Paul who own the house we rented and live next door. Other than that nothing but quiet and stunning views.
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| Two views of the house and covered back terrace with dining table and the heated pool (usually covered because of the cool weather). |
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| The sheep would come running when they saw us, and were initially wary about approaching us. |
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| Even mama and her two little lambs came running as well. |
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| In the beginning we would have to throw the bread over the fence to the sheep... |
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| and after a period of time they would take the bread from our hand. |
In keeping with the theme of global warming our stay featured totally bizarre weather. Normally in May and early June temps are 70 degrees to 80 degrees fahrenheit and usually not that much rain. In our five weeks we had: 1) four really nice days; 2) twenty-seven days that were in the low to mid 60s with clouds and or rain and; 3) a stretch of four days with temps in the highest 90s approaching 100. We still had a good time but even the heated pool wasn't too tempting. Our hostess was funny. She said: "Oh, you're not using the pool. Oh, you're from Mexico. The Irish will swim in anything. Brits too."
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| This Eurasian Magpie is eyeing the remains of a flower blossom on the pool cover... |
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| and decides it will make a tasty morsel after all. |
At the end or our five weeks (we decided that was a little long because it ended up more like 6-7 weeks if we stop to visit folks), we retraced our steps to Paris and grabbed a non stop flight from Paris to Los Angles to spend a few days with our sons. We had fun and caught up and then faced the final challenge of returning to Guadalajara in the midst of the World Cup occurring both in LA and Guadalajara. Luckily our flight schedules avoided the worst of it.
Normally we construct our blogs in a chronological manner but this time we think we will do it in"chunks" based on subject -- bastide towns, chateaus, etc. This may not work out perfectly but we'll just throw in the stray uncategorizable photos and you can figure it out. It will be fun.
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| The area is known for its vineyards, but we also saw many fields of spring wheat. |
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| And yes there were more vineyards than we could count with all the vines in nice neat rows... |
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| sometimes seeming to stretch all the way to the horizon. |
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| The Dordogne is also known for its walnuts. In the lower left is a walnut grove and in the center a vineyard. |
