L’amitié international

Each of our two AirBNB stays has now included a long boozy evening with the hosts. We all know just enough about each other’s country to empathize across linguistic and political lines with our poorer choices in Presidents, celebrate the better ones, and agree that the world is generally going to hell except of course for evenings like this one.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, little Hercule (appearances notwithstanding he is named after the Greek hero and not the Belgian detective) decided that Chuck was an acceptable port in the conversational storm, and another new friendship was born.

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La queue

As an American I know I don’t have much experience standing in lines. I mean, we have Disneyland and airports and so on, but you sort of expect it there. In my daily life, they just open another register most of the time.

French lines might not be as bad as stories I’ve heard about Soviet Russia, but they’re still in a different league than I’m used to playing in. Four people buying train tickets last evening was nearly an hour. Everyone has a problem, and a story, and their own ideas about how the whole thing is supposed to work.

And there’s only one window, one clerk, and her job is to make sure every customer gets her full attention.

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Anché enchainé

So, you are riding along in the French countryside, dreaming of the Tour de France, and you come into the village of Anché. Just as you are thinking to yourself, hmmm, this village is perhaps less charming than some of the others we’ve seen today, you espy this mailbox along the side of the road.

All is right with the world.

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Worlds and worlds

The young person who normally inhabits this room is just at an age and lives in a place where it’s okay to display both your Spiderwick Chronicles book and your Lady Gaga poster right next to your own elementary school art, all cunningly arranged around your 18th-century fireplace.

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The view from my window in Chinon, including my new friend Squeezy the Cat. Incredibly charming but at the same time, the narrow medieval street and the old windows mean you gotta get along with your neighbors.

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This little guy holds the shutters open on your achingly quaint stone house in Chinon… if you have such a house.

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I AM FROM AMERICA AND I WILL TASTE YOUR WINE NOW. IS IT BRUT OR DEMI-SEC? YES I RENTED THIS BIKE SO WHAT.

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Boules à la guinguette

In France, a guinguette is a restaurant/amusement area that lives on the side of the river or lake. It’s a new concept for me, but one that is apparently fairly common.

Today, we cycled past Luluparc, a big one in the village of Rochecorbon. They had volleyball, mini golf, go-carts that you have to pedal, a band, big drinking tent, blowup toys (like a bouncy house… Not what you were thinking) and monkey bars and stuff like that, and of course, boules.

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