chinon – Brattleboro Adventure – the Auckland Edition

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.

June 18, 2014 0

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.

June 18, 2014 0

June 17, 2014 0

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.

June 17, 2014 0

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.

June 17, 2014 0