Friday 8 August, 5:45 a.m., Eastbourne

I’m sitting in a big white bathrobe waiting for water to boil. In our room are tea and biscuits. I’m sitting by the open window, looking out over the coastal road, the boardwalk, the beach, and the English Channel. Shades of white and grey with the tiniest hints of blue and green. The sky is thick with a blanket of clouds. The sun has just risen, but you wouldn’t know it but for everything’s soft light. We’re staying in a third floor room in Eastbourne’s Sea Beach House Hotel. We hope to go for our first run of our trip this morning and then we’ll experience our first English breakfast.

8:30 a.m.

A short run west along the boardwalk with the white cliffs looming ahead of us, past the recently burned pier (arson, probably) and along endless lengths of immaculate English garden. This town is lovely. The grey, chilly day doubles the nostalgia for me.

11:45 a.m.

As we climbed the hill out of Eastbourne toward Beachy Head, the BBC radio station served up an orchestral setting of the Parry hymn, Jerusalem, no holds barred. We felt like we were listening to the gushing soundtrack to our own movie.

We love the sound the waves make as they crash over the large pebbles and pull them back into themselves – not like the quiet of sand, but like the noise of a maraca or shaker makes.

We climbed down to the beach at the base of the cliffs beside Birling Gap. The white stones left chalk on our shoes.

Friday, August 8 was one of our more relaxing days, though it was punctuated with a couple pretty crazy moments. I began to wake to the sound of the surf as soon as dawn began, so when I finally got out of bed at 5:45 I felt like I’d slept in. I sat reading and enjoying a cup of tea and the morning air through our open window while Mike slept in properly, then went down to the water’s edge awhile. When Mike was up we went for what ended up being the only run of our trip. Though all our walking left us constantly sore and itching for some good, cleansing exercise, we were too tired every day to use our feet for anything besides. We should’ve saved some space and left our running shoes behind!

Our first English breakfast was a treat. We filled our bellies full, planning to make it last us till dinner in Salisbury. After checking out and sitting a few more minutes on the shore we drove out of town, back up the hill toward the cliffs. That was the hilarious moment the BBC blasted the most over-the-top, epic arrangement of the hymn “Jerusalem” you’ll ever here. Sheep in front of us, the channel behind us, climbing out of a sleepy English town on a densely cloudy, almost rainy, chilly morning. We laughed. Very funny, England, we see you.

It is impossible to capture in a photograph the angle and height of the cliffs at Beachy Head. The tallest cliffs in England, they rise over 500 feet above sea level. Astonishing, standing at their feet by the water and looking up. The white stone is chalk. It marked up our shoes and our hands, surprisingly porous and fragile. Little horizontal lines are visible in the cliff edge: thin layers of black rock punctuating the chalk. We parked at the visitor center at Birling Gap where a staircase (thank you, Rick Steves) takes you down to the shore. Once more on the road, we anticipated two or three hours of pleasant coastal and countryside driving would have us in Salisbury by mid-afternoon, and we even thought we might stop in Chichester or Winchester or both to wander their cathedrals for a few minutes. We drove right along the coast until we were west of Brighton. (Not a town I would ever want to visit! We decided it was the Orlando of England in all the worst ways.)

After Brighton it was only a few more minutes to Arundel, where we parked by the massive cathedral and walked down a steep hill towards the town center and castle gates. We were still contemplating paying entry to see the castle, but mostly we were looking for bathrooms. This was our first crazy moment of the day, and one of the most unnerving of our whole trip: Now in England for over 24 hours we still had no local currency. We discovered that all the bathrooms required coins for entry so found an ATM where our credit card (remember the expired debit card) was refused. Great. No way of getting cash? Now we were really starting to worry, only a third of the way into our travels.

Ignoring our need for a bathroom and satisfying ourselves with peek at the outside of the castle (entry was quite expensive) we trudged back up the hill to move on to Salisbury where we could sort out the currency problem. It’d taken us well over two hours to get to Arundel from Birling Gap because of very heavy traffic, not only in the scenic coastal route we chose through the heart of Brighton, but on the major motorways. Clearly a Friday in August is not the quickest time to be navigating the roads of southern England. The whole population sinks to the bottom of the island to celebrate the “warmth” of summer. There were some big festivals going on that weekend, too, making everything worse. So we put together a patchwork route using our atlas, avoiding the major motorways and probably saving ourselves time. We waved at Chichester Cathedral as we passed it, then prepared to wave again at Winchester.

That was our second crazy moment. By now starting to feel nervous about arriving in Salisbury in time for 5:30 Evensong, we were in beast mode. But our tourist’s ignorance got the better of us as we realized that what looked on the map to be the most direct route through the city actually took us into the heart of its historic center (which by now we were realizing always meant narrow cobbled roads closed to traffic). We saw the cathedral all right, several times as we backed up and turned around and tried to find our way out of the jumble of a summer Friday afternoon in a destination village. Once out of pedestrian-land we were still in deep trouble, making several more crazy circles as we learned the hard way how to read England’s more confusing street signs. It took us an hour to pass through that little town, and now it was down to the wire. Salisbury by the GPS was only 15-20 more minutes away, but we had no confidence we’d get there in the hour we had left. Our hearts began to sink a little.

We arrived in Salisbury with frayed nerves just before 5:00 p.m. It was raining. I hopped out of the car at our Inn while Mike went to find parking. The innkeeper gave me a very quick introduction and pointed me in the right direction to find the cathedral, looking a little doubtful as he affirmed my hopeful statement that we could make it to Evensong after bringing in our bags and parking. Parking, apparently was only in designated lots during business hours. He gave me a map marked with the closest one and as fast as we could we were on our way. Of course when we got there we realized it was cash only. So we hoped for the best and parked illegally on a city street, hoping that in the 40 minutes before 6:00 p.m. when meters would be no longer enforced, no one would notice. We ran through the drizzling rain to Salisbury and were gratified to find we still had three or four minutes to spare. We felt pretty pleased with ourselves when we returned to our car and found no ticket.

Evensong was sublime – our first of nine in ten days. The service was sung in plainchant and our hearts just sank into its beauty, both familiar and strange at the same time, a rite we know well thanks to our training and interests but have never engaged in thanks to our denominational affiliations and geographical misfortune. Afterwards, to our amusement, we ran into (almost literally) a friend from home who we were to meet up with in London on Monday. He and his wife had taken a day trip down to Salisbury from a nearby relative’s house to hear Evensong, too.

Evensong ended and, our car now legally parked, we recognized the chill and exhaustion and ravenous hunger that were left in the wake of all the adrenaline that had propelled us to that point. One of our best culinary decisions of the trip turned out to be the heeding of our hotelier’s advice. As he’d sent me off with a map he’d made a quick X at what he said were the “good” pubs in town. A few hours later as we talked with him we found out that in his former life he’d been quite a sophisticated chef. I’m glad we followed his suggestion, since the food we ate was marvelous. We settled on Ox Row Inn, on the large main square in Salisbury. After getting past the awkwardness of discovering the British custom of seating yourselves and ordering your food at the bar (at least then you don’t have to tip!) we settled in for comfort food and a few drinks to warm us up, damp and chilly as we were from the rain, which kept pounding out the open door just a few feet away from us. Nice to look at with an Irish coffee in hand.

Salisbury was hard-earned for us and we felt the cozy comfort of being “home” for the night. We turned in after dinner, recognizing that there wasn’t much to see of Salisbury on a cold, rainy night. Our hotel, however, was plenty to enjoy. Relatively spacious, refined, so comfortable. We were at the top of the staircase with Salisbury’s amazing spire framed in our attic window.

But we were still one step away from real relaxation: First on our agenda was to figure out why the ATM rejected our credit card. Before we got very far we made an even more horrifying discovery: our passports were nowhere to be found. I raced downstairs to call the Eastbourne hotel, hoping against hope they were safe with them and we hadn’t been the victims of theft. Mike had a memory of having put them in a drawer in our room for safe-keeping, and a very vague memory of having retrieved them as we’d packed that morning. Very vague, indeed! The innkeeper went up to investigate and you can imagine my relief to hear his words: “I’m holding two American passports in my hand!” Meanwhile, upstairs, Mike had discovered that our Chase Visa came with a $500 cash advance limit, and we’d so far taken about $480, which meant our attempts to withdraw even just 20 pounds had failed. The remainder of the trip we felt thankful for the travel advice we’d read: “Take a couple credit cards with you so you have a back-up.” We were uneasy with every visit to an ATM, too, wondering if our Wells Fargo Visa, though we hadn’t seen any evidence on their website, would also have a cash advance limit.

11:10 p.m. Salisbury, St. Ann’s House

Our drive west was long but beautiful and pleasant, punctuated by a stroll around Arundel and into the outskirts of the castle we’d hoped to see yesterday. It was quite a sight from the road as we approached! We wound through country roads and impossible town centers (worst of all, Winchester) and saw three large cathedrals before arriving in Salisbury just in time to park illegally and dash into Evensong there. We were lucky and got no ticket. Rain and cold had set in and we retreated to a bar restaurant for a warm, hearty dinner and drinks and then to our hotel. We retired early for a night of reading in bed, after sorting out the discovery that we’ve left our passports behind in Eastbourne. Salisbury seems lovely and we hope to explore it more tomorrow by sunlight. We feel like we are on a honeymoon.

August 7 was a ridiculous day. Travel feels like a time warp sometimes. Looking back on this day I can hardly believe it all happened in the span of a day. In the morning we lingered at a cafe on a French market square, sipping chocolat and eating warm baguettes. In the evening we sat on the rocks of the English Channel coast, snarfing down fish and chips from a paper sack while the sun set. How is this possible? The time intervening was…je ne sais pas…an adventure.

Thursday 7 August, in flight to London

We were up early, ready to travel, and out for breakfast by 7:15. We returned to enchanting Place Richelme and found a cafe seeling petit dejeuner for 4.90 and crepes, too. We sat and watched the market come to life, sipping chocolat. We watched the restaurant owner cross the square a few steps to retrieve a pan of hot croissants direction from le boulangerie. C’est trop parfait. We sat a long time before he was ready to serve, watching the town waking up. The restaurant owner would pause now and then for a drag on his cigarette, walk to the market for a couple pieces of fruit… assembling his wares. Amazing, this economy. Finally we ate, only after he’d gone back to le boulangerie to fetch les baguettes, also warm. That bread was beyond words. We shared another crepe avec nutella and ran off – Mike to the ATM while I assembled a lunch for later of olives and dried figs – tasting plenty along the way. The kind vendor gave me my food for 7 euro, not 9, when I came up short, and I had just enough for one bannon to finish our meal. We sped back to the hotel, though first wasted a few minutes drinking in the neighboring flower market. Along the mad dash to the bus we missplaced our three postcards – ready for the mail to Jacob, Meredith, and the Moons. I hope we find them.

And then we were gone. The airport was busy, tedious, nerve-wracking. We irritated the security agent with electronics not removed from our bags and then our large bottle of Woolite I’d forgotten to pack into checked bags, which they threw away. Oh well. Finally on our plane, we’re so pleased with British Airways – the classical music, the seats roomy enough for my knees, the free and delicious sandwich. And now we are about to land, a fresh sense of adventure for this new country and high hopes of Mike’s ability to drive on the wrong side of the road.

Friday 8 August, 5:45 a.m., Eastbourne, Sea Beach House Hotel

Everything went smoothly when we arrived yesterday (aside from the 20-minute wait for the rental car shuttle) until the rental car. We stood in line a half hour, then signed a slip for 245L – over twice what we’d budgeted, due to hidden fees and insurance rates. And that was without GPS! We set out for a nerve-wracking orientation to British roads – in London!! Oy. We meticulously followed our printed directions and then at the edge of the city everything went wrong. Our only explanation is that either two sets of maps (Google and the atlas we bought when we stopped at a service station) were wrong or the street sign was wrong. One said A238, one said A283. At any rate, it cost us an hour, at least, of feeling our way around, stopping for a map, where we met a kind Indian tax driver who helped us until the point he gave up hope and generously offered us his old “Tom-Tom.” We exchanged addresses to mail it back on Monday, thanked him profusely, and set out. Even then there were several more sets of circles as we tried to learn the old GPS platform and navigate all the roundabouts. In the end we were still in the edges of London (after over 2 hours) when the castle we’d planned to see near the coast was closing. Another two hours brought us along narrow windy roads (and exquisite English countryside) to Beachy Head, like the White Cliffs of Dover, but better. It was an enormous sight. We hope to return this morning to find the stairway leading down to the beach. We didn’t stay nearly long enough (I was in search of a bathroom) but vowed to return. The bright, sunny sky made the cliffs that much whiter, the water so blue, so sparkly. We awed at the lighthouses, the houses nestled at the top of this hill of hills, the rolling, steep fields of cows and sheep. England at its most picturesque. We drove a couple miles down into Eastbourne and wasted another half hour vainly looking for our hotel and a parking space. About 8 p.m. we set out to acquire fish and chips, which we ate right by the water, perched on a crest in the ridgy pebble each, entertained by seagulls begging our chips. We watched as the sun’s light failed and the moon began to glimmer across the water, enjoying the quiet after a week of city sounds. At dark we wandered into a pub – a favorite of locals, as it turned out – The Marine. We sat at the bar and chatted in happy, easy English (Mike especially) with the barista (straight from England’s version of Sweet Home Alabama, if such a thing could be possible) and a crusty old man named Richard, who conversed with us all evening. We stopped on the beach again to see the moon shining and then retired for the night to our spacious, comfortable room-with-a-view that also happens to have no internet (so we couldn’t talk to the kids) and no flushing toilet.

It’s hard to describe some of the feelings that hit us on this day. There was the delight of the crisp early morning on Place Richelme as, to our wondering eyes, the restaurant owner walked toward us with bread straight out of the baker’s oven. There was the fascination at the attitude toward cigarettes we observed as we sat watching the town wake up; it seemed breakfast for the French needed no more than an espresso and a cigarette. There was the adrenaline of the mad dash to acquire cash and food and run through town to our shuttle with all our bags, and the sweet feeling of a vendor kindly sending me off with my selection of dried figs and fresh olives despite my insufficient funds, and the self-satisfaction when the baker treated me like a local as I dashed in with my last euro for my morning loaf of bread in perfect, hasty French.

There was the horror we felt as we recognized just how angry the TSA agent was when she found the large bottle of liquid in our bag after already having been irritated by the not-unpacked Kindle. Not to mention I’d earned myself the full pat-down for some reason. Not to mention the pocket knife/corkscrew we forgot to put in our checked bag and she somehow didn’t notice. She could’ve dragged us right out of that line for an interrogation. What a nightmare!

There was the nostalgia – pangs of disappointment, even – for me as we flew away from France and I realized it was time to speak English again. And perhaps for Mike, relief. I’d gone from stumbling, nervous attempts that mostly ended in English or silence to easy, eager conversation over five days, and it was a thrill.

There was the despair as we realized how deeply lost and hopeless we were, stuck going in circles on the south side of London as the castle to our south that we’d been trying to reach was closing. We had no map, no GPS, no cell phone, no clue. We didn’t even know how to read the street signs yet. All we had was a printed out set of directions from Google Maps, which failed us thoroughly. In the end, what should’ve taken less than ninety minutes (we’d expected to arrive at Arundel Castle at 3:30 after arriving at Heathrow at noon and picking up our rental car) took hours. Thanks to the Indian cab driver (we gaped at his generosity all weekend, and giggled at his quirky mannerisms), we finally arrived at Beachy Head around 6:00 p.m. with nothing to show for our day but travel and lost postcards (which we later learned the hotel mailed for us). But the drive was so lovely, improvised with the cab driver’s ancient GPS and the paper atlas we bought, carrying us from one immense vista to the next, along impossibly narrow back roads.

There was the humbling, soul-shaking awe as we walked up to the edge of the white cliffs at Beachy Head, and the desperate resolve growing stronger by the day to master our own lives and desires and pursuits to leave time for the good and the true and the beautiful, as much for our kids as for us.

There was the embarrassment when we found that our toilet wouldn’t flush (we discovered the next morning in an awkward conversation with the owner that the joke was on us; it was one of those cranky old toilets where you have to throw your weight into it just right) and the shock at a few of the profoundly politically incorrect opinions of the friendly, crusty, frankly ugly old man sitting beside us at the bar, and the hilarious moment after he’d left when another local, evidently familiar with him, dismissed him as “smelling like a horse.”

The long and short of it is, it wasn’t an easy day. It was our most challenging (possibly with the exception of the first day of work in London) and it wore us thin. In fact, by the time we’d checked into our room at the memorable Sea Beach House (our large windows opened up right onto the ocean) I was frayed so thin I couldn’t talk past the lump in my throat. I was disappointed to have missed the castle, frustrated that acquiring dinner stood between us and the fast-setting sun – just a ball of stress. Determined to keep our pledge not to let attitudes like that ever hijack our trip I just moved through it in silence, trying to ride it out. I wrote in my own journal the next morning of just what a mess the day made of me but how perfectly Mike met me there and made it all feel OK right in the middle of it. Marriage at its realest and best.

The emotional roller coaster only got worse when we were finally sitting on the beach and I remembered what I maybe hadn’t even known; I wrote later: “The beach – the looming ocean, more importantly, and the gulls and the smell of fish, here more nostalgic than in the states because of my childhood memories of Scotland – this is true, deep home to me and I hadn’t really experienced it in years. Never with Mike present. Nostalgia and emotion and peace washed over me and tears poured down my face.” Sitting on that beach practically carried by the sounds and smells, even the feel of the air on skin, so unique to the coast, and to the coast in that part of the world where I spent a magically happy year as a child, completely undid me, silenced all the tension of the day and washed it away, bringing instead a lifetime of memories, first of St. Andrews as a child, then of the Ft. Lauderdale coast – one of the only safe places my teenage years knew: the axis and sanctuary of my little world for several very hard years. And to have my husband beside me, for the first time experiencing my definition of “home” and with it, my truest self… Not a night I will soon forget.

Aix-en-Provence is a university town about the same size as our own. (After that, the similarities cease!) It’s about 20 miles north of the south coast of France and has been on the map since the second century. It’s university and cathedral date from the twelfth century. It was home to Cezanne and, for a time, Van Gogh. The cobblestone streets of its historic city center wind every which way, sometimes barely more than six feet wide, opening onto large squares here and there. Needless to say, there’s not a lot of car traffic. We spent two nights there, enjoying it from sun-up to sundown on Wednesday, August 6. It wins the prize as our favorite destination of all. We would go back in a heartbeat.

Wednesday 6 August, 1:00 p.m.

We’ve just eaten – a pizza for Mike and a salad for me. We’re sitting at one of many busy tables under umbrellas in a shady square – Ancino Place de l’Archevescat. We’re sending a couple postcards. The ground beneath our feet is ancient stone. We slept in a little this morning, then wandered the streets, through the PERFECT market and into an almost as perfect (the market was THAT perfect) fabric shop where we gleefully parted with 94 Euro for a bag of treasures, including oil cloth to cover our table from now till forever. We watched a man in a food stand make us a crepe and fill it with nutella. We wandered the Cathedral de Saint Saveur, finding a sixth-century baptistry and a lovely little cloister – how these things capture the imagination!! The woman eating behind us heard our stumbling conversation with the waitress and inserted herself, the quintessential French woman, perhaps 50-55 years old. Elegant and exuberant. She told us where to go for our picnic tonight.

12:15 a.m.

We bounced around town for two hours today. The Mediterranean lifestyle scored one on us when we returned to the food market after lunch to find it all gone and washed away. So for our picnic we assembled the basics – bread, cheese, grapes, 16E worth of chocolate, a bottle of delightful dry-but-sweet red wine – from various shops. The bike rental plan was for nought, a discovery hard-won by searching out three address around town without satisfaction – one was closed, two wanted the bikes returned too early. So we saved our budgeted 32E and spent 4E instead, hopping the city bus with our books and our picnic for a feat of precise timing, getting off one to buy a Cezanne for Mike’s mom and back on another to ride it to the end of its route for a scenic tour of the countryside and back, to where we eventually recognized we were in the wrong place (and unwilling to walk the distance) for the vista picnic we’d planned. We settled for a grassy park set back from the road, itself high enough on the hills to the north of town to make for a few views and a lovely sunset. A bubbly French woman – uncommonly (but only slightly) overweight, about 65-70 years old, sat nearby and came to make conversation. We conversed for a half hour easily, she in quick, eager French, we in slow but improving French, and we understood a surprising amount, even Mike. It was a hilarious exchange and we giggled about it after she left. She’d watched us incredulously as we’d approached – tourists, obviously – but warmed to a grin when she saw us lay out our very French picnic. Clearly she approved. When she came over and discovered we were drinking straight from our bottle of wine (she professed deep affection for “le vin rouge”) she was slightly horrified, mostly amused, and even more so when she apprehended our intent to polish the whole thing off. We assured her we’d ride the bus. Eventually she went on her merry way and soon we went on ours, disembarking from our bus onto Cours Mirabeau just as darkness set in. We shopped a little more and sat at a cafe for a night cap, enjoying more hilarious conversation, the best of all – the moment Mike saw the rising moon and made note of it, sounding EXACTLY like Josh: “Leh Mooooon.” Now everything is “Leh” this and that and I think Bryonie and I share ever more in common.

Some days are better than others. August 5 was one of the best I’ve ever had and I’d never finish coming up with reasons. It felt like several days, divided as it was into amazing chunks of good living: sunrise yoga; quiet, intimate reflection on our hotel balcony in the early morning, shopping one of Paris’s famous market streets for food to last us four meals, wandering Paris’s grandest sites, wondering at our first-ever train ride, discovering glorious, perfect Aix, doing the work of travel (reviewing a budget and washing clothes by hand). It’s one of those days of our trip that I look back to now and it boggles my mind: We really got to live that!? I don’t know when I’ve felt more in love or felt happier, maybe like C. S. Lewis’s “happy”: not wanting to be anywhere else at that moment. By this fourth day we were getting our travel legs, so to speak. We were learning it like you learn a dance step – finally actually dancing, and it was starting to do its work on us, on our marriage, on our tired souls. It was just a good, good day.

A few missing details worth remembering: This summer I accidentally bought the wrong rail pass in preparation for our trip. The discovery was horrifying, since it’d been a non-refundable $850. But it was exchangeable and a wonderful customer service representative spent an hour or more on the phone with me one afternoon going over our travel plans with a fine-tooth comb until I knew for sure exactly what trains we’d need on exactly what days, and applied that $850 to all those tickets, to our Paris 3-day metro passes, and to our London Oyster Cards. In the end I think we only lost about $12. We used up some “spare money” by upgrading almost all our rail tickets to first class. So we were riding in luxury, and it was a ball. And oh, the scenery from Paris to Aix!!

The walk we took on this morning ended up being one of our best times in Paris, taken at a leisurely pace. From our hotel at 23 Avenue Duquesne we walked to Rue Cler around 8:30 a.m., shopped and ate, then (with three baguettes tucked into my bag) found our way to the river, crossing at Pont de l’Alma and then walking east alongside the river past Grand Palais, Port des Champs Elysees, the stunning Pont de la Concorde and Place de la Concorde, and then through the Tuilleries & Louvre, across the river again and deep into the web of streets again where we did a pretty good job navigating home, considering I accidentally lost our map.

Finally, Aix deserves some introduction, and a few of the good moments there need recording: We picked Aix because a handful of our dear friends have lived there for various seasons. We wanted a small town and we wanted the “feel” of south France. Ideally we wanted to see endless lavender fields, which didn’t quite happen. In our imaginations we saw ourselves wandering outside of the town to lie on a picnic blanket for half the day. That also didn’t happen because we fell in love with the town in an instant and couldn’t get our fill. That night we browsed through the artisan stalls, buying a handmade drum for the kids, some beautiful clay-and-glass plates for our dresser, aprons or little bowls for assorted family and friends. We lingered long over several tablecloths or other textiles but couldn’t reconcile ourselves to their prices, a little disappointed, but sure we could find something cheaper on a bolt in a shop.

Upon returning to our room (in a plain, cheap, but charming hotel in the historic city center – words wouldn’t do for capturing it) for late dinner with Jason Bourne and a lot of dirty laundry, we finally reviewed our budget for the first time since setting out, discovering that in our perpetual frugality we’d significantly under-spent in Paris (besides, we’d been too busy to shop for souvenirs), and that my memory of a $200 “gifts/mementos” budget was actually wrong. We’d saved $500 towards it. Our anxious budget-trained hearts at all the cash we’d parted with in four days of profligate living were stilled and the rest of the trip we just had fun. The next day we bought ourselves a tablecloth to make your heart sing, dang-it. We’d set a good pace for our spending and came home soundly within our budget. (Never mind the story of the $3000+ transmission rebuild that stood between us and the road on the morning we left Florida. Oh well. It was good while it lasted.)

Tuesday 5 August, 6:10 a.m.

This morning we plan to shop and eat in Rue Cler before a walk through the Tuileries Gardens, along the Seine, past the Louvre, and back to get our bags via 12:15 mass at Ste. Clotilde. If we’re lucky there will be time to peek into the sculpture gardens at Rodin Museum. We’ll bus across town past its major sights, ending at the Bastille, where we’ll catch the metro to the TGV bound for Aix-en-Provence. This city has charmed me, intrigued me, challenged me, as if to say “I dare you to figure me out.”

Un autre fois.

3:40 p.m. T.G.V. Gare du Lyon —> Aix-en-Provence

Which came first? The ^1-^5-^6 of the train announcement or the Bourne theme?

And so Paris is done. A perfect end to the morning, sitting on our balcony, finishing 1 Corinthians and praying, aware of the grander of Christ and His kingdom by comparison with Paris’s own splendor and grandeur. We didn’t want to leave that moment, that place.

We set out to Rue Cler at 8:30, leaving our luggage at the hotel desk. We ate Pave du Chocolat (custard filled pastry) and a raspberry cookie for breakfast after procuring three cheeses, four figs, a jar of fig-raisin confit, two almond pastries, and 3 baguettes from shops along the road. From there we walked (strolled, finally, after days of quick clips) up to the Seine and east through the Tuileries Gardens (where I fell in love!) and realized as we left the Louvre grounds that our map was lost. We navigated as best we could within a few blocks of Ste. Clotilde. We stoped at a cafe to ask and were answered by a lively, hilarious argument between a tall, sharp, suave waiter and a crusty-but-sophisticated old American ex-pat. A third man counseled us to listen to the ex-pat and we all laughed a lot. Ste. Clotilde was surreal – Franck’s church. We were there for noon mass, a beautiful thirty minutes with a dozen other worshipers. Daily worship – so simple, so perfect. An oasis in the bustling city, like the consulate for the kingdom of heaven.

Along the way we enjoyed an eclaire from Eric Kayser. Returned to our hotel about 1:15 and boarded a bus across town (a group of nuns sat beside us after a few stops – they are such inspiring characters). We disembarked at the Bastille and walked to Gare du Lyon.

Along the Seine a dark-skinned old woman (Spanish?) stopped us with a found ring; she offered it to us (“good luck”) and then, when we refused money for a cafe she took it back in a huff. Not till I saw her again by the Louvre did I realize we’d been conned. She must’ve had the ring all along, not found it.

In an age of photography (not to mention narcissism – so many Asian kids with long sticks to attach to their phones to aid in taking “selfies”) we memorialize every sight we see. But how do you remember the sound of the accordion playing golden age French love songs – Le Vie en Rose – on the metro? How do you remember the smell as you walk past a cafe or a poissonierre? How do you remember the taste of a perfect cheese – sweet, almost, like it was faintly perfumed with blueberries, or (today) with orange? You can only live in those moments, fully present, thankful, wondering. Photography overdevelops one sense, dulling the others, and gives us confidence in our archives, making us lazy and lethargic toward the present moment. (And yet, for full disclosure, I took around 700 pictures in these 4 days!)

I love how the hay bales are smaller, the fields look like patchwork compared to ours, and the farmhouses and barns are regal almost by their stone walls. America the Beautiful isn’t the only thing going…

12:30 a.m. Hotel des Quatres Dauphins, Rue de 4 Septembre, Aix-en-Provence

We loved Aix-en-Provence immediately – walking down Cours Mirabeau amid the evening street vendors. We settled our things and went out to shop for gifts and mementos, coming back at dark for a picnic of Paris food and Bourne Identity while reviewing our budget and doing laundry. C’est bon!

Given all that this day contained, 72 pictures doesn’t actually seem like a lot…

Our general rule of thumb on this trip was to find the cheapest possible accommodations in any given location that came with private bathrooms. That ruled out hostels and some of the most basic hotel options in European countries where hall bathrooms aren’t unusual, but it kept things pretty budget-friendly. In our three weeks of travel, though, we went in for two splurges: once the third of three nights in Paris, once the fourth of five nights in Italy. Little bookends of glamour for our trip. I am so happy with the effect this had on our travel. Starting and ending our adventure with those little touches of luxury left us with a general impression of luxury all across the board, even though some of the places where we stayed were rather plain (epecially the dorms in London!!).

Our third night in Paris we stayed on the fifth floor of Hotel Duquesne Eiffel, a choice we settled on after reading review after review of the shocking view out the windows on this street corner. Not only was the hotel just as sleek, shiny, and elegant as we could’ve imagined, the view was past our expectations, and we weren’t even in THE famous room. Right next door to it proved just as good, as you will see from our photos.

The goal for this day was relaxation and glamour, but we front-loaded the relaxation by accident, so tired from Sunday’s miles that we decided to sleep in rather than arriving at the Eiffel Tower at 8:00 to beat the crowds. This decision cost us our whole day, rather than “just a couple hours,” as we’d told ourselves, but we didn’t mind. We were standing right under the Eiffel Tower, after all, and we were even in the shade, and we were together, reading a book about Paris. No picnic happened, though, and no boat on the Seine, and no stroll across the river to wander around Trocadero. These were all possibilities on our itinerary, along with A Real French Restaurant Experience and a peek at what all the fuss was over Champs Elysees. In the end, the day included the Eiffel Tower, and by a burst of well-prepared Monday-in-August-in-Paris improvisation, a fabulous dinner followed by a night-lit stroll down Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. Good enough, I’d say.

This was the third day in a row of our travels in which we ended up unintentionally fasting (or practically fasting) for half a day. It was the introduction to a theme that has stayed with us most vividly from our travels and the conversations it inspired: a deeper understanding of “Give us this day our daily bread.” This, too, must wait for another time. For now this anecdote, just to prove that our trip wasn’t QUITE perfect: Waking about 9:00 a.m. and checking out of our hotel around 10:00, we thought we’d just see what there was to see near our new hotel by way of food, maybe grab a pastry on our way to the tower, maybe have a picnic before standing in line. By the time we were checked in, settled, and beginning to execute our day’s plan it was after noon. We looked for a nearby boulangerie or market but there wasn’t much. It seems we were in more of a business/governmental district, tucked in right beside L’Ecole Militaire and a block from UNESCO. By now desperately hungry and desperate to get to the tower before the crowds worsened, we ducked into a corner market, what seemed the French equivalent of a convenience store. We picked up a little wheel of Camembert, two peaches, and two apricots, and went on our way. We ate the mushy, grainy fruit but the cheese! Before Mike had finished peeling the wrapping away we could smell it. Not being the kind to shy away from stinky cheese, we thought nothing and bit in. We literally almost spat it out. Hoping and starving, I even took a second bite, a memory I won’t soon forget. We wrapped it up as tightly as we could and even then the smell stayed with us until we found a place to discard it several hours later. So we saw the tower and got back to our hotel at 6:30 to settle our dinner plans, change quickly, and get across town. Sitting down to dinner at 8:00 p.m., we ordered two bowls of French Onion Soup. Besides the fruit and that bite of cheese, the only thing we’d eaten in almost 24 hours. It was good.

Monday 4 August, 5:00 p.m. Atop the Eiffel Tower

We slept in till 9:00 this morning, which was perhaps a mistake, since it meant we wouldn’t beat crowds to the Eiffel Tower, so here we are, and it’s all we’ve done today besides relocate to our astonishingly lovely hotel here in 7th Arr. I’m sitting on the south edge waiting for Mike to descend from the top, after which we hope to find the hotel has successfully made us reservations for dinner. All we’ve eaten today are two peaches, two apricots, and an awful bite of a cheese we had to throw away – we bought it in what appeared the equivalent of a c-store. So we are fasting, and hoping to be gratified tonight after yesterday’s disappointment and today’s starvation.

Tuesday 5 August, 6:10 a.m.

I’m sitting on our balcony – practically a shrine to the Eiffel Tower for how large it looms in the foreground. To my right on the horizon, Sacre Coeur; almost in arm’s reach, Les Invalides; at my feet, L’Ecole Militaire. We marveled at how perfect a hotel we found! Last night we sat here together almost till 1:00 a.m. taking in the city and the tower’s lights, a bright half-moon on our left. We descended by stairs from the tower and walked home still with nothing to eat, discovering on our arrival at 6:30 p.m. that the concierge had been unsuccessful in securing our dinner reservation. Thank God I brought the indexes of Food Lover’s Guide to Paris! I cross-referenced, looking up online half a dozen options open both August & Monday (a rare find) and we had an 8:00 p.m. reservation by 7. We raced to iron and change, setting out for Chez Andre just off Champs Elysees. We emerged from the metro by Grand Palais. Our dinner was sublime, a mountaintop worthy of Paris. We ate for 89E, too, a feat! We were served by a warm and good-humored manager and a completely darling waitress. Famished, we made quick work of the bread basket and began a bottle of white wine, slightly sweet, so crisp and cold. We lingered over bowls of French onion soup, split a main dish of duck breast with caramelized peaches, slowly shared a cheese plate and a glass of port, and then finished with dessert, for Mike a rum-soaked baba, for me an exquisite and generous creme brulee, hard as a paper-thin sheet of glass on top. we walked up Champs-Elysees after two hours at the table, glimpsing the Arc de Triomphe before catching the metro back to our hotel. It was a perfect night.

There are a lot of pictures. Obviously.

Our first Sunday in Europe was mostly magic, but it got rained on (both literally and proverbially) by the end. Our first attempt at navigating the sharply angled streets of Paris dissuaded us from the notion that we could just “go up one more block because it’ll all come out in the same place, and that street looks interesting.” Fortunately, we built a lot of time into our morning journey from our hotel in the 9th Arrondissement to our destination south of the Seine. Not only did we have to right the wrong caused by my curiosity about an “interesting looking street,” but we had to figure out what we were actually looking for in a metro stop. Never having navigated a major world city before, we were looking for something a little more commanding then the steps into the ground on the street corner that soon became a familiar signal that we’d reached our goal. Sewer rats, all of us, crawling in and out of the ground!

We emerged from the metro at the north end of the famous Pont Neuf on the edge of Ile de la Cité. It was our first sight of true Paris, and completely enchanting. It was only 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday, and the city was fast asleep. That, too, was enchanting – a special gift to have Paris to ourselves as we walked to church, across Pont Neuf and through the streets of the St. Germain district.

And what a day of church it was! Intimate, quiet, early mass in the east chapel of St. Sulpice, then back after breakfast to catch the organ in the main mass, an afternoon visit to Ste. Chapelle (past Durufle’s St. Etienne du Mont), and Vespers and Mass at the end of the day at Notre Dame. The times we spent in worship in France were profound. To enter a space in a country you’ve never been in before where you barely speak the language, and to know exactly where you are and what is happening speaks so much (which I will have to write later) about the transcendent power of the practice of Christian worship. Foreigners though we were, we felt like we belonged in that early morning spoken French mass, surrounded by 20-30 people, doing their customary Sunday morning thing. So began a trip filled with immense moments of worship inspiring long reflection.

Sunday 3 August, 11:00 a.m. St. Sulpice Church

A perfect morning. Got off the metro at Pont Neuf for our first look at Paris. Walked to St. Sulpice early while streets were mostly empty. Mass in the chapel was perfect, texts on God feeding us – Ps 144, Isa 55, Rom 8:31-39, loaves and fishes; communion – “Le corps de Christ.” Joy in finding familiarity with the Christian liturgy even in a foreign language. This is how the church should be. I felt like an initiate. We wandered into St. Germain des Pres church and its neighborhood, sharing breakfast and people-watching at a café across the street from the church, listened to its bells calling to worship and heard St. Sulpice’s answer. After splitting a french breakfast with an omelette and greens, hot chocolate and the rest, we’ve come back to St. Sulpice to the 11:00 mass where the main organ is playing Brahms chorale preludes. During communion Roth improvised on Schmucke Dich and for postlude, Durufle Fugue sur le thème du carillon de la cathédrale de Soissons – Mike’s piece from this spring’s AAGO exam.

Monday 4 August, 5:00 p.m. Atop the Eiffel Tower

Sunday ended with a stroll and a pause in Luxembourg garden, a brief walk past the Pantheon to Rue Mouffetard, to find the Sunday market just finishing its close. Gelato on a square and a walk past Durufle’s church, then up to the islands to see St. Chapelle and attend Vespers & Mass at Notre Dame. We left there for Ile St. Louis and walked the circumference, getting caught in a downpour and desperately needing a bathroom. At 9:30 we ate a massively disappointing dinner in Cafe Odette & Amié by our hotel and fell into bed.

The rest can be told in pictures…

We arrived in Paris on Saturday, August 2, crossed town with our luggage and settled into our first hotel, an affordable and tiny but elegant 2-star in an out-of-the-way neighborhood at the foot of Montmartre. That evening we enjoyed a simple picnic and a slow stroll through the streets of the hilltop neighborhood of Montmartre.

Our flight arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport around 3:00 p.m. local time. It was quick and easy getting our bags and passing through border patrol. Once past, we had bigger problems trying to discern where we were supposed to be; not only was there a slight language barrier due to my mediocre French, but everything looked unfamiliar. You’d never be able to predict what would result in culture shock, and it wasn’t the last time unfamiliar-looking signs would have us way out of our comfort zone.

Our only real trouble began when we were finally at the train station ready to board the RER into Paris. Europe has this new chip-and-pin system for their credit cards and without that implant in your cards, most machines won’t read them. We had no currency yet and were suspicious of airport exchange rates, though within a few more hours we would throw that picky attitude to the wind for the duration of our trip. Eventually we boarded our train, still without currency but ready to take on the town. We sat down on the train and the next moment a plainly-dressed man stepped onto our coach carrying an accordion. As we rolled out of the station he began to play La Vie en Rose. And there we were, in Paris. It couldn’t have felt more real – one of those moments you think you might have stepped into a movie.

More reality awaited us at Gare du Nord, where we discovered several things quickly: There was to be a lot of lugging heavy bags up enormous flights of stairs through the next three weeks of public transport. Some of our walks were going to be very long. We were going to get very good at paper maps and acting on our instincts without certainty. Wheeled suitcases and cobbled roads aren’t exactly an ideal match. Parts of Paris smell like pee, and if you’re wondering why just glance over to that side alley to see a very average sight: someone facing the wall.

It took several hours to get from the airport to our hotel room, and just as we relaxed into our room a downpour came out of nowhere. By the time we’d changed clothes and prepared to set out for night the sky was clearing again. This was a pattern through our whole trip with almost no exception: The weather was perfect and the only rain happened just when we minded it least. We took it as a lovely gift from God. Not only was the weather perfect for our journey but neither of us ever got the slightest bit sick. These are not details you can plan into your itinerary!

After setting out from our hotel we encountered our first real traveling trouble, which introduced a theme that would echo through our whole adventure: I’d told Mike (he understandably assumed I was being over-fussy) that I felt inadequately prepared for the financial nuts and bolts of this trip. There we were at 7:00 p.m., standing in Rue des Martyrs having eaten nothing since red-eye airplane food, completely starving, ready to sample France’s finest fromageries, boulangeries, and patisseries – we could smell them!! – when we realized we were nothing without currency and the only debit card we’d brought had (horror of horrors!) expired three days earlier. (I told him I was under-prepared…) That left us dependent for the entire trip on cash advances from our back-up credit cards, used at ATMs along the way. Our primary card, without international fees, wouldn’t supply us with a PIN and was therefore useless to us except as a simple credit card.

While it made for quite the drama in the moment (because not only did we have no cash and no shops accepting credit card, but the PINs for our back up credit cards were in a notebook back in our hotel room, which we’d just left (we thought) for the evening), it wasn’t the end of the world. This was the only frustrating element of our trip, and we managed to pull through with no real setbacks and only about $100 of extra cost.

Saturday, midnight

It was a good day; it didn’t measure up to our expectations, but then there we were, ACCIDENTALLY sitting on the wall of Renoir’s home, eating dinner (after 9 hours’ fast) of baguette, cheese, and grapes, all bought from different shops on Rue des Martyrs. And late tonight in bed, a bottle of Bordeaus and a shared pain au chocolat. Our flight arrived two hours late. We couldn’t use our Venture Visa in France, our debit card expired, and we had to walk back to our hotel, famished, because we hadn’t brought our Chase pin to withdraw cash from an ATM.

We got lost in the back slope of Montmartre, and cut short our expedition to find the famous Montmartre Cemetery in order to arrive early enough to attend 9 p.m. Compline at Sacre Coeur only to discover it was at 9:30 and on top of that, search the famous horizon in vain for the Eiffel Tower. We sat in the church till 9:40 and gave up hope of the alleged Compline, and were accosted by pushy Kenyan bracelet makers at the foot of the hill. So, not the day we anticipated, but all-in-all perfect anyway: Paris. (Did I mention our tiny, quaint 5th floor room up a spiral staircase overlooking the street? We chose a LOVELY hotel!)

While scaling the staircase streets of Montmartre and wandering its lovely neighborhoods was well worth the effort, Sacre Coeur was one of our more disappointing experiences, one of the few destinations we would skip if we had the chance to retrace our steps. It was too commercial, too devoid of historic significance (built after WWII), too full of tourists; of all the churches we stepped into, Sacre Coeur felt least sacred. But the beauty of dusk coming to Paris atop the hill was memorable and our spirits were high (and our feet were sore) as we enjoyed the walk home after dark on our first night of adventure. We were tired after accomplishing only a part of what we imagined our first day could hold. Paris put us in our place that first day, but we gave it a good fight anyway the next three days.

It’s been a month since we set out for Europe. Choosing to go off the grid for four weeks was one of the best decisions we made going into this trip. It expanded our time and our capacity to appreciate where we were and what we did. We didn’t spend time reading Facebook comments or trying to log in to WIFI in cafes. We saw more of the world through our own eyes instead of through a screen. Perhaps best of all, the whole adventure was like our big secret. Choosing not to share it made it more intimate and forced us into each other’s company. For three weeks in Europe it was just the two of us, and we grew together as I imagine only a properly honeymooning couple would.

That’s what we called it: “The honeymoon we never had.” Marrying in the middle of college in 2010, we took four nights at a local bed & breakfast in the middle of snowy Minnesota and called it our honeymoon, coming home to mountains of work, missed classes, and the mess of moving in together. That was almost five years ago now. In five years we’ve had two kids, finished three degrees, moved across the country, and the list goes ever on. So this trip was our own celebration: Mike’s graduate degree is complete, our kids are old enough to live without us temporarily, and we are on the verge of our 5th anniversary. Besides, we’ve been feeling a need to do some hard thinking about the last five years and the next five, about the things that make us tick and whether or not they’re good.

Now we’re home and settling into the beginning of the next five, but I am eager to live those weeks again and, in doing so, preserve their memory for years to come and share the fun with all those friends who didn’t get to Like it on Facebook while it was happening. It was too good to keep to ourselves forever.

Eventually I will recount the first days of our journey – the roadtrip that took us from home to Miami. But tonight I am tired and happy just to mark August 1 on September 1.

Friday, August 1 was a pretty normal day in that we got up at 4:00 a.m. Or was it 3:30? Our attempt to outsmart jet-lag was weeks in the making and thoroughly successful. We never had the slightest problem those first few days in Europe. We finished a lot of little tasks, spent lots of time drinking in Jacob & Meredith, and put the finishing touches on our journey – overlooking only one significant detail, but that story will come tomorrow. At lunch time we took the kids out to Chick-Fil-A for a little date and at bedtime we tucked them in slowly with lots of snuggles and stories. Jacob cried as we walked out of the room: “I want to come with you and say goodbye at the airport!” He’d remembered our initial plan and we were sad he was so disappointed. We left him comforted with promises of airplane pictures and Gramma snuggles and set off about 8:00 p.m. for the Miami airport.

It was really hard to leave the kids. The only way I can describe it is that it took an enormous amount of mental and emotional self discipline. Choosing to get lost in the wonder of the adventure instead of obsessing over how they were. Trusting them to my parent’s care and to God’s kindness. The reality of it hit me hard two days before leaving and I was ready to call the whole thing off. It wasn’t until we were on the road toward the airport that I started to feel enthusiastic again about this trip we’d so passionately anticipated for almost a year. But those two days were the worst. We missed them every day but we never felt the urge to jump on the next flight home. Only a few times were we really sad in their absence. Mostly we just enjoyed talking about them and sneaking peeks at their pictures.

Our flight left over an hour late, so we sat at our gate a long time, playing cards and enjoying the ease we felt, having launched this epic journey and no longer needing to do any more preparation. True vacation was a new experience for both of us and we sank into the luxury, pretty pleased with ourselves.

My only disappointment in our travels was upon waking up from a few hours of sleep to sense the sunrise out my closed window. I opened it and prepared to bask in it, still meticulously taking steps to align my body clock with European time. Within seconds a flight attendant came and emphatically directed me to close the window. Apparently the consensus on the flight was to honor United States time, and there was barely a stir on the plane before 7:00 a.m. EST. Tedious, since I was wide awake, ready to start the day Paris-style.

Throughout our trip I kept a handwritten journal, documenting our adventure pretty exhaustively and often recording in it the sort of vignettes that I might have posted to Facebook. That journal will be the backbone of this one, and I close with it now:

Saturday, an hour till Paris, in flight:

Leaving the kids was hard. We laughed to hear them talking and snuggling with Gramma on a recording she sent after we left. Jacob burst into tears when we tucked him in – wanting to go with us to say goodbye at the airport. He recovered so calmly & peacefully. He’s brave. Merry’s been more unglued than I’ve ever seen her the last two afternoons after her nap. I think she’s homesick and nervous, but I can never really know. I’m glad for Jacob’s presence for her.

Last night at Miami airport we were amused by a TSA agent, seeing me from the back and calling me “sir.” I guess my hear is really short. We were horrified to be sitting at the gate with several massive brown cockroaches! Our flight left over 90 minutes late. We’ve just woken after dozing about six hours. Paris soon!!