The sound of Chopin drifted through our teeny Paris hotel room in the Marais district at 5 am only a week ago.
We hadn’t really needed the alarm. Neither of us had slept much on that final night, with feelings of excitement, sadness and a little trepidation all jostling around in our minds.
Part of the sadness came from the fact that, after a patchy few weeks, Les was finally feeling more like himself again—and we wanted more time to enjoy that.
After landing in France following our mesmerising, amusing and, at times, slightly depressing road trip through Scotland, we had been looking forward to the final French chapter. We were also bracing ourselves for a big couple of weeks, chock-full of festivities.
And chock-full they were.
Our first three nights were in the port city of La Rochelle on the west coast of France, where we happily bunkered down in the former mansion of a thirteenth-century sea captain. Now a tasteful bed and breakfast, it had a wonderfully comfortable bed and was only a few minutes’ stroll from the bustle of the old port.
Friends we were meeting for a party in Talmont-Saint-Hilaire the following week had highly recommended the place.
They weren’t wrong.
At best, we had imagined La Rochelle would be a pleasant distraction by the sea in warmer weather and a convenient stop before reaching our ultimate French destination of Talmont-Saint-Hilaire. After the layered road trip we had just completed through Scotland, that would have been enough.
But La Rochelle was so much more.
As consummate lovers of seafood—and it is no secret that we don’t mind the odd drop of wine—we found this place had it all. Its magnificent old harbour was surrounded by bars, restaurants and cafés, tucked into cobblestone streets and briny sea air, with nautical history waiting around every corner.
La Rochelle was particularly good for Les’s nautical soul and felt like a much-deserved chance for him to properly enjoy this part of the trip.
Thank God his beer hand had remained fully operational throughout.
He had managed to exchange regular “beer of the day” photographs with his good mate Chris, who was also making his way towards France after spending time in sunny Italy.
Les comes from a large nautical family of tug masters and captains, and the old port seemed to speak directly to that part of him.
So La Rochelle and nearby Île de Ré—almost as wonderful—had us immersing ourselves in everything they offered during the all-too-brief three nights we had there.
We left just as excited about the next leg, even though La Rochelle has since been declared one of our favourite places from the entire seven-week trip.
Off we went in our little hybrid towards the quieter and very authentic French town of Talmont-Saint-Hilaire.
My friend has a very tough gig in life. She shares a rather large and gorgeous holiday home close to the sea that she and her family have been enjoying for more than 40 years.
Apart from the excitement of catching up with good friends we hadn’t seen for ages—many of them travelling from Sydney for our much-loved friend’s 60th birthday celebration—we were delighted to have six nights in a cute, fully equipped apartment perched right on the marina, looking towards the sea.
And there was yet more fresh seafood.
Oysters everywhere!
They were good. Very good, in fact. But in all honesty—bias aside, or perhaps not—they were still not a scratch on our Tassie oysters.
Nevertheless, we persevered and toughed out the west-coast French oysters so that we could continue to be seen as team players.
The cheese, on the other hand…
Nowhere in Tasmania, Australia or possibly the entire world has such delicious cheese, at such reasonable prices, so readily available.
Thank God we have the oysters, and I think our wine can hold its own against the French. But their cheese is another story.
If you are sensing a theme in this blog—one that probably also came through rather strongly in my social media photographs—food and wine featured prominently on this trip.
France is home to Les’s favourite cuisine in the world, and “immersing ourselves” is really the only way to describe what we did.
In fact, had we stayed much longer, I was beginning to worry that we might become those people who need a seatbelt extender on the flight home.
I think we escaped just in time.
Phew.
The birthday party arrived, and it was everything—and more—that we could have wished to be part of. In fact, the entire seven-week journey had eventually been designed around ending with this celebration.
In hindsight, my special party dress might have been far more flattering without my newly acquired kilos had we travelled through Poland and Scotland after the party, spending the following weeks on a diet consisting mainly of sausage and potatoes, instead of before .
But no such luck.
There was much merriment and a long, late lunch beneath the warm twilight skies of western France, close to the sea. A long table was adorned with wildflowers, and some rather interesting lawn games reached an entirely new level of orignality once most of the guests had reached peak merriment.
Eventually, we waved farewell to the birthday girl and most of the guests, and set off in the direction of Paris.
But first, we stopped for one night at Mont-Saint-Michel.
We wanted to see the abbey rising above the tidal island. It is not simply an abbey but an entire medieval village, climbing steeply upwards until it seems to merge into the abbey itself.
It was every bit as spectacular as people had told us.
We arrived late in the afternoon on the day after the party. I was feeling slightly foggy-headed.
It must have been the baguette I had eaten for breakfast.
Les, who had been the designated driver the day before, was in substantially better form.
We made the long trek from the car park towards the island—well, mostly on the shuttle bus—crossed the bridge over the tidal flats and wound our way up the steep cobblestone streets towards the abbey entrance.
To my rather horrified surprise, and Les’s clear-headed delight, we were just in time for the last two-hour tour.
“How lucky was that?” Les said.
I somehow managed to nod and agree, already visualising the post-tour drink and sit-down.
I have no doubt the tour was fantastic. I seem to recall that our guide was incredibly passionate about the abbey, its history and its architecture, and some fragments of her detailed commentary did manage to penetrate my head.
As we were leaving, Les quietly said that the abbey was the most impressive historic building he had ever visited.
I nodded again while gulping down my hair-of-the-dog Pinot Gris and asking for peanuts.
The following day, off we went to Paris.
First, our trusty hire car needed to be returned to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, requiring our usual right-brain and left-brain teamwork to get it there.
The only problem with the shared couple-brain we have developed over almost 20 years of travelling and being together is that sometimes we both have a right brain at the same time.
Occasionally, one entire brain sneaks off for a rest altogether.
That is when things happen, such as driving past the hire-car entrance at a massive international airport three times.
Then came Paris.
It was my sixth visit to the City of Light and romance.
My first was in 1973 with my mother, whom I still consider extraordinarily brave for taking such a large European trip alone with her eight-year-old daughter.
How on earth she managed it without Google, artificial intelligence, email or a mobile phone, I can only begin to imagine.
If someone took all those things away from me now and handed me an eight-year-old to manage, I would view it as something akin to a particularly gripping episode of Survivor.
My other visits included one with a good girlfriend during my single days in my early forties, one by myself a year earlier, and now three with Les.
But every time I visit, Paris gives me something of herself that is new and different. Somehow, each visit seems to align with something significant happening in my life at the time.
For that reason alone, I feel connected to the city, as though she calls me in whenever life demands it.
This time, we had only two nights.
We were both beginning to feel much better than we had during the previous weeks, although the potential seatbelt-extender problem was looming. So we ate, drank some more and met up with some of our closest friends and their delightful young-adult children, who were also in Paris.
We had an altogether fabulous time.
And so we returned to that final morning and the sound of my newly programmed alarm playing Chopin and reverberating around our teeny hotel room.
Thoughts of our golden girl Stella were bigger in our hearts and minds than ever before.
We showered, grabbed our luggage, went down to the foyer and stepped into the dark street to begin the journey home.
The night before, we had commented on how smoothly the entire trip had gone.
Not one serious flight delay.
Not one lost suitcase.
Not one completely stuffed-up booking.
Only minor things.
We had barely settled into the back seat of the taxi, our minds already drifting towards airport check-in, when blue flashing lights began flickering at the edges of our peripheral vision.
As they drew closer and the siren grew louder, a knot began tightening in my belly.
“Must be that group of young men outside our hotel,” Les said quietly.
“Mmm, must be,” I agreed.
But they had looked fairly tame to me—just young blokes lingering into the dawn after a big night out.
It was when the flashing lights stayed with us, the siren grew louder and our taxi driver began to look increasingly nervous that reality kicked in.
Then he pulled over.
Five burly police officers jumped out of their vehicle and soon surrounded our taxi.
Needless to say, we became a tad nervous too.
There were many moments during the trip when I wished I had learned more of the language.
This was definitely one of them.
The officers looked like a squad of action heroes. They had guns, strong jaws and not one of them was smiling. The female officer was the scariest of them all.
Our taxi driver kept laughing in a strange, nervous way.
Words were exchanged and papers handed over. Torches were shone through the windows and across the back seat. We squinted into the light and attempted to arrange our faces into the most innocent and charmingly vulnerable expressions we could muster.
I wondered whether we had eaten too many oysters in the previous town or perhaps short-changed the baguette vending machine.
The French are very possessive about their baguettes.
But it seemed to be the driver who was under investigation.
The process lasted about 15 minutes, although it felt like an hour.
I nearly wrote that it was an hour for the sake of the blog, but it is best to stick to the facts.
The truth was dramatic enough.
Les sat quietly, staring straight ahead and choosing not to make eye contact with the occasionally over reactive woman beside him.
Fortunately, my left brain told me it might be wise to follow his example.
My fingers, however, were having none of it.
They flew across my phone, busily texting my good friend back at the hotel while doing their best to keep the rest of me contained—particularly my voice and the growing urge to leap out of the taxi and do a runner.
I strted to wonder whether our driver might be a wanted terrorist or a serial killer.
My insomniac friend—thank God for her—replied immediately and suggested that we get out of the car and ask the armed officers surrounding us whether we were safe.
My thoughts exactly.
But Les kept his eyes firmly ahead, shook his head and muttered, “Stay quiet. It will be resolved.”
And, of course, somehow it was.
We still don’t know why the taxi was stopped or what was said. But my bladder relaxed slightly when, after a nod and a few final French words, the officers retreated to their vehicle and drove away.
So, on the final morning of our trip, Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport became a far more welcome sight than we could ever have imagined.
We tipped our poor driver, who had sniffled all the way there. I suspect he had been crying.
We wished him well and high-tailed it towards the check-in desk.
Ahead of us was the long flight home via Singapore—the usual economy-class sardine-can experience.
Except, by some small miracle, we ended up with an entire empty row to ourselves, which of course we were wildly excited about.
Then came a lovely night at The View Hotel in North Sydney, lunch with my parents and the final reshuffling of luggage weight before the last leg back to Hobart.
Now, only a few days later, we find ourselves home in sleepy Tasmania.
This time, the view beyond my window is from my own office. Stella keeps wandering back and forth outside, and my little fan heater is only just managing to keep me warm.
There are not too many terrorists down here in Cradoc… at least not that we are aware of.
We did, however, spend a full day with two of our grandchildren yesterday. Their main offence was being impossibly cute, which does tend to elevate my heart rate and turn me into a cuddling demon with absolutely no respect for their personal space.
Still, they didn’t have us bolting for the nearest airport.
Although I am still poring over the holiday photographs with a healthy dose of melancholy, we are happily back to evenings with our golden girl snuggled across our laps, the fire spreading warmth through the house and the crisp-cold Tasmanian winter waiting outside, reminding us why we love coming home.
And, naturally, we are already planning our next getaway.
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