1. Journal Entry 1--Introduction
I started this blog with a run-through of my trip to DFW Airport with Ben, and when I read it, I realized that I was leaving out something very important--the way the idea of this trip came about in the first place. So here it is.
The GHS Class of 1964 had its 50th Reunion the first weekend of April 2014 in Gainesville. We enjoyed it very much. Friday evening we spent at the State Theater. Saturday lunch was out at Phil and Ruth Adams's horse ranch, and a Saturday evening dinner was at the Santa Fe Depot.
50th Reunion of the GHS Class of '64
During dinner with several classmate couples, I sat near Laron and Jana Robinson, who proceeded to tell me about a Roadscholar tour they had already taken and one of England they were planning for June, which they encouraged me to consider. That sounded interesting, so later in the week, I looked up the website and was well impressed with the offerings.
Since France has always been a major interest of mine, I looked over the tours there and discovered something called Survey of France. I liked what I read; it lasted three weeks and included stays at many of the major destinations that I had long wished to visit. After a lifetime of studying, reading, and teaching people about France and the French language, I had a large backlog of pent-up travel dreams, and no other tour I had read about offered more wonderful places at such a reasonable price (set to rise sharply in 2015).
Route of Survey of France
So I sent e-mails suggesting this tour to several classmate couples and also offered to take Ben with me on it in September. When no one else showed interest and Ben said he could not be gone that long, I swallowed hard, decided to go by myself, and booked single rate. I also chose to go in October instead of September, because that would give me more time to prepare and I had heard many good things about France in the fall.
I let Roadscholar make the airline arrangements, and they put me on a Delta flight to Atlanta out of DFW. In Georgia, I would board an Air France plane to Paris for an overnight flight and come back the same way. The departure would be the morning of Oct. 16--with arrival in Paris the morning of the 17th.
Let me add that Ben and I had taken a two-week trip to Europe in 2012 and that our brief, two-night stay in Paris had only whetted my appetite for more of France. As I went on into summer and thought about Suvrey's three-night conclusion in Paris, a new idea took hold. Roadscholar offered something called "back-to-back adventures"--tours that could be combined with others. I noticed that "Independent Tour of Paris" lasted one week and could be added at the end of Survey of France.
Well, I booked that tour, too. It added the following week plus a three-day layover in Paris for a total of ten additional days. That should certainly solve the frustration of too little time in Paris. I simply did not want to spend three weeks touring the provinces and come into the City of Light for only three nights. This added to the cost, but it would make my tour complete.
Then I told the Robinsons what I had done, and they decided to book the same tour of Paris, to fly in from Houston a few days early, and to join me at the Villa Beaumarchais. I was thrilled! Next, I informed North Central Texas College that I would not be able to teach in the fall but would like to resume work in the spring. The English Dept. was agreeable, so I cleared my desk for travel planning. Practically everything would soon fall into place.
Louis Gabriel Bideau
While I'm winding up this introduction, I want to mention our guides who would make these tours so successful. For Survey of France, it was Louis Gabriel Bideau, a Frenchman who accompanied us for three weeks from one wonder to another. He's pictured in the red Mercier Champagne cap at the Chateau-Tierry battlefield. Louis would join up with local docents all along our route to assure us of the most informative, pleasant trip possible. He was a former Legionnaire, as was his father before him, and had gone through the French Military Academy of St. Cyr.
SURVEY OF FRANCE
Louis took a picture of our group at Chateau Amboise.
For the "Independent(?)" tour in Paris we had two British guides. Thomas Randall was the overall Roadscholar expert who stayed with us at the Patio St. Antoine and served as coordinator. He's pictured in jacket and hat aboard a Paris tour boat. He was joined by Paris resident Jennifer (Jenny) Burdon, who is pictured in the red beret lecturing on a painting at the Orangerie Museum. These two made a superb team. Above, I include a picture of a map drawn by Louis of our Survey destinations.
Thomas Randall and Jenny Burdon
Of course, the trip itself is a logical extension of earlier learning and teaching. Not only that, but it would become an invaluable source of reference and information for classes I teach in the future. The blog of this tour could be made available to former students and would also be a source of learning and sharing for present and future students. The very skill of blogging would be a type of composition which, as an adjunct professor of English, I could impart to my classes.
Though this blog will sometimes reflect the informality of most electronic communications, it will be composed as a potential teaching tool. As for the blog itself, I owe its very existence to my son Andy, who taught me how to do it. As a computer science major, now teacher, with a master's from the Texas A&M Viz Lab, he had the patience and expertise to show me how to start this project.
Laron et Jana Robinson et moi à Paris
Et aussi un petit DISCLAIMER--Every photograph in the blog shows places we visited on the tour and that I saw, and 96% of the photos were taken by me with either my camera or my cell phone. However, I did not always take them with me, and I rarely shot pictures inside restaurants or hotels. My thinking was and is that enjoying an experience and fully taking it in preclude constant photography. Yet as I progress into the blog, I sometimes fill in with pictures sent to me by others on our tour or from public-domain, online sources.
When I began the trip, I brought along a spiral notebook to write in after each day's events. I gave up on that idea the second day in Caen! I did not have the time or energy to do notetaking. For me at least, the events of the tour and the need to pack and prepare to move so frequently left no time or energy for extra activities. The resources for constructing this blog are a detailed itinerary provided by our guides and my photographs. What the heck, if Proust could remember the past, so can I!
The word awesome is overused nowadays. If everything were as "awesome" as some people say, their senses would be worn to a nub--their dendrites to an axon. Nevertheless, to say this month in France was "awesome" is no exaggeration. The days were not equal, but every one of them WAS awesome, and I intend to give each the attention it deserves. I will do this experience justice, no matter how long it takes!
Lunch near Avignon
Finally, this event was more than just "Gordon's trip France." It was an unequalled journey of fulfillment. If this diary allows anyone to share in the deep satisfaction I took from it, the blog will have been worth the effort.
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