It Takes a Leap of Faith...

So we're rolling through Central France. 17 hours and 3000 miles of travel behind us. We're ready for a new adventure. An experience that will change the way we live the rest of our lives. A leap of faith into a foreign land. And as I sit there with my daughter on my lap, looking out at this exotic countryside slip past I think to myself, "Huh. Looks like Upstate New York."

No, seriously... it REALLY looks like Upstate New York. Rolling fields, cut only by the occasional county road slicing one vast, 0pen area from the next... tractors... cows.... True, there are some differences, like a seemingly primal instinct to settle communities on the top of any available hill, rather than the lowest point in the valley. And the cows? White. Really white. I mean like Karl Rove white. But I swear at one point I saw a John Deere tractor plowing a field. Were we really in France? I promptly ventured to the cafe car and purchased a baguette jambon and a small bottle of Bordeaux for about seven dollars total and breathed a sigh of relief.

The kids maximized the opportunity to stand, sit, crawl under, and run up and down the aisles of seats while we attempted, largely in vain, to minimize the annoyance factor to our fellow travelers. Mile by silent mile the train roared through the French countryside as the sun set and our marathon "day" of travel finally neared its conclusion.

Prior to the trip, I had sent an email to our host, Nathalie, to ensure that taxis were available at the station in Nimes, where we would arrive, some 20 minutes south of our final destination. They were of course available, she assured me, but not to worry, she would meet us with her "very large" Mercedes station wagon and that would surely be enough to transport our entire traveling party. Now, we'll get into this in more detail in a later post but suffice it to say that "very large" in France is roughly equivalent to mid-sized in the States. I chose not to push the issue at the time and as it happened, a friend of theirs was at the station at the same time and was willing to help us, "just in case it didn't all fit in the car." Ha. So, about 20 minutes later, with two cars bursting with luggage, and my bike strapped to the roof of the mystery friend's Volkswagon (my heart rate pushing 200 as I anxiously watched every curve), we were on our last leg. We pulled into a tiny gravel road off a not-quite-as-tiny paved road, weaved cautiously through walled pathways that couldn't have left more than a few inches clearance, and then, finally, after everything, we had arrived.

As we stepped through the gate, the door, up the stone stairs, though another door, and into the "kitchen," we took stock of our present surroundings and both thought, "Wow. These guys are in for a rude awakening when they get to our tiny place!"