I learned nothing about what the wineries of Bordeaux were  famous for on my first trip to this city a year ago. I did learn something about where the wine was served, though, and it was in that same cafe that Carol and I sat now.

At least now I understand what’s wrong with my sense of direction. Carol and I arrived back in a section of Paris (the St. Lazare train station) neither of us had been to before. The Place d’Opera looked interesting, and I consulted our city map.

When Carol awoke Friday morning, I’d already been up for awhile. A long while. Before her eyes were fully opened, I completed a data dump of my collected thinking during the night. “We should head over to the train station to activate our Eurail passes…reserve our seats for Bordeaux…buy our tickets to Giverny for Saturday…change your money…take the 13 metro to L’orangerie…then walk the Champs Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe…then figure out the metro to the Eiffel Tower…walk to Rue Cler for dinner…then go back to the room and bed.” I managed to get all that in before Carol sleepily responded, “I need coffee.” It was unclear if anything I’d said to her had registered. Later, while Carol showered, I spent some quality time fretting whether I’d gotten enough sleep myself to last through the day. Being a travel companion is still very much a work in progress, but I’m learning to slow down and smell whatever it is these flowers are.

The 9:00 a.m. Le Bus Direct to Gare Montparnasse Paris at night, via our hotel room   There is a bathroom in the room at the hotel. There was a wrinkle (I’d reserved a single room instead of a double), but the desk clerk had already corrected that by the time Carol and I arrived. […]

    It’s not love that means never having to say your sorry, but solo travel. This trip to France is one done by tens of thousands of couples each year. I’m planning nothing that any of those thousands wouldn’t have planned on their own. In sum, there’s going to be nothing worth writing about on this trip; yet I plan on writing nonstop. And I want it to be a transatlantic triumph, not a catastrophe. I want Lindbergh not the Hindenburg.

  I’ve been rereading Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence by reading it aloud to Carol. Movie night with a BBC DVD of the book followed this past weekend, and then we dove right into Mayle’s sequel Toujours Provence. Our longest stay in France will be in the same apartment hotel I stayed in Avignon, when I was reading A Year for the first time to myself. Just about everything Carol and I will be seeing together is well trod ground from Mayle’s books. I, of course, will be seeing all of it for the first time. (I spent five days in Avignon that first time, too.)

   Carol tried to tap into my recently acquired travel expertise by asking about currency exchange. “When you use your credit card, do you pay in dollars or euros?” I thought it both an astute and practical question. Unfortunately, I had no clue which method was more sound monetarily. “I choose dollars, but I don’t know why,” I replied with an incurious shrug. Carol hasn’t realized it yet – or maybe she has – but she is the resident expert on practical matters for this trip.

Mike and Reid

   It was Mike’s daughter who wrote, “Mike collected people.” She wrote that in the family’s memory card. I never met Mike, but I have met a couple of the people he collected.

   Al has been the Madigan handyman for years. A Mexican national who at one time had been crossways with U.S. Immigration, Mike’s contacts within the judicial system as a private investigator helped Al eventually earn legal status in this country. When it comes to repairs and home improvement, there’s no job Al isn’t willing to tackle, even if he’s never done it before. “This will be interesting” is his calling card, as well as his M.O. for expanding his expertise. Al’s dependability is limited only by his garrulous, outgoing nature that is mostly responsible for the elastic quality of his deadlines. Mike liked talkers, because he was one himself.

The best way to show Carol that I know how to travel with a companion was to show her the pictorial evidence. But that meant showing her Carolyn’s Shutterfly books of our trips together. I worried that might be hard for Carol. Carol worried it would be hard for me. Instead, we were both awed to observe together the artistic eye that Carolyn possessed. For me it was rediscovery.

I first visited Paris in 1971. It was my first city in Europe. I must have been enthralled by all that I saw, because I remember walking the streets from seven in the morning till eleven at night, capping off the evening at a cafe with a glass of vin rouge ordinaire and recording all that I had observed that day in my journal. For example my detailed notes on the Sacre Coeur basilica included this gem of an insight: ”overwhelmed.”