While I don’t go out of my way to meet people (in fact I go in the opposite direction) that does not hold true for children, especially from about two to about six. I sense they feel an instant kinship (“Hey, that grownup is just like us!”). Since that same comparison has been made by adults coercing me, I have to allow the kids may be onto something.

My decision to walk whenever and wherever I can on this trip is not a financial one. What I’m spending on my international data plan, chewing up minutes following GPS around town might equal what I’d be spending on uber. It’s not a health-driven one either. At the pace I saunter, it hardly qualifies as exercise. I walk because I can, and I love the liberating feeling of closing the door behind me and just taking off.

The 10:26 to…”

…Lyon. I think I may have seen the papal palace on the way out of Avignon today. I couldn’t help it, since stone walls and crenelated rooks and towers came into sight suddenly, and they filled the train window. At least now, though, I will be able to honestly answer “Yes,” when the inevitable question, “Well, did you even bother to try and see anything while you were there, for crying out loud?” is asked.

“The 11:42  to…”

… …. ? The further implications of an Avignon with two train stations made itself apparent the following day after arriving in town. I started looking at destinations out of Avignon, and I realized I could see a lot of places without having to pack up and leave the city. The idea of being able to leave Claude in the room for a few extra days was more than appealing, since I had access to a kitchen, patio and laundry, all within the little gated community of Residence Les Cordeliers.  I extended my stay an extra three days, and sat down the plot out my next itinerary. The 10:26 to Aix en Provence looked juicy. From there I could travel on to Toulon, and then circle back home in the early evening. Since this was a non-pass day, I strolled up to the ticket window with plan in hand. That’s when I learned that my 10:26 was not leaving the Avignon Centre station where I was, but Avignon TGV, a six minute train ride away. It was already 10:20, so I had little chance of making the connection.

I once fell asleep on a Munich bus late at night (probably Oktoberfest had something to do with it). When I woke up, I was the only one on the bus and had no idea where I was. I started walking, and about two hours later, I was turning down my street and heading for home. I don’t know how I found my way, especially with the effects of Oktoberfest still snarling my navigational coordinates. So it is more than a little annoying that on this trip, armed with GPS, Google maps and my own documented capacity for finding my way in the middle of the night, I could not find my way from the train station to the hotel without a lot of gesturing and pointing on the part of the locals, and in one case, humiliatingly forced to take a taxi about eight blocks.

The 10:50 to…

…Bordeaux. There was, fortunately, nothing much to see out the window the entire way from Paris to Bordeaux. It was the kind of flat, brown and weathered green landscape that would have had Carolyn put away the camera and settle in for a good nap. For only a few dollars more, I’d bought a first class rail pass. The spacious, reclining seats would have been no match to beat Carolyn’s ability to fall asleep within the space of a single yawn.

A reconversion to traditional Christianity as an adult, it comes as no surprise that C.S. Lewis’s otherwise insightful essay on grieving would be anchored, if not weighed down, in a religious context. Setting theology aside for those of us who’d prefer it that way in considering grief, Lewis scours his inner state of being following the death of his wife with the thoroughness of a surgeon cutting out a cancer. What he’s produced is a seventy-six page road map for negotiating oneself up from the depths of loss and grief.

A little less than two weeks to go, and the stand-by list continues to hold in my favor. Flying standby has its own contestant on The Price Is Right thrill and drama attached to it. But I’m making as much as I am about this trip because it’s not at all about getting away. It’s about heading to a place that is still unknown to me. It can’t be found on a map or listed on a train schedule. Yet, that’s the way I’m trying to get there. Like Hugh Conway in Lost Horizon. Except my Shangri-La was taken from me, and what I’m seeking is not something that could ever replace it. So what is it exactly that I’m looking for?