D220 to Paris

 Say your ten years old and you’re going to Disneyland for the first time. You’re bugeyed with excitement as you enter the Magic Kingdom. There’s just so much you’ve been told there is to see and do. You can’t contain yourself, and you also don’t know where to begin. But you’re ten-year-old brain is telling you you can see and do it all and all at once. So you grab your little sister’s hand, and you run and see and try to do everything. Your parents can’t begin to keep up with your energy and exuberance. Past exhaustion, you still don’t want to leave and you beg for just one more ride or one more attraction. That night you can’t sleep; your world has become a place of infinite excitement and possibility, and it will never, ever end. You don’t realize it, but you are creating not just a memory, but in the years to come, a wistfullness for those years of your youth when energy and wonder seemed boundless and eternal. 

   You’re following along with a pair of 70-somethings landing in Europe, but acting like a couple of ten- and eight-year-olds at Disneyland running off in all directions to see and do it all at once.

   Sometime during this Europe trip I will celebrate my 74th birthday. There was a time a couple of years back, when Carol could relish being in her youthful sixties, while I plowed a steady march through the Land of the Septuagenerian. But when we land in Paris this Monday we will be as two people currently embarked on our eighth decade.

   And we are bugeyed over where to go and what to do first.

   We’re arriving without a fixed itinerary. The plan is to find a café in the airport and have a café creme and a croissant, and feel out what we want to do first or next. One option is to activate our Eurail passes and head in a southerly direction in France. From there we can get to Barcelona and see where that leaves us wanting to go next. Eventually, we’ll work our way back to Paris for a few days and then back home. Or we can spend a few days I’m Paris first, then head down to Spain for the duration and then catch a train straight back to the airport and fly home. Do you see where I’m leading you?

   You’re following along with a pair of 70-somethings landing in Europe, but acting like a couple of ten- and eight-year-olds at Disneyland running off in all directions to see and do it all at once. There will be some differences – naps for instance. And Happy Hours. But my point is, to paraphrase the novelist Tom Robbins: you’re never too old to have a happy childhood. 

   Carol, of course, will be providing the adult supervision that will be required. (Although, surprisingly, she hasn’t ruled out a tour of the sewers of Paris – the amount of time she’s lived with her oldest grandaughter’s theatrical association with Les Miz probably has somethingto do with that.) She’ll manage the sightseeing; I’ll handle the train schedules and Happy Hours. 

   Being in our 70s we’ll both be peeing like ten- and eight-year-olds, as well, I suppose.