Laughter, Play and Love,

A ‘Round the World Adventure

      Hello! Welcome to our long-term travel journal! It's about being" on the road" -- about laughter, play, love, adventure, having fun, and, as Bob Dylan sang, "life and life only."  

       

    We hope to inspire all who, with interest and compatible life-situation, want to feel free to travel long-term at low cost. 

    Now we're in costly Europe on easy budget, spending less than at home, free of the bills.  Our home's rented to a friend. Our home here is a camper van.
.

       Amira and  Michael     

    

    

  

Michael, Amira, and Free Flow the Van

     Email us at joyfulplanetnow@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you!

     This first post's longer, made up of the first 13 posts.  Internet problems kept it from being published until now.  By publsihing these all at once, you can read from the beginning rather than from the current post backwards.  Soon this post will be replaced by another. Just click on Archive on the first page to retrieve it.

     To help you find your way around, here are the titles of what might have been individual posts:

1. More about "Laughter, Play and Love,

     A ‘Round the World Adventure"

2. How to Comment/Keep in Touch

3. BACKSTORY -- Why We're Doing This

    (This is personal history and a bit of philosophy --

    to go direct to travel nitty-gritty, move ahead to   

    "LONDON . . .")   

 4. LONDON -- ROBERT HOLDEN

5. FREE FLOW, THE CAMPER VAN FROM WALES

6. NEW FRIENDS

7. SERVAS, SYLVIE, AND GEORGE

8. TONY PARSONS

9. ARRIVE FRANCE, MEET MICHELE

10. THE ATLANTIC COAST OF FRANCE, ROUEN, NORMANDY

11. LE ST. MONT MICHEL, BORDEAUX

12. THE PYRENEES

13. SPAIN

BACKSTORY    

     Amira and I began traveling together in early 2009. When younger, we had traveled the world more than most. Now, nearing “retirement,” our passports were out of date.     

    

Our Greeter at Sacred Mt. Sanctuary,

Sideman, Bali

      We had a great fun together laughing and playing with beautiful people all over that exquisite island. Driving among thousands of motorcycles is akin to an extreme sport.  Amira  would say, “Pull over! I need to take a laughter break before I have a heart attack!”  Laughter is Amira’s instant stress reliever, and it works!

  

Big Smile in Bali

      Amira could be the world's leading expert on laughter's positive, healing aspects for body, mind, and spirit. She loves to laugh, and we love to laugh together.  
      Meeting and playing with new and different folks sparks us.  Laughter opens the way.  

     I’ve been fortunate in my life -- graced to spend a lot of time with people who love to laugh and smile.  As a comedian friend said, “Michael, you make a space for laughter.” 

     Laughter and smiles are not about a sense of humor. Have you ever heard a laughing infant has “a good sense of humor?” A smile opens doors and hearts -- what matters most to us in life is heartfelt connection.  

     Traveling,  laughter's the universal language. You don’t need a phrase book to connect. Laughing and smiling are contagious openers -- play, joy, and fun, who needs a drink?    

Mayan Girl

Our friend next door.

Michael did an astrological chart for her.

     Soon after Bali, it became low cost to go to Mexico due to drug war, swine flu, and world economic collapse.  Business continued slow at home, which we took as a sign to keep traveling, especially at costs close to half normal. 

     

Sunset,

 San Miguel de Allende

This sweetie had natural

organic gelato,

the best in town!

      

We love bright colors!

     We, like you, cannot help noticing that our sweet blue sphere sailing through space is having a health crisis, with planetary and human survival at stake. For lack of basic needs being met, there is great suffering in many places.     


     Laughter can heal when the things in life that are not at all funny turn up.  Our laughter mentor Annette Goodheart says: “If you decide to take up laughter as a habit, it may not heal everything that’s wrong with you, but you’ll enjoy being sick more.”  Still, laughter just may up the planetary vibration in cool ways. 

     In Mexico, we went to laid back Isla Mujeres for two weeks and sophisticated San Miguel Allende for three.  It didn’t matter where we were.  We laughed, played and had fun with nearly everyone.  We saw that many folks are struggling to hold it all together.  Laughing with them, we came to agree with Milton Berle: “Laughter is an instant vacation.” There's a lot of us in this world who really could use a vacation right now. Laughter is one you don't have to wait for!

     Laughter is free, and it's instantly available -- you do not need a joke or comedian to laugh.   Amira says, “A laugh is just a smile that bursts!” We're alert to others’ laughter too – it’s contagious, and we’ve caught the bug – when we hear laughter, we join in!

     Six months after Mexico, a friend offered us several free nights on an island we'd never heard of – bet you haven’t either – Dominica, in the far southern Caribbean.  (Not Dominican Republic.)  

     Despite Dominica’s seven volcanoes and dramatic, emerald rainforest jungles, few great beaches render it uninteresting to the tourist industry.  It's a large island, lightly populated by easy-going folks who gained their independence from colonialism not so long ago.

Fountain,

Old San Juan

Brothers!

On the way to Dominica we spent a couple nights in the Old City of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  We hung out with the loving and happy folks at the Blessed Cafe, a sweet introduction to the Rastafarian energy we would came to love and enjoy in Dominica.  Don't miss it if you're down that way!

Blessings Be!

     Anticipating the laid back Rasta approach to life in Dominica, we brought along 20 CDs, each with 18 repeating tracks of Bobby McFerrin’s version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”   It was our own background mantra for seven weeks. We gave away every CD.  We sang and danced with folks, and joined in with their lives as much as a brief visit allowed.  

     It was here that we first came to feel a deep appreciation for village life – life in a place where everybody looks you in the eye, says hi and hello, smiles or laughs or toots their car horn to everybody else, new visitors included.  These folks had little, but needed no lessons in the universal language.

Calabishie Beach, Dominica

Amira and Tianna,

the Birthday Girl

      We'd had such a good time traveling so far, we decided to try a longer, less scheduled trip.  We saved our pennies for eight months, stopped eating out and buying things, read up on the lives and styles of vagabonds and gypsies of all sorts (more on these folks below), and planned what eventually became a plan to travel around the world!

     Michael had long dreamed of such a trip, and gradually saw it could be real.  An even deeper, more esoteric dream of simply wandering, inspired by the “holy men” of Asia, stories of laughing, wandering monks, and a desire to take a break from the complication and concern for comfort of modern life, all contributed.

       Travel outside the confines of tourism, without itineraries, reservations, and return tickets, supports an experience of life that is surprising, serendipity, and lived more in the present. 

     Like many of you, Amira and I were both faced early on in life with choices to accept the risk of leaving supposedly more “secure” and comfortable ways of living, chosen for risk and more expansive ways, and been willing to accept the costs.  We are trying out the idea, like many others before us, that long-term travel suits us.

     Our trip is not about getting somewhere or something. Whether or not it happens this way or that, or even happens, is not the point.  This trip’s about feeling joyful unity with all life, and with humanity beyond race, gender, age, and cultural differences.  One hardly need travel to feel that, but travel has a way of asking you to make it real.

     This first post is longer than most, it needs to be to bring you up to date.  After this, new posts will appear at the top of the blog. If you haven't finished reading this post before it disappears from the top, you can find it later in the Archive at beginning of blog. 

So here we go -- Enjoy!  And keep in touch!

TO LONDON, LATE MARCH 2011

     It's London!  It's early Spring.  As advertised, it's cool and rainy.  After ten hours on a very large jet plane,  we devote a day to sleeping. 

Yep, it's Big Ben!

     There's a good reason we're so tired. Can you imagine the last few days of getting all in order to travel for year or more?  I doubt it -- we hadn't.   First times are first times! 

     We’ve taken long trips, but packing for around-the-world is – you’ll have to try it, hope you will! -- another whole thing.  If it doesn’t make you feel even a little over whelmed, maybe you’re not really intending to be gone that longJ

Two carts full for a year!

     After our day of recovery, we find ourselves in a London hotel conference room with sixty-seven “professional helpers.” We’ve gathered to hold a conversation on the subject of genuine happiness.  Quite a subject to talk about, mmm?

     Hosted by Robert Holden, “conversationalist,” and author of several books on happiness, this meeting had a distant resemblance to Plato’s Symposium, that congenial gathering of friends hosted by Socrates.  I had always wanted to be part of something like that.  

      Here in London, the talk is intimate and deep, and like Plato’s Socrates, we do not reach any definitive conclusions about happiness that can be expressed in words.  Just sharing with so many others, on a subject so worthy of thorough examination, is a fascinating, lively, truly different, and, at times, surreal, experience.

      Surreal?  Well, am especially thinking of an event that unfolds while Robert was leading an “Inner Smile” meditation.  Sparked by Amira, Michael and our new friend Marina from Mexico, along with another girl with an outrageously funny high laugh, Robert becomes the straight man for a you-had-to-be-there mass giggle fit that goes on for at least twenty minutes – every time Robert says “smile,” the whole room is overcome with laughter.  He plays it well, and though we may yet have to learn about the inner smile, that much spontaneous joy transcends inner, outer, or any other words.   

     The next day, reviewing the day before, Robert names the giggle fit “transcendental chuckling.”  Well, it was quite possibly “transcendental,” yet infinitely beyond “chuckling” – we knew we had been part of something quite beyond definition!    Check out robertholden.org for more.

     Outside the room, plum trees spread pink-blossom-covered boughs over Hyde Park’s Serpentine waters, swans swim and preen.  Blinking, pasty-looking English folk wander out dazed by the first glorious spring day. All the little dogs are ready to go, straining at their leashes, marking just about anything they can get near with well-aimed streams.    

     Young lovers sprawl on green swaths of grass while the middle-aged yammer on anxiously about whose still with whom.  The sun is hazy through a misty blue sky and a cool breeze never quite stops nipping at you.  It is early Spring in old London town.

Statue of Nelson Mandela,

Hyde Park

      The metro comes to an unexplained stop and all are put off the train and sent into the streets above to fend for themselves among a gaggle of red double-decker buses and crowds of confused passengers with little idea of which one to take and where to go. 

     I get lucky and see one with a sign that says Lancaster Gate, my stop.  I thrust a handful of coins toward the driver instead of the coin box, having no idea of the fare or the value of the coins. He gruffly grabs a couple and waves me to the back. 

     I find myself next to an Aussie benefactor named Joe who tells me my stop and even gets off to make sure I find my hotel.  He was once a landscaper in Australia and loves the flowers, now he’s come to the big city with dreams of being an actor.  I ask him how it’s going.  Right now he’s a telly actor in a kid show about Jack and the Beanstalk.  He looks like he could be Jack himself, so I ask if that’s his role.

     He laughs, says, "No, I’m only a peasant."

FREE FLOW, THE CAMPER VAN FROM WALES

      Atop a cliff on the Atlantic Coast of France at night, I'm looking a mile or so across the bay to the twinkling lights of the harbor of Boulogne-Sur-Mer.  A gentle breeze wafts up from the sea.  Amira is dropping off to sleep.

     It’s surprises me that I’ve not added to this account for three weeks.  It has been a full and busy time, few moments for reflection.  Tonight, am simply feeling grateful and amazed to find myself here, feeling happy and free, on the road with little schedule for the next year or so, with only a hazy idea of what’s next -- not-knowing is an essential part of being a wanderer.

      My writing perch tonight is on a little seat by the wide open sliding door of our cozy – isn’t that always the realtor’s word for “tiny”? -- shop van, now starting a new life as our home on the road.  Inside now are all the basics:  a comfy bed, an old propane camping stove, a "porta-loo" as the Brits call it, an electric cooler that runs off an 2nd "liesure" battery, and a small counter-top over cupboards.  

     The story of how the van came into our life is a good one. For starters, it’s a story of international trust, as good a place to start as any.  Except for six photos, we bought this little 1998 Fiat diesel van, without a test drive, from a young woman in Wales, all via internet and phone.  She’s already told us the main downsides –diesels can be noisy, and no power steering, which we will miss parking a small truck in small spots.

     By the end of the sale, she kindly picked us up at the train station and put us up for the night.  Twenty-six years old with a case of trophies for her white-water kayaking victories, she was just back from Uganda where she had been kayaking on the White Nile, the part of the Nile that turns white from rapids. 

     While our new friend was braving the white water, further down the Nile – looks like up on the map, with the Nile running north-- Egypt was convulsed by revolution.  Revolutions in the making all across North Africa and the Middle East made the timing of our trip memorable. 

     We would like to go to Morocco, Israel, and Egypt, so we’ll see how that works out.  As we left home, we got news that French troops had arrested a dictator in the Ivory Coast as a war criminal, nine months after he should have given a speech conceding electoral loss instead of trying to kill off the democratic opposition that had won.

     I digress.  We’ve named our van Free Flow, in honor of its first owner’s kayak guide business, Flow Free.  As an acupuncturist I'm very pleased, as the essence of good health in acupuncture is the free flow of Qi.  It may be a small van, yet it’s wide enough to sleep across in the back, and that’s wide for driving narrow Welsh lanes and byways -- not to mention making the adjustment to driving on the left. 

     Fortunately, low, slightly rounded Welsh curbs are designed to alert you that you are off the road, and not to cause an accident.  I successfully test this out quite a few times the first couple weeks. We keep on flowing freely down the road despite the occasional surprising and scary scary bump! Except for Amira’s near nervous breakdowns, the curbs work perfectly!

NEW FRIENDS

     We don’t want to set off on a loop trip around Europe without making sure the van is in good order, so our trip becomes what we now call the First International Tour of the Breaker Yards of Wales and England.  We will lead you on this journey for only $5000 plus air fare for two unforgettable weeks.  Just kidding, that’s the kind of trip we’re not joining, whatever the destination. 

     Still, breaker yards – in America, we call them wrecking yards – are kind of amazing.  (And I always thought “wrecking yard” meant a place where you take wrecked cars -- no, it’s a place you take cars to get them 100% wrecked!)  Not your eco-friendly natural beauty kind of tour, you will get to see dozens of cars instantly turned into scrap metal by giant cranes with massive jaws -- big enough to pick up your car like a bit of cookie with afternoon tea -- crush it, and drop it on a giant pile, the same once-shiny cars folks gazed at lovingly at the dealer’s.  There’s no extra charge for the wafting chemicals, diesel fumes, and general oily grittiness of it all.  It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience you’ll never forget!

     Amidst all this, angels come to our rescue, none other than the owners of a large breaker’s yard.  One thing you need to know is that Americans do not normally brave the cold and wind and rain of north Wales in March for vacations.  We were a complete oddity.  “Why are you here?  Do you like Wales?” are questions we heard again and again. 

     Neil, owner of a breaker yard, is one of the most curious folks we’ve ever met – he is so amazed by our presence in his yard and Amira’s charm and contagious laughter that he most generously decides first to bring us fish and chips to the yard for lunch and later to invite us home to stay with him and family so he, along with his wonderful wife Joanne and their 100% cute kids, five-year-old little princess Isabel and her two-year old brother William, can get a closer look at these odd Yankees in King Arthur’s Court. 

Neil in the Breaker's Yard

Will, Neil, and Izzy

      Not only that, he and his employee Mark put our little van through a complete service and more, many hours of labor, charging us only for parts which they find cheaply for us with their connections with other breaker yards!  Now that’s the kind of royal gift that gives any poor wanderer a big boost!

Mark readies Free Flow the Van

for her big Adventure

Look what I found!

A new sun visor!

     In the process of collecting the parts, we travel with Mark to three other breaker yards.  Amira loves to shop, and the moment we get to a yard, she is off among the piles of cars waiting for destruction to find whatever she can find for Free Flow.  When she finds a new visor or door handle she becomes the happiest girl in Wales, waving her treasures in the air with glee.

     We have seldom if ever experienced the level of complete, spontaneous welcome, interest, kindness, and selfless generosity we do from Neil and Joanne.  Neil gets migraines, and I, who once suffered the same, do a couple acupuncture treatments for him as we talk about the possible health effects of taking on too much and overwork. 

     Neil’s only 42, yet he has spent 27 years working seven days a week, handling hundreds of calls a week, and making endless instant decisions for his customers and employees – he says he hardly knows how to do anything else, and feels guilty if not working.  We instantly, and with no authority whatsoever, declare him absolutely innocent J and encourage his dreams of taking his family and friends sailing.  Learning to feel free to just go and play is one of the things our trip is about – for us, and it seems, for others too.

River by our first

campsite in Wales

     After our days in the breaker yards we drive out to an ancient little village called Corwen, where Nerys and John run an immaculate campground just outside town atop a hill.  We see more hills upon hills in the distance, and walk down to a big beautiful rapidly flowing river. 

It may be cool and rainy in April, yet Spring in Wales

 is fresh daffodils everywhere!

     It’s mid-April, the Vernal Equinox is upon us.  There are daffodils, tulips and plum blossoms along the roads.  We feel like we’re in Hobbit Land with all the completely unintelligible Welsh words and signs around us, not to mention the fun-loving generosity and sweetness of everyone we meet.  One laughing lady tells us in Welsh, the name of the town with the longest name in the world – it’s in Wales, of course, twenty-six syllables with impossibly combined letters, and she pulls it off with flair.

This intense Rainbow was our greeting the first night we arrived

at our campsite near Corwen, Wales.  Wow!  This picture

does not show that it was a double rainbow!

     For example, here’s some Welsh: “lle mae dyffryn llydan yr Afon Ddyfrdwy yn cyfarfod a Dyffryn Edeyrnion.”  That’s the first part of the words – now we know where Tolkein found such strange yet moving language – “where the wide valley of the River Dee meets the Vale of Edeyrnion  . . . before winding its way towards Llangollen.”    

Have you seen daffodils like this before?

     

Spring Lambs

In Corwen on cold, breezy, rainy mornings we eat bacon and egg “baps” at the Yum Yums Café, chased with big cups of coffee overflowing with whipped cream, only a block away from a thousand-year old church, not far from a two-thousand year old fort called Caer Drewyn – early stage castle building, a mere circle of spaced rocks around the top of a hill. 

     The Welsh have had to defend their little piece of Middle Earth time and again.  Once at the edge of the Roman Empire, after Rome’s collapse these Druid-folks time and again fought off Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and the English to maintain their unique identity.  Eventually the English recognized the first Prince of Wales, and after many more horrific struggles, Wales became an independent country within the United Kingdom and gained its own representation in Parliament.

     We love Wales, but find ourselves wanting some sunny southern weather.  We reluctantly say our good-byes to Neil, Joanne, Izzy, Will, and Mark our mechanic, and head off to meet our first SERVAS hosts, Sylvie and George near Oxford. 

SERVAS, SYLVIE, AND GEORGE

    Inspired by Ghandian principles, SERVAS is an organization that has been promoting “world peace, one friendship at a time,” for 60 years.  That is a goal close to our own hearts.  We were thrilled to learn of it from our friend Gerri in Santa Cruz CA, went through an interview process, and eventually were sent lists of hosts for the countries we wanted to visit.  We received books for each country that said on the front, for example, “Here are the Open Doors for England.” 

     Sylvie stands waiting for us in the yard as she guides us by cell phone to her tiny English village.  We go out for dinne, and George shows up a little later to join a fascinating first meeting. 

     Sylvie and George are travel writers who have traveled pretty much all over the world, including a canoe trip four months long from the beginning to the end of the Mississippi River.  Not to mention that George was a climber of big mountains (think Himalayas) and member of the first survey expedition of a large island named South Georgia in the Antarctic.  Sylvie is a novelist in addition to her travel writing. We show up just as she is publishing the first volume of a trilogy to Kindle e-books, her first digital edition. We’re excited for her, and inspired to do the same! Sylvie, too is possibly the most dedicated and enthusiastic supporter of SERVAS in England.

     We are offered a guest bedroom but choose our comfortable bed in the van in their driveway.  We run an electrical cord in through the downstairs bathroom window and so create less impact and more ease and space for all.  

     Sylvie and George give us the intangible gift of inspiration – as well as the earthy gifts of wonderful food, older maps and books they did not expect to use again, particularly about eastern Europe, an area of special of interest to both of them. She and George had more than once traveled the length of the Danube. 

     On a very practical level, they give us bottles easy to pee in while in bed -- a cozy alternative to getting up for the porta-loo, essential equipment in a howling gale at night in a sleeping bag in a tent on a Himalayan peak.  It turns out they are a wonderful alternative to having to get out of van or use the porta-loo any time!  Thank you George and Sylvie!

     George will soon celebrate his 90^th birthday, and Sylvie is 80.  A beautiful big coffee table book, years in the making, about the Antarctic expedition, with dashing pictures of George, the expedition’s mountain climber and photographer, arrive in the mail while we’re there.  Fascinated by their photo-and book-filled home, we find Sylvie and George not only completely inspiring but kind and generous beyond anything we could have imagined.

     Their little English village, like Wales, is awash in spring flowers – we see tulips and daffodils we’ve never seen before, and walk in a little forest that Sylvie and other villagers created out of a cornfield by raising money locally. 

     Amira loves to garden, and is soon out in the yard trimming and weeding; and, as usual, nobody had a chance beating her to tidying up the kitchen.  I help Sylvie at the computer, and make an effort to ease pain in George’s knee with needles.  George cooks lamb, the house fills with smoke to which he is oblivious,  Amira and Sylvie run about opening doors and windows, I hide out tidying the van.  The meal is gourmet.

     One afternoon while Amira walks the countryside, I set off for an afternoon in Oxford, wanting to visit my old haunts and the place where I first studied acupuncture in an old mansion turned school at the edge of town.  I wander Magdalen College, where C.S. Lewis once taught, taking pictures of the exquisite stained glass in the chapel, spring flowers everywhere,  the geraniums in Lewis’ old window, and deer grazing peacefully in the Deer Park. 

Deer grazing in the Deer Park,

Magdelen College, Oxford

Spring in Oxford

     Later, ambling down High Street a ways, I find a great price on three large, long scarves in a fine little Pakistani shop, run by a family who were happy to pose for me.  The scarves are now on the walls and ceiling of our van, which on the inside looks more like a Bedouin tent than a camper van.  With a diesel engine and wheels instead of camels, that’s pretty much what it is! 

Pakastani seller of scarves and family,

High Street, Oxford

M and A's favorite slogan left by Michael

 on Oxford bulletin board (at bottom)

TONY PARSONS

     Normally SERVAS guests stay two days, Sylvie and George invite us for three, very convenient to our schedule of going into London on a Saturday to hear Tony Parsons (theopensecret.com) present his message of mystical oneness. 

     He probably would not agree with any of those words (“message,” “mystical,” or “oneness”), he’s simply communicating “that which is,” for which there are no words, methods, messages, meditations, or anything else to think or do, primarily because there is not, in fact (for Tony this “fact”  is self-evident not “mystical”), anybody to think or do anything.  There’ “just this,” which is timelessly whatever it is and isn’t. Will leave it at that for now! J Check out his books, CDs, DVDs at theopensecret.com for more if interested.

ARRIVE FRANCE, MEET MICHELE

     Getting all the way across London with Google map and GPS is a stressful triumph, and finally we are racing down a motorway toward Dover where we drive aboard a train that takes us under the English channel – slang, this is the “Chunnel” – and deposits us on the docks of Calais, France late at night, where, on the advice of a grandmother who speaks English, we park next to a “No Campers” sign and leave early enough on a Sunday morning to avoid unwanted attention.

     Happy to be driving on the right again, we go to an internet café and looked up local campgrounds, needing a place to settle and get a feeling for where we want to go next, knowing only that we want warmer weather and that means south. We soon realize we we’re a bit spoiled by our lovely spot in Wales with its hot showers and internet connection and welcoming caretakers.  Finding nothing like that we called a SERVAS person whose write up said she needed no prior notice, and Michele and her boyfriend Mark soon had two unexpected guests for dinner!

     Michele speaks excellent English, having grown up until age eleven in the United States.  She is one of the most easy-going people we’ve ever met, just very relaxing to be with.  She provides a truly soft and sweet landing for our arrival in France in every way.  We again choose the van in the driveway as our bedroom and stay for three days.

Yuuuuummm!

      Michele says she doesn’t particularly care for cooking, yet she is the first to remind us that we we’re now in a land where lingering at the table over course upon course of delicious, nutritious food is the everyday norm.  In addition to us, three of her seven grandchildren show up for much of the time.  

Michele's House

     Michelle, obviously enjoys cooking for a group this big, even though she might just as much have enjoyed painting.  Her house is one of her own works of art: simple and unpretentious, spacious, and full of light and color. 

Michele center, with her grand-daughter

and Amira at the market

     While I learn more about operating a GPS unit, pore over possible routes through France, and catch up on the computer, Amira plays in the garden with Michele.   

     On the day we leave, Michele takes us to the local village le marche, the outdoor market that is part of the life of every French city, town and village.  The food is local and fresh (are live chickens and rabbits fresh enough for you?) and less costly than any store.  There is so much for sale, it’s kind of a big outdoor department store. 

     We stock up for the road with rotisserie chicken pulled from the spit, fresh vegetables, and are gifted by Michele with a long baguette of France’s essential, crusty, addictively delicious le pain (pronounce something close to leh pah, bread).  

At Le Marche

        We head down the Atlantic coast of France.  Michelle has traveled and done photography and painting all over the world, and she very kindly took time to make suggestions about what we might like to see in France as we headed south.

     Our notion is to move fairly quickly toward Spain’s warm weather, and catch France on the way back.  Michele, knowing what we do not, that France remains the number one tourist attraction on the planet, and for good reason, subtly put us on a different track, the result being that it's nearly a month later when we finally cross the Spanish border from when we first met her.

FRANCE'S ATLANTIC COAST, ROUEN, NORMANDY 

       The other thing that shifts is our deeply rooted ambivalence about “tourism.”  For example, only on my third trip to India did a dear friend more or less drag me to the Taj Mahal.  We have always traveled for people  not sights; of course it’s hardly one or the other, but decisions about how and where to spend one's time become more serendipity when you decide to stay in a village for two weeks and just hang out with the folks rather than travel about “seeing things.”

     Another thing that makes a big difference in our “plans” is that Spring shows up with glorious warm days as we leave Calais – why hurry south now?  As it turns out we stop in a several French Atlantic Coast cities– Boulogne-sur-Mer, St. Valery-sur-Mer, Aubin-Sur-Mer, ("sur-mer" means "by the sea") and spend four days in a peaceful campground near a little village a few minutes outside Rouen which, though far from the beach, is a port on the mighty Seine River.  

Dinner by the sea

in Boulogne-Sur-Mer

Once on the cliff, now here --

old German defense

Somme River meets Atlantic,

St.-Valery Sur-Mer

Kite Festival, Berck-Sur-Mer

Church, Aubin-Sur-Mer

        The campground outside Rouen is quiet and private, and the owner even lets us use his computer when the wireless for unknown reasons proves non-functional. Amira has brought gold paint all the way from Wales, and begins applying it to the counter and cupboards and wall of Free Flow.  I finally get back to the blog. It's a time to take a deep breath, organize, relax, and ready ourselves for the journey ahead. We go into the city some days, and "stay home" others. We're just beginning to take in the easy-going nature of our non-schedule.

Not bad!

Clickity-clack!

       In Rouen,we find something rare in France, Café Cheri, providing free internet for hours, just buy a coffee – milk shakes, smoothies and snacks are available -- from the sweet and serving owner.  The internet situation we’ve found so far is a bit of a scandal in our eyes, but most “internet cafes” are charging 4-6 euros an hour to be online, something that has really slowed down posting this blog. 

      We are surprised to be directed for wi-fi to McDonald’s, founded in the USA.  Is it the new Starbucks free wi-fi of Europe?  (There are Starbuck's here too, but so far a lot more McDonald's by our anecdotal observation.  A bit of web research suggests the two companies are in a struggle for dominance, "the coffee wars" -- so much the better for free wi-fi!) At McD's, we didn’t have to buy anything, and there’s no password. 

     I’m left wondering how far Lonely Planet has fallen, that they list many expensive wi-fi cafes and never mention McD’s?  Once upon a time Lonely Planet was all about traveling cheaply.  Traveling cheaply in France now means camping, the LP France Country Guide never mentions a campground.  That said, it’s city maps are better than Michelin (that’s very good!), it can still find you some the low end hostels and nice little low-end hotels – and they did direct us to Café Cheri!

     Here's a photo album of Rouen, more below on our experience there.

Garden in village near our Rouen campsite

Memorial where Joanne D'Arc was burned, Rouen

Rouen

Rouen

Rouen

Memorial to DeGaulle, Rouen

     I had not foreseen being overwhelmed by cathedrals, but it happens in Rouen, I get caught by something I sometimes  miss, architecture and light through stained glass that can truly shifts me around inside in indefinable ways. Here too we sit in the plaza where a great modern building-monument has been erected to remember Joanne of Arc. 

Rouen Cathedral

      The art museum is so full of medieval art that it almost puts us into our own dark age.   There is an unforgettable trio of paintings, each with skulls and the tools of civilization -- music, books, art – and the repeated title, “Vanity.”  

     We are rescued from all this by a good showing of the amazing revolution in art called Impressionism, when artists turned to painting light more than things and ideas -- ahhhhhh, sweet relief!

Rouen Cathedral

     From Rouen we travel back to the coast, drive without stopping through botique-filled Honfleur, and spend a couple nights at a campground in a sweet little village with surf nipping at its promenade, St Aubin-sur-Mer.  We take in a few glimpses of the Normandy beaches, then drive to Bayeux to view the famous tapestry which depicts the Norman’successful invasion of England in 1066.

Rouen Cathedral

Rouen Catherdral after WWII Allied bombing

Crucifix damaged, WWII

Palais de Justice, WW II damage, Rouen

     This first section of France really brings home to us the long history of constant warfare and survival that is Europe:  in Boulogne, it is the great high-walled City; in Rouen, Joanne of Arc was burned at the stake in “the Hundred Years War” between England and France; the Normandy coast is lined with cemeteries from World War I and II.  We talk with a woman whose father had literally walked over a beach of dead bodies during the Allied assauIt named “Operation Overlord.”

     It feels more than a little ironic that we go directly from the hellish horror of the battle fought along the Normandy beaches as the Allies came after Hitler to Bayeux to see a famous comic-book-like scroll of the Norman’s bloody and hard-fought invasion of England in 1066.  This is where England is closest to the continent, the logical place for invasion forces going both ways.

LE ST. MONT MICHEL and BORDEAUX

Le St. Mont Michel

    Interesting as it can be, tourism begins to wear on us a bit, but Michele had insisted that we not miss Le Mont St.-Michel, so we dutifully head there.  Well, we are glad we did! 

    This one ranks with Mt. Everest for other-worldly amazement.  It’s a tiny medieval walled city built on a rock out in the ocean.  One-of-a-kind 40-foot tides sweep around it, and at night it is lit better than Disney could have hoped, it’s simply a fairly-tale vision. At the very top of an impossibly high, thin spire, St Michael is in his centuries-old pose, slaying the dragon.  Here's few more photos --

Restaurant, Le St. Mont Michel

St. Michel at the top

Le St. Mont Michel

Le St. Mont Michel

Le St. Mont Michel

     When the tides are not too high, you can walk across a causeway and pass over two moats with big drawbridges and begin climbing the narrow spiral main street to the top, too narrow for cars.  The Dark Ages was all about hiding out in the best castle, and this was the one castle in Europe nobody ever managed to take – the English besieged it three times without success.  It’s hard to keep an attacking force at the ready when they may be drowned by tides at any moment! 

     We know we will stay at least three nights as soon as we get our first breath-taking view.  There’s a magical, peaceful, safe and secure energy here that we simply want to soak in.  There are, it turns out, a few tourist don’t-miss-its! Michel, Thanks!

Night time is the Right time

       We drive south toward the Spanish border, finally!  But France still knows how to keep us.   We stop for an afternoon in Bordeaux, a lovely town, like Rouen, full of art ancient –Valasquez -- and modern -- Monet, Degas, Picasso. When I come out in the sunlight again after these paintings, it’s like my vision has been cleansed and I see color and light anew!  All the museums are free – Bordeaux’s current Mayor ran on free museums as part of his popular program.  After navigating narrow medieval streets, Bordeaux, with its wide tree-lined streets and plazas, feels good.  Here's a few photos from Bordeaux, enjoy!

THE PYRENEES

     And now: the Pyrenees.  There's no way to leave France.  This may be the loveliest mountain range in the world.  The peaks form a jagged sierra, from Spanish for “serrated."  The Pyrenees are a line of saw-tooth-like peaks rising dramatically from a sea-level plain up to 11,000 feet. They're snow-covered year-around, with pure white ice-fields and glaciers. 

     A series of valleys -- lush green, high-walled, and glacier-cut with steep walls -- lead into the high country on winding roads. Amazing spring-flood white-water rivers rush down the middle of the valleys.  We cannot help being reminded of the approach to Yosemite Valley.  As if we needed further encouragement, the promise of healing hot springs cinches the deal. 

     We spend three days in charming Luchon, the big peaks in view at the head of the valley. Our campground is a ten-minute stroll from a cave that exudes healing vapors – at least if it’s true that sulphur and other strange gases can heal. Things have been fancied up quite a bit, and the main mineral pool has powerful jets that are as good as a massage.  We both foolishly fell roller-skating a few months ago, and are hoping some of the lingering soreness will be left behind here.

     From Luchon we drive over two dramatic passes in, what else can I say? -- Sound of Music country -- and commune with happily grazing cows, thousands of wildflowers, and unimaginably towering snowy peaks.  Finally we arrive in a little mountain village, Cauterets, on the boundary of a French national park. 

     Next day we drive and walk to a confluence of rivers meeting in a narrow gorge with an almost terrifying and powerful roaring.  We hold on to the railings!  This spot is called Pont-de Espagne, no doubt because, looking up the valley, you can see big peaks located in Spain.

     Along with a few other hardy hikers, we climb a steep trail a couple kilometers to a big blue lake.  It’s a bit of a challenge, and we are unable to resist connecting with those coming down, offering them standing ovations and the laughter that follows.  Laughter truly is the universal language!  Since we were the ones still going up, we happily receive a few ovations ourselves in return, accompanied by the French word “Encore!”

     By the time we come down after a picnic by the lake shore, a storm is gathering.  We make it to our van just before it really lets go. We feel wonderfully tired and deserving of all the appreciation offered by our fellow hikersJ

     Berlow are a couple photos of the Pyrennees.  With funky internet, it’s too slow to put the photos of the Pyrenees in, there are too many favorites, please click on or paste this link in your browser's address bar --

https://picasaweb.google.com/118048194022063320691/Pyrenees?authkey=Gv1sRgCPStocf3pMHeJA-- to go to an on line album entitled “Pyrenees,” we think you’ll be glad you did!  (It also includes pix of LeBenne, France and San Sebastian and Galatea, Spain.)  Run it as a slideshow for best results, press the f11 key for full screen.  There are captions.

Glacier-fed river

    

We go up to the High Country,

the river rushes down

     How we wish the hot springs in Cauterets are open that evening!  They are not.  When, in the morning, we find they are closed for a week, we head down out of the now-mist-shrouded peaks to a hot spring in the city Pau.  This fairly large little town is famous for the best distant view of the Pyrenees, which have now disappeared in clouds and mist. 

     We are lost in Pau.  We are rescued by a gentle young man , who at first scratches his head a little at how hard it would be to direct us, then simply says – “follow me!”  He drives what surely must have been miles out of his way, and takes us to the front door of the springs. We’d never have found them. Leaving, he asks us where we’re from and, with all-around smiles and laughter, tells his profoundly moved and grateful charges, "Goodbye," with palms together over his heart, and drives off.

      Now follows more of a story that has left us at a loss for the right words, if they exist.  Two days later Free Flow has a broken electrical system and our little electric cooler is kaput.  On a Saturday afternoon we try and try to get help or directions to help, but it’s all an inch-by-inch struggle  for progress.  The sweet girl in MacDonald’s gives us a key hint.  Another young man at a camper store cannot not fix it, but tells us what he’s pretty sure is not the problem, and where to go for help.  We need to get to a camper store in the middle of Bayonne, but the 25-turns Google directions look like threading a maze.

    It's late, we're exhausted and ready to give up. The last person we ask for directions, struggling with different languages, comes back out to find us next to his car in the McDonald’s parking lot, and simply says, “follow me!”  As we follow him through a tangle of turns, we know there’s no chance we would have made it on our own.

      Ironically, they cannot help us at the store at all.  At that point, in the grip of magical thinking – well, what else should I call it? – I think: I’ve learned some things I didn’t know, let me look at that wiring myself again.  I go out to the van and start wiggling fuses.  One must have been loose, because --Voila! – the power cames on again.  I realize that it is the boost in faith and hope our second young angel had given us that gives me the faith and hope to go out and play with something I really know nothing about.  It is this boost on the heart level that gets the job done. His generous “Follow me!” is the thing that was needed.  Coda: We did find the replacement refrigerator we needed at that store J

     Two days later, late at night, we’re totally lost, in a true spaghetti plate of back mountain roads, miles from our campground in San Sebastian, Spain.  Stopped momentarily on a desolate one-way bridge to nowhere, not expecting to see another car out there all night, we have to move ahead when one pulls behind us. 

     We drive on and pull over to consider our next move.  The car behind us stops alongside.  Amira rolls down the window.  A young woman alone asks if we’re OK, she knows we’re hopelessly lost.  She gets out of her car to talk to us, and after a short discussion, she gains complete clarity about what to do:  “Follow me!,” she says.

      You may wonder why route finding for has come down to angel power J  After all, we have the best maps, GPS, and my own very good sense of direction, as Amira will tell you from her frequent surprise when I drive straight to where we’re going with little help from technology. 

     We are not lost often, but when we are, it sometimes feels neither fun nor funny!  That’s when we need to remember what this is really about: adventure.  The part of real adventure that’s exciting is that you are doing pretty much everything for the first time ever, and that means you will make wrong turns and get lost. It’s just part of the game. 

     It’s totally cool when you know you’re not going to be able to do this on your own, and a caring, helping hand and voice reaches out and sets you on your way.  You can be sure that this functions in tandem with faith and determination, but in the end, it’s beyond all understanding, and there’s no better way to go!

     Amira says: “While in Wales I walked into a butcher shop and said: “I’m lost!”  The butcher’s wife came out and said, ‘I can tell you exactly where you are, you’re right here!’  We all laughed at once, and then I showed them the piece of paper with the place I was looking for.  It turned out it was right across the street. 

     We all laughed again.  We’ve found that “getting lost” or needing help knowing where you are often turns out to be one of the day’s fun experiences, a time to connect, communicate, and share smiles and laughter.”  Shortly after writing this, re-reading Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, I find this: “The best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost.”

     I need to add that, by observation, it seems men and women find directions in very different ways.  I have some kind of inner sense of direction that works, whereas Amira and some other women I’ve known are innocent of this mechanism.  Yet she finds her way.  I asked her how. 

     She says, “In France, it’s easy.  First I notice the patisserie (cake store) on the corner, then I see the glace (ice cream) store down the street.  I then triangulate on the boulangerie (bakery) around the corner.  With those three landmarks checked out by taste, I know I’ll always be able to find my way to or from these locations.  It’s simple, it’s sweet, and it works!”

SPAIN

     The city closest to the Spanish border is San Sebastian, which the Basque people who live here call Donostia.  We have a love affair with this city and the Basque people. It only takes a moment to break through their reserve, and then, like the Welsh with whom they may be related, they are some of the sweetest, most helpful people in the world. 

     I can get by in Spanish reasonably well, but I find myself carrying around a little slip of paper with essential Basque on it.  I'm not even going to try to tell you how to pronounce "Kaixo" for "Hello" or "Eskerrik asko" for "Thank you."  In any case, my Spanish will have to wait.  I go online to discover that the Basque language has the experts stumped.  There's no other language in the world like it and nobody has any idea where it came from.  You alien folks, are you listening?  Basque is as wierd as Welsh!

     Also, we don't know it now, but we will never find tapas -- here, the endlessly creative little sandwiches that are already made on the bar when you arrive -- as good as San Sebastian's again.  Scrumptious! 

     The narrow streets of the old city are entirely pedestrianised, as is the tree-lined broad avenue next to it, where we sit happily licking cones of delicous fruit sorbets.    San Sebastian's lovely curving white-sand beach, a cove with an island in the middle, is one-of-a-kind.  This time of year, the sun sets right in the center of the cove's horizon.  It's a hard place to leave, with its strange signs in both Spanish and Basque (a non-Romance language with, like Welsh, unpronouncable words), and its proud and sweet people.  San Sebastian gets five stars for sheer just rightness!

     It seems we need a push to leave San Sebastian and our lovely mountaintop campground a short bus ride outside the city.  First, manure is dumped on the nearby fields, then flies arrive, and finally the best wi-fi system so far breaks.

     We circle about finding our way through the city again.  We love the city and its buses.  It's winding hilly streets make it very easy to get lost driving.  It’s a relief when we’re in gentle countryside again.

     We find our road winding inland along a beautiful river and then out to a truly Big Sur-like coast, big Atlantic rollers smashing against black granite cliffs and the road perched on a ledge, yet making  room in places for a promenade, a walkway for pedestrians, of whom we see quite a few.

     The beach town of Galetea has a good free parking place from which we climb up to an ancient medieval town looking out from a high rocky promontory with a harbor full of fishing boats on one side and big waves breaking with surfers on the other, it’s a dramatic place. 

     We walk alone through an ancient church with beautiful modern stained glass, then sit down for what has become the meal of the day, around 2:00 PM in the afternoon.  Amira finds something she actually had been wanting for a year, grilled sea bass. Tho we usually split meals, this discovery leads leads to a splurge, as we add grilled prawns, white wine, and salade nicoise with enough tuna in it to have been a meal on its own.

     The weather is perfect, we sit outside under a yellow umbrella, we see surf and mountains for miles down the coast, we linger over coffee and dessert.  The food , the air, the setting, all fresh and absolutely right.

     Afterwards we choose the toll "motor way" that cuts nearly level all the way with long tunnels and outrageous bridges through steep towering granite gorges and peaks.  We usually take the secondary roads, for going slow, saving fuel and tolls, and seeing the scenery.  In this case, the road itself, more modern and cool than anything we’ve seen in America, is part of the scenery. 

     We see the old road winding along precipitous cliffs with big trucks on its two narrow lanes, and have no objection to the seven euros we pay an hour or so later when the mountains end.  Back on a two lane we speed along under a vast sky with ancient cliffs and peaks and great massifs of puffy white clouds in the far distance.  It feels like we have gone from Big Sur to the spacious American West in an hour.

     Then we get lost again.  You know the story by now.  We pull over to take stock, a man walks out of a garage to check on us, starts to give directions in perfect English, changes his mind, and says: “Follow me!”  He leads us through another maze and sends us on our way with an arm out over the top of his car pointing “Thattaway!”

     Even "Thattaway" isn’t enough. The campground does not seem to be where it’s supposed to be.  We pass a police car sitting by the road, in a place where you will not see it in time if you’re going fast.  Legally, we’re probably going too slow.  I pull over, go back to the police car and find two very young officers, they seem like nice boys to me. They consider the matter and, well, by now you know what’s coming.  They say: “Follow us!” 

     Six miles later, our campground hosts are not sure what to make of our arrival with a police escort.  Amira says, “Hope you’re properly impressed!,” or words to that effect.  Linguistic confusion reigns, our host says, “How long have you been driving?”

     Amira says “We’re from California and we’re tired.  It’s been a very long drive!”  Our hostess gets the silly joke, breaks up in laughter, and says, “You must be very tired indeed!”  It takes twenty minutes to get signed in, we’re having so much fun, the laughter never quite stops until we’ve been led safe and sound to our campsite, well, not even thenJ

You have survived the longest blog post in history!  After this, short ones!

NEXT! We visit with the peaceful protestors camped out in Plaza de Puerta del Sol in Madrid.