Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing some moments from our 40th anniversary travels in France, as they happen.  I hope to provide a short update every day and will try hard not to put you to sleep.  If you start to nod, have an espresso with me.

Le voyage was uneventful for the most part.  We thought for a moment that our plane might be diverted to Newfoundland when a passenger became ill and attendants started to run through the aisles calling for a doctor on board.  Luckily, the passenger recovered.

Several World War II veterans were on board, heading to Normandy for the D-Day commemorations today.  My father was a D-Day veteran himself — I don’t recall which beach he landed on.  He rarely talked about the war.  He would have been 98 this year.

We stood in the customs line at the Paris airport for about ten minutes.  Once we reached the booth, our passports were stamped and we were on our way in ten seconds.  This is faster than entering Canada.

We picked up a couple of delicious baguette sandwiches at the train station and ate our lunches on the high-speed train to Bordeaux.  It was a quiet, pleasant ride through the French countryside, dotted with a surprising number of wind-turbines.  We tried to sleep but had little luck until we got to our hotel, twenty-one hours after we walked into the Asheville airport.

Here are a few photos from our Day One in France.  More to come in my next post.