{"id":8336,"date":"2014-06-06T03:12:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T07:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=8336"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:08","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:08","slug":"live-blog-france-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2014\/06\/live-blog-france-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Blog from France: Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be sharing some moments from our 40th anniversary travels in France, as they happen.\u00a0 I hope to provide a short update every day and will try hard not to put you to sleep.\u00a0 If you start to nod, have an espresso with me.<\/p>\n

Le voyage <\/em>was uneventful for the most part.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Luckily, the passenger recovered.<\/p>\n

Several World War II veterans were on board, heading to Normandy for the D-Day commemorations today.\u00a0 My father was a D-Day veteran himself — I don’t recall which beach he landed on.\u00a0 He rarely talked about the war.\u00a0 He would have been 98 this year.<\/p>\n

We stood in the customs line at the Paris airport for about ten minutes.\u00a0 Once we reached the booth, our passports were stamped and we were on our way in ten seconds.\u00a0 This is faster than entering Canada.<\/p>\n

We picked up a couple of delicious baguette sandwiches at the train station and ate our lunches on the high-speed train to Bordeaux.\u00a0 It was a quiet, pleasant ride through the French countryside, dotted with a surprising number of wind-turbines.\u00a0 We tried to sleep but had little luck until we got to our hotel, twenty-one hours after we walked into the Asheville airport.<\/p>\n

Here are a few photos from our Day One in France.\u00a0 More to come in my next post.<\/p>\n