Confession

So I guess there is no harm in admitting this. This is just between friends, after all. So there is no need for me to be ashamed or anything like that when I say that we are all three just plain worn out.

The sky isn't even hinting of nighttime, and here we are all collapsed on our beds. Trudy is already breathing deeply.

You won't tell anyone about this, will you?

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Trip to France - Day 10
Amboise

8:38:32 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Sitting on a Park Bench

It is a long walk from the bridge over the Loire at Amboise to the upstream point on this island. Or at least it is longer than we expected.

As you follow the path past the flowers and the hedge-hidden swimming pool, past the tree-lined quadrangle where the school children come to play, past the soccer stadium, past the old stone Chapelle St. Jean, there are fewer and fewer benches to sit on and rest.

But at the very end of the path, where the oak grove stops and the path bends around to the other side of the island, there is one last bench. One last place to sit and gaze upstream to the east with the water flowing towards you and around the island and away to the west and the sea.

When we came here today, we sat for a moment on that bench by ourselves while the boy found something else to do. We sat there alone for a moment and then found a place for a nap.

But we are not alone anymore. A woman is sitting on that bench playing fetch with her poodle. And a woman in a red jacket is sitting by herself further on down by the river's edge. And a family just walked by with a dog on a leash, and another family with a boy on a bike going the other direction around the island. And now there is a group of kids driving by all on bicycles.

It was a long walk out here, but we are not alone, anymore.

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Trip to France - Day 10
Amboise

8:31:49 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Snapping Sticks

Somewhere in the distance I hear the sounds of sticks snapping. Birds are singing from the leaves of the trees on the south side of the river. The rapids are rushing on the north. And when a breeze comes up, the whispering of the shaking aspen leaves mixes with the sound of the water, and you can hardly tell them apart.

But between it all, there is that sound of snapping sticks. There it goes again -- that snapping/cracking sound that can only be one thing: a teenage kid let loose on an island in the Loire.

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Trip to France - Day 10
Amboise

8:20:21 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Sur La Loire

Perhaps we're at the point in this trip where you just plain get tired. Or perhaps we're being lazy. Whatever the explanation, we just didn't feel like doing much today.

So after eating breakfast, and after doing the laundry and spreading it out in the hotel room to fully dry, and after walking to the island in the middle of the Loire and eating lunch (bread and cheese and chocolate) on a bench in the shade in a park watching several groups of French school children play, we walked to the point of the island where the Loire goes one way and also goes another, and we found a shady, grassy place under the canopy of a stand of oaks, and we lay down and napped.

We slept while the clouds passed in front of the sun, and while the cool breeze made quake the leaves of an aspen leaning out over the bank, and while white birds flew out over the water in front of the gray-leafed willows on the southern bank of the river.

We found a shady, grassy place and we napped. So now we feel much better.

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Trip to France - Day 10
Amboise

8:12:23 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []