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- By Nancy Ferguson -
Paris to Paris
Knowing we should be back in four weeks to see Dr. Angelle - who WAS an angel - the orthodontist who would check Lisa and Dina's braces, we made plans to leave Paris for Luxembourg. But first, a meal at an Italian restaurant. Not for the food. The girls were in love again, this time with the waiters, sons of the owner. Is there some bizarre connection between food and men that Lisa and Dina know but I don't?
Arriving in Luxembourg by train was much simpler than our arrival in Paris, but once there all my fears resurfaced. Can I drive the camper? What if it breaks down? How do I ask for gas? I don't even know all the continental road signs. But my daughters were unconcerned (or ignorant?) so I settled down; three days later we had supplied Parnassus (with European products, even though American ones were available) and were off, frequently lost, few specific destinations, just vagabonds. Lisa was learning to read the maps and Dina had begun to manage converting currency. All I had to do was drive.
Our camping gear was yet to be picked up, so we stayed in small hotels, had meals in our tiny space or outside and meandered through the glorious woods and ancient cities of Belgium. Arriving in Brussels, we circled the city seven times, each time passing the Hilton, searching for an appropriate (cheap) hotel. Finally, in desperation, I pulled into the Hilton parking lot and said, "Alright, tonight we live it up." In we marched, Levis, sweatshirts and sneakers, ignoring all the well dressed travelers who looked at us disdainfully. The room was wonderful; ah, American comfort! But to the girls' regret, we changed hotels the next day, ending up in one dated 1694, just four blocks from the amazing Grand Place. We picked up our sleeping bags and gear from the American Express office; now we were prepared to camp and four days later left Brussels behind.
The Waterloo lion stands on a hill overlooking the battlefield where Wellington defeated Napoleon. After all three of us puffed our way up the two hundred steps, the girls still had the energy to play king of the mountain, chasing each other and shouting with delight in a way I had thought them too old to enjoy, young children again. At fourteen Lisa was tall and slender, her brown hair framing a delicate face with silvery grey eyes; Dina, blond hair to her waist and glowing green eyes, was beginning to leave the awkward twelve year old stage; they had grown in the five short weeks we'd been traveling.
It was initiation night for Parnassus - and a revelation: it was obvious that one half inch more and Dina would have outgrown her Parnassus bunk. But for now we would take advantage of our camper; this gave easy access to the cobbled streets of Ghent and the smelly, beautiful canals of Bruges. Heading south to Holland we awoke one morning to a grey world. Winter had crept up on us during the night. We stopped a few more times on the way to Amsterdam where we would visit an old friend, now a big TV star, who showed us her city with obvious pleasure. It was good to have a guide. We spent a week there at a lovely inn, taking in the many sights for which that city is famous. One day there was a violent storm with 100 mph winds. Trees fell, tractors were overturned, 29 people across Europe lost their lives and I'm sure all the ladies in various stages of undress we had seen in the red light district, causing Lisa and Dina to gawk, open mouthed, had to go inside to escape the weather.
To our sorrow, the Van Gogh exhibit which was normally housed at the Civic Museum was on tour. Oh, well, we had time. That was the big advantage to Parnassus. We were able to visit villages in the Dutch countryside. And to side track all the way to Arnhem to see the exhibit. For a change of pace, I decided to take the girls to a zoo for which we'd seen a road sign. It turned out to be similar to our Lion Country Safari. When a pride of lions crossed the road in front of us I stopped the car to screams of protest from my children. Well, I didn't want to hit them. Big mistake. A large male raked his claw casually across the front tire and the car sagged. The amused guards who changed our tire spoke rapidly in Dutch, with one English phrase, "Freddy did it," Seems Freddy did that often.
Another quick backtrack on a badly marked road found us in Zundert, Van Gogh's birthplace. There is only one monument to him, in front of the church he and his brother, Theo, attended as children, a very strange looking one, actually. I mention the town only because, after two days there, Lisa received her very first proposal of marriage. She gently told her suitor that girls in America rarely marry at fourteen. She thought life in a Dutch village might be too big an adjustment for her.
In Paris the hotel staff welcomed us warmly, Dr. Angelle scolded us for our long absence and the girls were still in love with their favorite Italian waiters. Marie France, daughter of the hotel concierge, who spoke English as a requirement of her job, tried to help us with our French. I was hopeless and the girls would giggle as I stumbled over the verbs and tried to imitate the lovely sounds. She, Marie France, showed us a Paris that mere tourists never could have discovered.
Dina made her morning runs to the patisserie for croissants, butter and milk stayed cold on our window sill, the charcuterie or the open market furnished food for evenings we wished not to walk to one of the nearby restaurants. The Metro was now easy; we continued to explore Paris.
But now, all tooth metalwork checked and adjusted, our plans were to drive southeast, across France. This time we really had no specific destinations. We truly would be vagabonds.
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