Awaking before the rest of the household, I slipped outside to explore the grounds in the peaceful early morning light. Just me, God, and the neighbor's cows. It was what I needed after eight days of intense tourism. We spent the morning enjoying our friends and their home. Easter Monday is a holiday in France, and most places are closed, which was fine with us!
Later our friends took us to a nearby park. We ate lunch at a small restaurant there, listening in on another group that was sitting on the steps and singing folk songs in French with an accordion accompaniment. We enjoyed a leisurely walk past cliffs and climbers, and saw why this area was attractive to its very ancient inhabitants. (There are cave paintings nearby, though we didn’t get to them.)
There are caves…
springs of clean water….
wildlife (okay, these are sheep, but there must have been plenty of game in such a place)…
and even beautiful butterflies. They certainly took a shine to Porter while the rest of us were stretched out in the warm sunshine.
What more could a prehistoric family want?
Dinner that night was at a very fancy restaurant. A very fancy French restaurant, and not just because we were in France. I'm not a fancy restaurant type of person, but it's a nice experience to have on occasion, especially if you are sharing it with good company.
I should mention that the Fairy Princess is the daughter of an American mother and a British father, but she lives in France and attends a bilingual school. I could have listened all night to her speaking French with the waiter. It's not perfect French, more the French of a five-year-old. But after all, she is only five. I wouldn't want my grandchildren to be an ocean away—it's bad enough they're in Pittsburgh—but there are compensations, and the opportunity to grow up bilingual is certainly one of them.
As an interesting aside, I asked Stephan about his bilingual upbringing and he said that three days a week were English days and three days a week were German days. Sundays were a free for all. I assume Swiss German happened at school with friends and in life. It obviously worked well for him, but it is not often that both parents can speak the other language well enough to do that.
