Travel trials: tropical storms, quiche and owls

As mentioned before, we decided to cut short our French sojourn by a day to avoid an encounter with tropical storm Danny. Although Saturday's flight arrived more or less on time (though with driving rain and cloud cover at about 50') the decision worked out well in that we were able to Tivo the funeral of our Senator Ted Kennedy and had more time to get back on to EDT before Monday morning. We did very much regret missing our second night at the Château de Jonvilliers, however.

Our hosts there, Richard and Virginie were very welcoming and have done a lot of work modernizing the inside of the old house. And the cooking was superb. Never have we enjoyed quiche so much (three different types). Their location, in a small village not far from the forest of Rambouillet, is in a small oasis of woodland among hundreds of hectares of open fields. We went for a short walk after dinner and were treated to a wonderful chorus of awakening tawny owls that continued for about an hour, with short reprises during the night. I imagine that the high concentration of owls in their daytime roost is a consequence of this particular habitat situation.

Our return home journey from Jonvilliers went almost without a hitch. There were two hitches actually. The first came just after I had observed that there had been no traffic problems. We reached the Charles de Gaulle exit on the A1 about 2h 30m before our flight time. It then took about an hour to reach the checkin counter! Do they have that traffic jam every day?

Our second problem came after we landed. While awaiting the new style "green card", I had been obliged to get an official stamp in my passport to the effect that I really am a resident alien (I had applied for the new card back in early April). Said stamp was only partially accepted at the immigration desk. I had to wait over an hour to get it confirmed by the passport control office.

Isn't it strange how you often learn things about a person only when they're dead? There were lots of (good) things I learned about Ted Kennedy from watching the funeral. I particularly enjoyed hearing Susan Graham sing Schubert's Ave Maria.

Next blog: La Brenne