Farewell to France
Knowing that we would be going back to Canada and that future European travel would be rare, difficult and costly to pull off, we made a lot of travel plans for our last few months in France. The Covid-19 pandemic forced us, like many others, to cancel everything. Our weekend trips to Amsterdam, Prague and Vienna were no more. Our spring break road trip around France to go camping, visit the landing beaches in Normandy, see the Loire valley chateaux and go to the French historical amusement park, Puy du Fou, was put on indefinite hold. My bucket list of things I wanted to do and see before leaving was distinctly lacking in check marks.
On March 16, 2020 the French government announced that everyone had to stay within a 1km radius of their homes. Restaurants, shops, museums and schools were closed. We managed to continue to enjoy Paris through daily walks within our allowed perimeter, planning for and shopping for nice meals, learning to bake French pastries and relying on FaceTime and Zoom for social connection. It was a different experience but still a memorable one and I am proud of how well we made the most of our time in Paris, despite the restrictions.
Throughout the confinement, however, I held out hope that things would improve before our departure and that we would be able to have a few final experiences before saying goodbye to France.
My wish came true and starting on May 11th, we were given permission to travel within 100km of our homes. H and I celebrated by taking a long walk along the Seine. It felt so good to be able to walk freely without the need to monitor our time or distance and saying re-bonjour to some of our favorite views filled us with joy.
Musée d’Orsay
One weekend we rented a car, something we had categorically refused doing until this point because we were terrified at the prospect of actually driving in Paris. We carefully planned our route to avoid the Place de l’Etoile, the scariest traffic circle ever, and left Paris on a Saturday morning to a spot about 20km away. We spent the day flying through the trees at Parc Accrocamp: a high ropes and zipline adventure park. After months of confinement, it was the ultimate freedom to let go and fly through the trees. We brought a picnic lunch with us and marveled at the freedom of being outside of Paris and doing something fun while not wearing masks. The stress of the car rental was 100% worth it.
Sophia headed back to school for half days starting at the beginning of June. She had managed online school tremendously well but it was like a light turned on inside of her when she got back to face-to-face learning. Mavis was reluctant to go back as her friends had left Paris and she preferred her online teacher but with two weeks to go, she declared she wanted to return. To their credit, though we were not supposed to be allowed to change our minds, her school welcomed her back. We felt so lucky that they both had the opportunity to return to their schools, even if only for a few weeks. They were able to say goodbye to their friends and teachers and put a dot on the end of their two-year school experience in France.
On June 2nd restaurants in Paris were allowed to open their terraces. I made a lunch reservation for H and I to go to Girafe, a restaurant whose most beautiful terrace has the most spectacular views of the Eiffel Tower. With the girls, we only wanted to go back to the restaurants that had meaning for us. We went to Crêperie Chez Yannick where we had celebrated Sophia’s birthday our first year in Paris, where they had taken their grandparents for dinner when they visited and where we would sometimes go to sit at the few tables outside their door and soak up the ambiance of our local shopping street. We walked to Marzo, the Italian restaurant that served only pizzas and appetizers. It was the first place we found in Paris that made exceptional pizza and was one of the few places we could go that all four of us truly loved.
On June 14th President Macron announced that Paris restaurants could fully re-open. While we were watching the televised address, I went online and made a reservation for a table at Frenchie. I texted the confirmation to H, who was sitting across the room from me on the couch, and as he read it, he smiled. If there was one restaurant we would want to go back to again before leaving Paris, one with a special place in our heart, it would be Frenchie.
Travel started to open up again starting at the beginning of June. From June 2nd, we were given permission to travel anywhere within France and from the 15th the European borders would open. Although it was allowed, we decided we would not attempt any trips outside of France. We did not have a lot of time left and did not want the girls to miss school so we needed to be selective.
We had a hotel credit to use at Les Hauts de Loire after having had to cancel our spring vacation. What could be better than to plan our last, exploratory weekend away in France in a gorgeous chateau with enormous grounds and a picturesque pool? We arrived the first night they opened after their forced shutdown and it felt extraordinarily safe after months of living in Paris. Sadly for H and I, we could not get a reservation at the double Michelin starred dining room but they had a lovely bistro onsite, and that is always more to the girls’ taste anyway. We toured the iconic Chenonceaux and Chambord Chateaux and to make up for the many others that we would not tour, we went to Parc Mini-Chateaux where we got to see models of the famous chateaux and Mavis got to ride in the mini Bugatti cars. It was as corny as it sounds but was a great way to get a sense of spectrum and grandiosity of the chateaux in the region.
Before flying home, we needed to make one more trip: it was to the South of France to visit some friends that had joined the mass exodus from Paris when the confinement was first announced. Pre-Covid, we had walked to school with these friends every day since we first arrived in Paris and we could not imagine leaving France without seeing them again to say goodbye. We booked train tickets to Toulon and spent a glorious weekend with them catching up, watching the kids play in the pool and visiting the beach all while eating and drinking well. It was everything we needed after months of isolation and it was hard to say a final goodbye not knowing when we would see them again.
When the city shut down one of the things that I most missed was my regular guided tours, organized through the parents’ association at the girls’ school, and led by Dr. Kelly Spearman. Since the girls started school I had been participating in these tours at least once a month and through Kelly, I fell in love with Paris’s streets, bridges and monuments and the history of France. The tours were such a highlight for me that in our second year at the school, I volunteered to help organize them. I also booked Kelly for a number of private tours when friends would come to visit, or just for our family. Kelly’s business, as all tour guides during the shut downs, was heavily affected. As soon as they announced that museums would reopen in France, I wanted to book some tours both to support her and also to give us some last memories of the magic of her tours. We chose to go to Les Invalides because Kelly had told me that it was one of her favorite tours to give and to the Chateau de Versailles because, while we had already been to visit the Chateau, it had not been with Kelly and I knew that with her, the history and the stories would come alive. We visited the Chateau on a Friday, just after the girls had finished school. It was the most incredible experience as we had the place mostly to ourselves. Normally crammed with tourists, we stood in the hall of mirrors, with no one else around. This was just days before we prepared to leave France and it felt both surreal and the perfect postcard ending to our time in a city full of history and beauty.
There were many more small things we did to say goodbye including a last visit to the village of Montmarte, using up the images in the girls’ disposable cameras, last scooter rides, dinner with friends, stocking up on pastry making supplies, and trips to boulangeries that we had not yet managed to visit but we had to accept that many things on our bucket list would remain undone. Looking back, that is not such a bad thing. The day will come again when we are able to travel and we will go back to France. It will be an easy trip to plan because we still have that bucket list: restaurants and boulangeries left to try; experiences still to have; places left to visit and and an endless list of things to learn. So, in fact, it is not really a farewell to France but more of a “see you soon” to the place where we spent two years of our lives. See you next time, Paris.
