Europe at last

I was a history major at the university, and I primarily read history now.  I force myself to read literature occasionally, although once I get into a great book, I can love it.  Like reading Great Expectations recently (apparently I didn't read it in ninth grade, although we spent a whole semester on it), the first 100 pages were bewildering, the last 400 pages were pure pleasure.

Coincidentally, this year I read a book on D-Day after finishing a book on the Second World War in Europe.  Then I got a call from my friend Eric, the husband of my first and best running buddy, Rhea.  He said, "Rhea and I are going to England for my Oxford reunion and then to France to go on a personally guided tour of the D-Day beaches, and Rhea insisted that I call you to invite you to join us."  Rhea and I used to take long runs on the Mall and the trails in Northern Virginia and talk about battles, before she and Eric moved back to California a decade ago.  Yeah, that's the way she is, and me too, I guess.

So I went with them, to Oxford and London and then to Normandy to visit the D-Day beaches and then to Paris.  They both have long known that I have never been outside of North America and this has always mystified them.  They were excellent traveling companions and the perfect travelogue hosts.

I spent twelve days in England and France, flying to London to meet them and flying home from Paris after spending the last two days there alone.  Oxford was charming and London was terrific, touring the D-Day beaches on this 75th anniversary of the battles in Normandy was memorable and providentially I toured Notre Dame barely two weeks before it burned so catastrophically.  I liked spending time on each of the five D-Day beaches the best, and the impressions of the days I spent in Paris are steadily growing in my memory.  I came back just in time, with a bad cold, for my fourth and hopefully last eye surgery; after being shown the wonders of Gay Paree, I suppose it's a wonder I ever came back.