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<\/a>French tri-color flags (also red, white, and blue) fluttered everywhere. There was little outward sign of the angst and anger that has gripped France for the last several years. The sidewalk caf\u00e9s were full of cheerful people\u2014 many of them French\u2014as we watched military planes do thrilling fly-overs along the Seine, trailing streams of red, white, and blue smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The French seemed to be excited about their new, young (age 39) progressive president, Emmanuel Macron. For the moment, at least, there were no strikes, no protests, no terrorist attacks; although, soldiers wearing camouflage and carrying machine guns were everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I introduced the girls to some of the icons of France: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame de Paris, the Mus\u00e9e D\u2019Orsay, the Louvre, the palace at Versailles, the Luxembourg Garden. We took a guided bicycle ride along the Seine, mostly along bike paths but also veering occasionally into Paris traffic. (It wasn\u2019t as scary as it sounds.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we also meandered through various city neighborhoods. We poked around the quiet, cobbled streets of the \u00cele St. Louis, tasting delectable macarons and the island\u2019s famous ice cream but also imagining the men and women who lived and toiled there centuries ago. (My father\u2019s ancestors came from this area. Some of them emigrated and settled in Quebec, Canada, in the mid- 17th century.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We roamed the narrow 12th-century streets of the Latin Quarter near the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), today overflowing with cheap restaurants and annoying men hawking their tourist wares. But it wasn\u2019t difficult to imagine the likes of Montaigne, Voltaire, Emilie du Ch\u00e2telet, and Heloise and Abelard once ambling here, books in hand, centuries ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We wandered around the charming Marais, not far from the Place de la Bastille where the infamous prison once stood and also near the area where, tragically, more than 13,000 Jews \u2013 including 4,000 children \u2013 were rounded up by the French Vichy police in July 1942 and deported to Auschwitz for mass extermination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, we hopped on a small (98 passengers) riverboat and wound our way up the Seine, drinking in artist Claude Monet\u2019s spectacular Impressionist garden in Giverny, and then time-traveling in Rouen, with its slender, soaring memorial to Joan of Arc, who was born here and was burned at the stake here. Rouen also boasts its own famed Notre Dame Cathedral, painted by Monet more than 30 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFl\u00e2neuse-ing\u201d was especially rewarding in small Normandy towns like Rouen, where around nearly every corner sat an ancient half-timbered house or a venerable stone church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We ended our Seine journey at the Normandy beaches of World War II fame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Omaha Beach and Utah Beach, where thousands of American soldiers landed on D-Day\u2014 June 6, 1944\u2014are lovely and tranquil today. Children scamper on the sand, and people swim in the same sea that witnessed so much blood and death 73 years ago. \u201cSome people say it is unseemly for us to still use these beaches as beaches today,\u201d our French guide told us. \u201cBut we say, \u2018This is what those gallant men fought for\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, during a visit to the magnificent and peaceful Colleville-sur- Mer American Cemetery (the girls recognized the cemetery from the opening and closing scenes of the Steven Spielberg film \u201cSaving Private Ryan\u201d), each of us was handed a white rose to place on one of the endless rows of white Latin Crosses\u2014and an occasional Star of David\u2014that mark the burial place of a soldier killed on the beaches in June 1944 or in the months afterward as the Allies moved inland to free Europe from Nazi rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emma chose the headstone of a soldier from Pennsylvania, Ciara that of a soldier from North Carolina. I laid my rose at the final resting place of Sergeant Lawrence R. Ruckreigle of Michigan, 326 Bomb Squad, 92 Bomb GP (H). He died on July 8, 1944.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some 9,387 American soldiers\u2014including four women, who were nurses\u2014are buried at this largest World War II American war cemetery in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Seeing this exquisitely beautiful memorial park overlooking the bright blue sea was a fitting way to end our excellent journey to France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To be a \u201cfl\u00e2neur\u201d in 19th-century Paris, first of all, one had to be male. From the French verb \u201cfl\u00e2ner,\u201d a \u201cfl\u00e2neur\u201d was \u201cone who wanders aimlessly.\u201d There was no feminine form of this noun. Such a dandy gentleman, says Lauren Elkin in her new book, Fl\u00e2neuse: Women Walk the City, was \u201can idler, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}