Some of you know that more than five years ago, my daughter-in-law challenged me to learn Spanish. At the time, my grandson was learning to talk, and his first language was definitely Spanish. I went whole hog into learning Spanish, and using Duolingo, a popular learning app, was only a part of the process, which included online classes, listening to podcasts, watching Spanish telenovelas on TV, and forming a daily Spanish conversation group with four other women (which continues to this day).

Two years ago, I went to Toulouse, France, as part of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, and I struggled to converse in French, which I hadn’t used since high school. My instinct was to answer in “Si, gracias!” in Spanish instead of “Oui, merci.”

(By the way, I caught Bill Potter answering in “Hai” in Japanese here in France! So I’m not the only one who is confused!)

About six months ago, I started reviewing French in anticipation of this current trip. I have a score of 80 (out of 130) in Duolingo French (equivalent of B1), am making similar progress in Busuu (another language learning app), and signed up for a year of ATFrenchies French Club, based on watching hilarious French videos by Alex and Tom for several months. When they offered in-depth French classes, I jumped on it.

On this trip, there have been two incidents when Bill said I would have to use my French to solve a situation. We realized that he had failed to print one of the concert tickets and I would have to talk to the man in the box office about getting another ticket without having to pay for it. Done! I patted myself on the back when he wrote out a ticket voucher which allowed me free entry.

When we had to stop at the gas station to fill up the tank before turning it in to the car rental office, Bill tried without success to use his credit card at the gas station self-service. I finally was able to use my debit card but no gas would pump. Finally, Bill asked me to go into the office and ask for help. The attendant first asked me which pump number we were at, and then what type of gas I wanted. Amazing! We got gas in the car and drove off.

While in Saintes, our hotel was next door to a bakery (ooh, that’s dangerous!) but Bill said that in France, there’s a bakery in every block! We gorged ourselves on fabulous, flaky French croissants every morning. But after eating avocado toast every single morning for months, it’s probably okay to eat croissants on vacation!

One last adventure in Saintes happened when we looked for our car in the parking lot after the late night concert. We had left the hotel much earlier in the day and parked the car in the Abbaye lot, for at least two concerts and a period of 3-4 hours, because it was now dark. I spotted a car with its lights on and the engine running, and checked the license number against the key in my pocket. It was our car (!) which I had put into Park but I neglected to press the Start button to turn the car off. We quickly got into the car which was cool from having the air conditioning run for several hours! I was so lucky that no one got into the car and drove off with it! Also amazing—we were expecting that the gas tank would have been emptied having idling for several hours, but thankfully only a little gas was apparently used. This was one of those “Oh, Kathy!” moments!

Here are some last photos of Saintes. As you can tell, it is a very picturesque little town.

Today was a travel day, always an ordeal on any trip to drag our luggage around. This morning we went to breakfast, then checked out of the hotel to drive to Bordeaux Airport to return the car. We then took a shuttle bus to the Bordeaux main train station, which took nearly 40 minutes. The train ride from Bordeaux to Gare Montparnasse in Paris took another 3-1/2 hours, then we took a taxi to the hotel, another half hour. We’re finally in our Paris hotel and went out for Thai food.

My trips are always full of adventures! Tomorrow we’ll go church hopping.