Bassin de la Villette, Paris
Apart from the food, wine, culture, people, architecture, history, climate, art and general joie de la vie what other possible reasons could there be for a couple of Kiwis to visit France.
Having spent the first 30 odd years of my life living in the south of England I was fortunate enough to have a number of opportunities to visit. There were school and Uni ski trips to the Alps in winter, a back-packing camping trip to the South in summer and a few short stays in Paris, which of course is delightful at any time of the year. I had plenty of great experiences in France as a young man. It always held a fascination for me. Maybe it was just “the grass is greener” syndrome but it always seemed so much more exotic and exciting than my native England!
Living in NZ over the last 26 years has given me a real appreciation of the depth of European history that I very much took for granted when I lived in England. As I’ve grown older my love of Europe, and in particular France, has grown stronger. That’s not to say I don’t still marvel at the beauty and people of NZ .
I first introduced Neil to France in 2001, a year after we met, when we went skiing in Val D’Isere. He very quickly became fascinated by the country and we’ve returned together three times, mostly to Paris. We always knew that we needed more time to travel further afield and explore more of the country and had often talked about doing an extended trip.
In 2012 I was looking around for a new hobby and decided to enrol at Alliance Francaise, Auckland to brush up on my schoolboy/holiday French. The teachers and regulars at the Alliance were highly inspiring and I began to immerse myself in all things French. Group classes, private classes, petit dejeuner Saturday, North Shore Meet Up Friday. I met many wonderful people too numerous to mention, from all walks of life, with the only thing really binding them together being the love of the language and country. However, I figured I needed a purpose for all this learning so the idea of an extended trip to France was born. More precisely we decided we would aim to spend three months in the summer of 2013 touring France in a campervan – that was to be the practical putting my new-found language skills to the test,
For a variety of reasons the 2013 trip never came off but now in late February 2014 we have airline tickets, campervan booked and a tenative plan for a route through France and we’re ready to go. Alllons-y!!
