Allons, enfants! Bastille Day is as good a day as any to celebrate all things French

Image credit: CultMTL.com

(NOTE: This is one of our Blog Rerun posts. It originally ran here on 5Kids1Wife.com on this day in 2021.)

Today is Bastille Day. I'm always reminded that, on this day in 1989, my friend Kevin and I went to our high school French teacher's house unannounced and drank wine with her in celebration of the holiday.

I give Madame Whitehorn credit for being so gracious to us. She was under no obligation to invite two former students (who showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep) into her home on a mid-summer Friday morning.

Yet she did, and she remains one of my favorite teachers ever, as does another former French teacher of mine, Madame Pumphrey.

As I've mentioned, I took 14 years of French classes between the Wickliffe City Schools and John Carroll University, so I have a deep interest in French language and culture. It also doesn't hurt that, as a First World War buff, I have a relatively detailed knowledge of the geography of Northeastern France, where so many battles were fought.

By the way, contrary to what you may think you know about France's military history, the French army was a tough out in WW1. The Germans had deep respect for their tenacity and fighting capacity.

I've visited Paris four times, but I've only scratched the surface of things to see and do there. I also someday hope to make it "en province" and experience some of the non-Parisian parts of the country.

The closest most Ohioans get to all things French is visiting some part of Francophone Canada. I have been to Montreal five times, and while it's lovely, it's not the real thing.

Nor should it be. It is a wonderful city with a mystique and culture all its own.

French people have a reputation for being rude and snooty, and I'm sure many are (just as many Americans are). But during my trips to France, the people I've met have been nothing but kind and gracious.

That includes the French woman whose job it was to stand in the men's room while I peed at the Gare de Nord train station in 1999. I don't know if she kept any notes on customer behavior, but if she did, I'm sure she noted my exceptional cleanliness and respect for French urinals.

The sleeping (or lack of sleeping) is my least favorite part about flying to other parts of the world

I've had both good and bad experiences flying to Europe.

The worst was probably the time I spent 8+ hours from Chicago to Frankfurt in a middle seat next to a guy with a very active cold who was apparently gunning for the Guinness record for World's Loudest Cough. I somehow managed to avoid getting sick, but needless to say, I didn't get much sleep on that flight.

The best was undoubtedly the time I went from Newark to Brussels in business class. I slept like a baby in my little pod with the lie-flat seat and the comfy pillow and blankets. The only trouble was, they woke us up for landing way before I was ready to leave Dreamland. It was the one time I could have done with a 10-hour flight.

I fondly remember the first time I flew to Europe in 1999 because it was a daytime run from Toronto to London. We left early in the morning and got to the UK that evening. I may have dozed a bit, but the important thing was that, unlike overnight flights, I didn't feel I had to sleep.

It's that pressure to get significant shuteye that makes me dislike late-night flights of the sort I'll be taking this evening. Tonight I'm scheduled to fly from Cleveland to Atlanta, then from Atlanta to Paris to spend a week in the French capital to watch Les Olympiques.

(That's the Olympics, for those who don't know a baguette from a hole in the ground.)

The overseas flight from Atlanta doesn't take off until 11:30pm Eastern, which is 5:30am tomorrow in Paris. Basically I'll be trying to sleep on the plane at a point when it's already morning at my destination, thus ensuring that my internal clock will never, ever adjust to the local time zone while I'm there.

Now on one hand, hey, I get to go to the Olympics in Paris. I should quit my whining.

On the other hand, why can't I find flights that arrive in Europe the same day? Why do these seem so scarce anymore?

First-world problems, I'm aware, but they're the only problems I know.

Allons-y!

We're going to the Paris Olympics next year and I'm pretty sure we'll be sleeping in the street

Some months ago, my daughter Elissa called and asked, "Hey, do you want to go to the Olympics?"

My response was a somewhat bemused, "What?"

She repeated the question.

"The answer to that is always 'yes,'" I replied, "but tell me more."

It turned out Elissa had won a lottery giving her the right to purchase tickets for up to three events at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Seeing the Summer Olympics in person has long been a bucket list item of mine, so I didn't need to be asked twice.

When the day came to buy tickets online, Elissa was equipped with a list of our preferred events and the amount we were willing to pay. As you might imagine, some sports are more popular than others, to the point that you're much more likely to score front-row seats to, say, handball than you are for women's gymnastics.

Elissa spent a frantic 15 minutes typing and scrolling, coming away with four tickets each to a women's quarterfinal field hockey match, a women's quarterfinal soccer match, and the one thing on which I had my heart set, a full day of track and field.

In the event, gaining admission to these events was the easy part. And I'm sure we'll have no problems booking a suitable flight to take Elissa, Terry, Mark and me to France next summer.

The issue lies with our accommodations. We immediately tried booking Airbnb and Vrbo houses, only to be denied each time without explanation.

No explanation was needed, though. The owners of these rental properties are (wisely) going to jack up the prices by a factor of 3x or more, and they were all waiting for the market to sort itself out before fixing their fees and accepting reservations.

We also tried several hotels, but in most cases, you couldn't book anything outside of a 365-day (and in some cases a 400-day) window preceding your arrival.

Now we're getting to the point of being one year out, and as I type this, we're still looking for places to lay our heads for the week we plan to be in Paris. The cheapest VRBOs are $3,600 for six nights, which actually isn't bad but also doesn't provide the type of bed situation we need.

We may ultimately end up staying somewhere outside of Paris and taking a train into the city each day, which would be OK.

But part of me still wonders how comfortable a sleeping bag under the Arc de Triomphe would be on a warm French summer night.

(NOTE: A few days ago, long after this post was already written, we were able to procure a nice Airbnb in Paris. That's a relief, of course, but I hope you don't mind me having strung you along there for a couple of minutes.)