Carnet de Voyage: “I’ve Never Seen an American Here Before”

Travel notes from the real France. Carnet de Voyage is a weekly personal travel story in France sent in by readers. If you’d like to write a story for Carnet de Voyage, head here for details on how to submit.

In the autumn of the year 2000, I took my very first trip to Europe at the age of 53. Southern England and France (mostly Paris) were the basic itinerary. My family having been in America since the early 1700’s, and my heritage, according to my mother’s genealogical research, being English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, and Dutch, I simply assumed that I would prefer the land of my ancestors.    

Although I was born in Los Angeles, I was fortunate to grow up in a rural area of Santa Barbara from the age of three. I have had a lifelong dislike of large cities, but an affinity for the peaceful and uncrowded countryside. Nevertheless, as does tout le monde, I wanted to see Paris. But at the same time, even though the trip was comprised of one week each in England and France, I was determined to at least experience the French countryside, however briefly.  

 To my great surprise, I found that although I enjoyed England, I fell in love with France. In that first venture into rural France, my wife and I explored a few of the small Burgundian Villages of the Côte D’Or surrounded by endless hectares of vineyards. We also stayed one night at the Château-de-Vault-de-Lugny (near Avallon) where we experienced virtual time travel to the 15th century. I was immediately hooked. Over the intervening years, I have learned to like Paris – the ONLY large city about which I can make that statement – but I LOVE the French countryside. I willingly trade less time in Paris (and its attendant Museums, its cultural, historical, and many other fascinating items and places of interest), for more time in the French countryside. 

Forward to 2008, the fifth of my eight trips so far. I called this my Pyrenees trip – which I had been planning for several years. It was to take us by rental car from Paris south to the Dordogne, thence continuing south to drive the entire French side of the Pyrenees, all the way from Saint-Jean-de-Luz to Collioure, as well as sorties into Spain on both the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, returning to Paris by a different route through the very middle of France. 

On the way down after visiting the magical villages lining the Dordogne River Valley, we continued south through the Lot-et-Garonne, and then the Gers. After a night at the Château de Fourcès, I made a point of visiting the three closely grouped Plus Beaux Villages of Fourcès, Montréal-du-Gers, and Larressingle.  By fortunate happenstance, we pulled into Montréal on the weekday morning when the travelling cheese cart vendor made his appearance. Always a welcome sight, just as when one arrives in a town on a market day that one had not planned for in advance.   

We immediately made our way over to the cheese cart, already doing business in the town square.  Among the many things that my trips to France have taught me is an appreciation for quality cheese. Choosing just two or three from amongst 20 or 30 viable candidates is a pleasantly difficult task. We made our selections to snack on with crackers and herbed olives along our days’ route. Although I was by this time conversant in French, my wife was not. A man who was visiting the cheese cart at the same time as ourselves obviously heard us conversing in English sans the familiar British accent. He invited us to sit and chat with himself and his wife at a table in the market square. He turned out to be from Texas, married to a French woman, and they lived locally to Montréal. 

He said to me, “I don’t think I have ever seen an American here before”.   

In his mind, that was simply an observation. To my ears, however, it was a compliment. An accomplishment of sorts, of which I was proud. It meant to me that I had achieved my continuing objective of being in the true French countryside, experiencing local customs and culture that other Americans do not. The Brits are ever-present in France. Americans, not so much. Most Americans who travel to France, go to Paris; maybe Versailles, or other of the main tourist destinations, and mostly with a tour group. Very few rent a car and travel France on their own. Fewer still, find their way into la vraie campagne. 

Having now made eight trips to France, I feel confident that there is some French DNA somewhere in my distant ancestral past that did not reveal itself in the course of my mother’s genealogy research. 

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Donald Nunn is a retired Attorney living in Southern California. He has authored documents of an infinite variety during his over forty-year legal career. He has occasionally published articles, mostly in the travel and wine travel genre. Mr. Nunn is an inveterate Francophile.