March 23, 2020
Gorham, Maine, USA
Gorham, Maine, USA
Last Train to London
Windows at Opera Bastille, Paris
The world has changed since we were in Girona, site of our last post. We are home now, thank goodness, but getting here was an ordeal that we'll never forget.
Montpellier, France, next stop after Girona, Spain, was an elegant and delightful city. Located straight south of Paris almost on the Mediterranean, it's in the Languedoc area, about 50 miles from where Bruce and I had spent several months in 2006.
The main plaza in Montpellier, Place de la Comedie.
Having arrived on Saturday, March 7, we settled ourselves into an artsy, comfortable Airbnb in the Beaux Arts neighborhood. Our landlady was a kind, 60-ish woman who lived in the adjoining apartment.
our cheerful Montpellier kitchen
For the next 3-4 days, we had a lovely time discovering this lively, student-centered, historic city with the world's oldest medical school, still in operation since 1289! Montpellier's proximity to the Mediterranean made it quite easy to get to the seashore, just a few miles away. When Wednesday, March 11, dawned sunny & warm, we set out on a tram and spent the day finding our way to the shore and the glorious, wide sandy beach. By the time that we returned to our apartment, my fitbit registered 8 miles. That night Trump announced a travel ban on the arrival of European citizens - and everything changed.
The next day, Thursday, I felt tired and decided to rest for the day, which is unusual for me. A slight fear that perhaps I had succumbed to the dreaded virus nibbled at my mind. Or perhaps I was just feeling the effects of our big adventure the previous day. While we had been keeping up with our US news sources, we hadn't been reading local French news. But somehow that day I came across a news feed announcing that the schools in all the surrounding towns were about to be closed. We had left Spain just days earlier, and things had looked fine to us at that point. We had no idea that Spain was coming into focus as a hot spot. The US news had all been about Italy.
Suddenly, when I felt a bit ill, the picture flipped. Perhaps our conscientious hand washing and general good health were not going to be enough to save us. What would happen to us if we both became sick, far from home? Who would bring medicine and food? How would we fare as sick foreigners, no matter what the acclaimed reputation of the French medical system? Of course, our minds locked onto the images of elderly Italians in hospital beds and the stories of insufficient ventilators. With exquisite clarity, we knew that we HAD to let go of our sweet apartment (all paid for another week) and our extended travel plans (tickets to Berlin already in hand) and return home within the next few days, if we could manage it.
The beautiful trams that ran past our apartment.
Bruce began trying to contact Delta Airlines to change the date on our flight home from London, scheduled for April 15. No one answered phones; the website was bogged down. Since the announcement of Trump's travel ban, due to take effect the next day, a flood of people were rushing to leave the continent, although US citizens could still gain entry after the March 13 deadline. While we felt urgency, we didn't feel panic - yet. Bruce discovered that flights were being canceled at the last moment, and that we couldn't necessarily count on the usual array of transportation being available, which was worrisome. What if all flights/trains/buses from France to England were stopped? Could that happen?
While I awoke on Friday, the 13th, feeling better, Bruce awoke feeling feverish. This really concerned us. He began a regimen of ibuprofen, which took care of the fever, and doubled down on trying to find a way to London. We decided to forget about contacting Delta. If we could get ourselves to London, we'd deal with Delta in person.
Our attempts to get a flight from Montpellier on Easyjet, including going out to the airport on a bus that day, didn't pan out; at the train station, however, we were able to get tickets on a fast train to Paris for the next day, Saturday, the 14th. We'd be a little closer to London and would take a bus from there on Monday.
We explained to Helene, our landlady, why we felt that we had to leave so abruptly. I'm not sure that she totally understood but she must have had concern for the man whom we had heard coughing in her apartment, probably an elderly father. We would get out of her space and take most of our possible germs with us.
The trains in Europe are so pleasant. The tidy fields under cultivation and the imminent arrival of spring cheered me up as we sped north to Gare de Lyon, our train station destination in Paris.
On our arrival in Paris, things looked normal. The abnormal thing was my lack of excitement at being in Paris! This wonderful city, which we hadn't visited in quite a few years, has always captured my imagination. But on Saturday, the 14th, we were intent on simply getting to our nearby hotel, clean and bright but minimalist. Next door was a busy creperie where we had a nice meal before retreating to our room.
One luxury that our hotel did have was television with BBC and an English language station from Berlin. On Sunday, March 15, we awoke to learn that all French restaurants and stores had been ordered closed. The exceptions were grocery stores and pharmacies. I quickly made a trip to the small nearby Monoprix grocery store and picked up enough foods for that day and into the next day.
By this time, we were still feeling a bit unwell. Advice from home and in all that we read was to hunker down, to not travel, and not spread the illness. We wondered about trying to get a test to determine if we had the virus but that seemed like a big job. Who would we call? Certainly not an ambulance or the emergency number. I went out in search of a personal thermometer. None left in the one pharmacy open on a Sunday; nor were there masks or hand gel. We decided to cancel the bus tickets for the next day and try to find a hotel room with a refrigerator where we could stay put and rest for a few days. It took Bruce hours on the computer to make this happen. In the process we learned that our current hotel had no available rooms, despite the manager having told us upon arrival that things were slow. Hmm.
That Sunday was a beautiful day in Paris. After hours in our room, we decided to take a walk, keeping our distance from other folks. We were not alone. It was election day, despite all the closures, and we passed a voting location with citizens coming and going, old folks dressed in their Sunday best, holding hands as they emerged. Along the streets, a bit of outdoor commerce was still taking place, including a florist with her colorful plants offering an uplifting note to the world. Further along, we encountered a cluster of merrymakers flouting the rules by gathering around a small bar table on the sidewalk, drinking and smoking and laughing. At the Bastille Monument, a wide open rotary centered by a massive obelisk, a sprinkling of tourists were strolling, bikers and runners were getting their exercise, taxis and buses zipped by. We sat (alone) on a bench for a bit to catch our breath and then returned to our room.
The closed creperie resto next to our hotel on Sunday, March 15.
The next morning, Monday, March 16th, we packed up, ready to move to our new hotel. While waiting for the time to check out, I went to another pharmacy to check on thermometers and masks. None, of course. However, the lobby of our hotel had a strange vibe. No other customers; staff standing around, looking serious, like something was about to happen. I asked if they might be closing and learned that they did, indeed, expect to receive word from the government, momentarily, ordering ALL hotels to close! What?!
With that news, Bruce and I grabbed our bags, jumped into a taxi, and headed for Gare de Nord, the train station from which the fast train to London leaves. We were beyond lucky to get tickets for a train leaving in about 2 hours. They were expensive, more than we would consider paying in ordinary circumstances. These were not ordinary circumstances. We would have paid three times that amount. We did not want to die in France, out on the streets, far from home and family. It seems a bit dramatic now, in hindsight, but it felt like a real possibility at the time.
As we waited in the station for the train to leave, off in a corner by ourselves, an announcement came over the loudspeaker in heavily accented English, regretting to inform us that, per orders of the government, .... Our hearts stopped for a second each time we heard it, fearing that we would learn that the government had stopped all trains. But no, something even worse for the French, no food would be offered on the train :)! Through the window, we could look down on soldiers in camouflage uniforms, carrying large machine guns as they patrolled the sidewalk. Not sure if that is now standard practice near train stations in Paris. We had seen them in Perpignan, too, near the French border, on our way from Spain.
We left Paris around noon, and within three hours our chariot had zoomed across northern France, through the chunnel, and across eastern England to St. Pancras train station in London. No one had stopped us to assess our health as we left France, and no one stopped us as we all flooded into London. We found a taxi and headed for our familiar old hotel where, with his smart phone, Bruce had been able to reserve a room while we were on the train.
St. Pancras train station, London, Monday, March 16.
London looked normal as we crossed the city; school kids in their uniforms were returning home; people were out in Hyde Park and on the sidewalks. I went to a pharmacy across the street from our hotel, stood in line, and was finally able to get 4 masks. We hunkered down in our room and learned that President Macron had closed the French borders.
Our plan for the next morning, Tuesday, March 17th, was to get up early and take the tube to Heathrow, bringing all our stuff with us. Our hope was to get a flight that day to Boston - or to get a hotel room near the airport where we could wait - days?/weeks? - until we could snag tickets. We donned our new masks and set out. The Piccadilly Underground line was nearly deserted that morning, unlike what we had encountered just a month earlier when traveling on the same train for our flight to Madrid.
Ready for travel home.
At Heathrow we immediately headed to the Delta ticket booth, where we were able to secure seats on a flight that afternoon for a flight to Boston via NYC! We couldn't believe our good fortune!! No one asked us if we were ill or indicated that we might not be allowed onto the plane. In the waiting area, we changed seats often as we tried to stay away from other people. Family and friends were in touch by email, inquiring where we were, how we were doing, and letting us know the latest news, which was changing hourly, it seemed.
We boarded our flight shortly after noon. I was assigned the middle seat in the middle section, with Bruce on one side and a rather unfriendly fellow on the other. Probably just as well. No interaction, and he was coughing a dry cough, unmasked. We wore our masks the whole time, except to eat. They were hot and uncomfortable but we hoped that they were protecting those around us. Probably not, but I felt less guilty.
On the plane everyone was asked to fill out CDC forms, indicating whether we had traveled in China - or in any one of a long list of other, mostly European, countries. France and Spain were included. We also were asked to check off whether we had any of the 3 major symptoms for COVID 19. I could honestly say no, but did write in that I felt I was "fighting off something". Bruce indicated that he had felt "feverish". As we stepped out of the airplane door and onto the skybridge in NYC, a Border Patrol official and 3 CDC staff stopped each passenger and took their temperature with a quick swipe to the forehead with a measuring tool. Neither Bruce nor I registered a temp. After a quick look at our forms and our travel history, they handed us cards, requiring us to self-quarantine in our own home and to take our temps twice daily for two weeks. We had made it into the country and were extremely relieved!
We continued on our way to Boston, where we stayed in a Holiday Inn near Logan due to the late hour and our exhaustion. The next day, Wednesday, March 18, we took a bus to Portland and then an Uber to Gorham. Waiting on our steps were bags of food stuffs from friends. More arrived later, practical necessities and symbols of love. Home never looked so good!
For the past few days, we have remained totally secluded as we have worked to warm up our home and to get water flowing again, a somewhat complicated job. It's possible, even likely, that we have been exposed to COVID 19. We don't feel particularly unwell, but we are quite tired with sleeping hours coming slowly back to normal and stress easing, to a degree. Perhaps we should quit watching the news to reduce it more! Our temps have remained in the normal range, for which we are grateful, but we wonder each morning if this will be the day that symptoms erupt. In the end, we don't know if we've been exposed. I'm sorry to have to disagree with our esteemed President, but test kits are NOT available for anyone who wants them. We'll have to wait out our 14 days and see what happens to our bodies. It's Day 5 and so far, so good. In the meantime, we have good books to read, writing to do, yard work to tackle, and indoor projects waiting for us.
It was a pretty traumatic experience, and our wanderlust has certainly been diminished. Time will tell whether that's a permanent condition. For now, we are so very very fortunate to have been flooded with offers of groceries to be dropped off and good wishes extended, through virtual means :). It's clear that a support system is crucial for all of us during these scary, stressful times. For ourselves, we feel wrapped in the warmth of friendship and are so grateful to be here.
The world has changed since we were in Girona, site of our last post. We are home now, thank goodness, but getting here was an ordeal that we'll never forget.
Montpellier, France, next stop after Girona, Spain, was an elegant and delightful city. Located straight south of Paris almost on the Mediterranean, it's in the Languedoc area, about 50 miles from where Bruce and I had spent several months in 2006.
Having arrived on Saturday, March 7, we settled ourselves into an artsy, comfortable Airbnb in the Beaux Arts neighborhood. Our landlady was a kind, 60-ish woman who lived in the adjoining apartment.
For the next 3-4 days, we had a lovely time discovering this lively, student-centered, historic city with the world's oldest medical school, still in operation since 1289! Montpellier's proximity to the Mediterranean made it quite easy to get to the seashore, just a few miles away. When Wednesday, March 11, dawned sunny & warm, we set out on a tram and spent the day finding our way to the shore and the glorious, wide sandy beach. By the time that we returned to our apartment, my fitbit registered 8 miles. That night Trump announced a travel ban on the arrival of European citizens - and everything changed.
The next day, Thursday, I felt tired and decided to rest for the day, which is unusual for me. A slight fear that perhaps I had succumbed to the dreaded virus nibbled at my mind. Or perhaps I was just feeling the effects of our big adventure the previous day. While we had been keeping up with our US news sources, we hadn't been reading local French news. But somehow that day I came across a news feed announcing that the schools in all the surrounding towns were about to be closed. We had left Spain just days earlier, and things had looked fine to us at that point. We had no idea that Spain was coming into focus as a hot spot. The US news had all been about Italy.
Suddenly, when I felt a bit ill, the picture flipped. Perhaps our conscientious hand washing and general good health were not going to be enough to save us. What would happen to us if we both became sick, far from home? Who would bring medicine and food? How would we fare as sick foreigners, no matter what the acclaimed reputation of the French medical system? Of course, our minds locked onto the images of elderly Italians in hospital beds and the stories of insufficient ventilators. With exquisite clarity, we knew that we HAD to let go of our sweet apartment (all paid for another week) and our extended travel plans (tickets to Berlin already in hand) and return home within the next few days, if we could manage it.
Bruce began trying to contact Delta Airlines to change the date on our flight home from London, scheduled for April 15. No one answered phones; the website was bogged down. Since the announcement of Trump's travel ban, due to take effect the next day, a flood of people were rushing to leave the continent, although US citizens could still gain entry after the March 13 deadline. While we felt urgency, we didn't feel panic - yet. Bruce discovered that flights were being canceled at the last moment, and that we couldn't necessarily count on the usual array of transportation being available, which was worrisome. What if all flights/trains/buses from France to England were stopped? Could that happen?
While I awoke on Friday, the 13th, feeling better, Bruce awoke feeling feverish. This really concerned us. He began a regimen of ibuprofen, which took care of the fever, and doubled down on trying to find a way to London. We decided to forget about contacting Delta. If we could get ourselves to London, we'd deal with Delta in person.
Our attempts to get a flight from Montpellier on Easyjet, including going out to the airport on a bus that day, didn't pan out; at the train station, however, we were able to get tickets on a fast train to Paris for the next day, Saturday, the 14th. We'd be a little closer to London and would take a bus from there on Monday.
We explained to Helene, our landlady, why we felt that we had to leave so abruptly. I'm not sure that she totally understood but she must have had concern for the man whom we had heard coughing in her apartment, probably an elderly father. We would get out of her space and take most of our possible germs with us.
The trains in Europe are so pleasant. The tidy fields under cultivation and the imminent arrival of spring cheered me up as we sped north to Gare de Lyon, our train station destination in Paris.
On our arrival in Paris, things looked normal. The abnormal thing was my lack of excitement at being in Paris! This wonderful city, which we hadn't visited in quite a few years, has always captured my imagination. But on Saturday, the 14th, we were intent on simply getting to our nearby hotel, clean and bright but minimalist. Next door was a busy creperie where we had a nice meal before retreating to our room.
One luxury that our hotel did have was television with BBC and an English language station from Berlin. On Sunday, March 15, we awoke to learn that all French restaurants and stores had been ordered closed. The exceptions were grocery stores and pharmacies. I quickly made a trip to the small nearby Monoprix grocery store and picked up enough foods for that day and into the next day.
By this time, we were still feeling a bit unwell. Advice from home and in all that we read was to hunker down, to not travel, and not spread the illness. We wondered about trying to get a test to determine if we had the virus but that seemed like a big job. Who would we call? Certainly not an ambulance or the emergency number. I went out in search of a personal thermometer. None left in the one pharmacy open on a Sunday; nor were there masks or hand gel. We decided to cancel the bus tickets for the next day and try to find a hotel room with a refrigerator where we could stay put and rest for a few days. It took Bruce hours on the computer to make this happen. In the process we learned that our current hotel had no available rooms, despite the manager having told us upon arrival that things were slow. Hmm.
That Sunday was a beautiful day in Paris. After hours in our room, we decided to take a walk, keeping our distance from other folks. We were not alone. It was election day, despite all the closures, and we passed a voting location with citizens coming and going, old folks dressed in their Sunday best, holding hands as they emerged. Along the streets, a bit of outdoor commerce was still taking place, including a florist with her colorful plants offering an uplifting note to the world. Further along, we encountered a cluster of merrymakers flouting the rules by gathering around a small bar table on the sidewalk, drinking and smoking and laughing. At the Bastille Monument, a wide open rotary centered by a massive obelisk, a sprinkling of tourists were strolling, bikers and runners were getting their exercise, taxis and buses zipped by. We sat (alone) on a bench for a bit to catch our breath and then returned to our room.
The next morning, Monday, March 16th, we packed up, ready to move to our new hotel. While waiting for the time to check out, I went to another pharmacy to check on thermometers and masks. None, of course. However, the lobby of our hotel had a strange vibe. No other customers; staff standing around, looking serious, like something was about to happen. I asked if they might be closing and learned that they did, indeed, expect to receive word from the government, momentarily, ordering ALL hotels to close! What?!
With that news, Bruce and I grabbed our bags, jumped into a taxi, and headed for Gare de Nord, the train station from which the fast train to London leaves. We were beyond lucky to get tickets for a train leaving in about 2 hours. They were expensive, more than we would consider paying in ordinary circumstances. These were not ordinary circumstances. We would have paid three times that amount. We did not want to die in France, out on the streets, far from home and family. It seems a bit dramatic now, in hindsight, but it felt like a real possibility at the time.
As we waited in the station for the train to leave, off in a corner by ourselves, an announcement came over the loudspeaker in heavily accented English, regretting to inform us that, per orders of the government, .... Our hearts stopped for a second each time we heard it, fearing that we would learn that the government had stopped all trains. But no, something even worse for the French, no food would be offered on the train :)! Through the window, we could look down on soldiers in camouflage uniforms, carrying large machine guns as they patrolled the sidewalk. Not sure if that is now standard practice near train stations in Paris. We had seen them in Perpignan, too, near the French border, on our way from Spain.
We left Paris around noon, and within three hours our chariot had zoomed across northern France, through the chunnel, and across eastern England to St. Pancras train station in London. No one had stopped us to assess our health as we left France, and no one stopped us as we all flooded into London. We found a taxi and headed for our familiar old hotel where, with his smart phone, Bruce had been able to reserve a room while we were on the train.
London looked normal as we crossed the city; school kids in their uniforms were returning home; people were out in Hyde Park and on the sidewalks. I went to a pharmacy across the street from our hotel, stood in line, and was finally able to get 4 masks. We hunkered down in our room and learned that President Macron had closed the French borders.
Our plan for the next morning, Tuesday, March 17th, was to get up early and take the tube to Heathrow, bringing all our stuff with us. Our hope was to get a flight that day to Boston - or to get a hotel room near the airport where we could wait - days?/weeks? - until we could snag tickets. We donned our new masks and set out. The Piccadilly Underground line was nearly deserted that morning, unlike what we had encountered just a month earlier when traveling on the same train for our flight to Madrid.
At Heathrow we immediately headed to the Delta ticket booth, where we were able to secure seats on a flight that afternoon for a flight to Boston via NYC! We couldn't believe our good fortune!! No one asked us if we were ill or indicated that we might not be allowed onto the plane. In the waiting area, we changed seats often as we tried to stay away from other people. Family and friends were in touch by email, inquiring where we were, how we were doing, and letting us know the latest news, which was changing hourly, it seemed.
We boarded our flight shortly after noon. I was assigned the middle seat in the middle section, with Bruce on one side and a rather unfriendly fellow on the other. Probably just as well. No interaction, and he was coughing a dry cough, unmasked. We wore our masks the whole time, except to eat. They were hot and uncomfortable but we hoped that they were protecting those around us. Probably not, but I felt less guilty.
On the plane everyone was asked to fill out CDC forms, indicating whether we had traveled in China - or in any one of a long list of other, mostly European, countries. France and Spain were included. We also were asked to check off whether we had any of the 3 major symptoms for COVID 19. I could honestly say no, but did write in that I felt I was "fighting off something". Bruce indicated that he had felt "feverish". As we stepped out of the airplane door and onto the skybridge in NYC, a Border Patrol official and 3 CDC staff stopped each passenger and took their temperature with a quick swipe to the forehead with a measuring tool. Neither Bruce nor I registered a temp. After a quick look at our forms and our travel history, they handed us cards, requiring us to self-quarantine in our own home and to take our temps twice daily for two weeks. We had made it into the country and were extremely relieved!
We continued on our way to Boston, where we stayed in a Holiday Inn near Logan due to the late hour and our exhaustion. The next day, Wednesday, March 18, we took a bus to Portland and then an Uber to Gorham. Waiting on our steps were bags of food stuffs from friends. More arrived later, practical necessities and symbols of love. Home never looked so good!
For the past few days, we have remained totally secluded as we have worked to warm up our home and to get water flowing again, a somewhat complicated job. It's possible, even likely, that we have been exposed to COVID 19. We don't feel particularly unwell, but we are quite tired with sleeping hours coming slowly back to normal and stress easing, to a degree. Perhaps we should quit watching the news to reduce it more! Our temps have remained in the normal range, for which we are grateful, but we wonder each morning if this will be the day that symptoms erupt. In the end, we don't know if we've been exposed. I'm sorry to have to disagree with our esteemed President, but test kits are NOT available for anyone who wants them. We'll have to wait out our 14 days and see what happens to our bodies. It's Day 5 and so far, so good. In the meantime, we have good books to read, writing to do, yard work to tackle, and indoor projects waiting for us.
It was a pretty traumatic experience, and our wanderlust has certainly been diminished. Time will tell whether that's a permanent condition. For now, we are so very very fortunate to have been flooded with offers of groceries to be dropped off and good wishes extended, through virtual means :). It's clear that a support system is crucial for all of us during these scary, stressful times. For ourselves, we feel wrapped in the warmth of friendship and are so grateful to be here.
