Mom's Thoughts on France, pt 5

We are winding towards the end - I think just one more of mom's posts after this one and then it will be back to my gibberish. When we left off, we had visited the Chateau du Suscinio, and mom was talking about the various castles and ruins all over our area:

Castles stood on hills surrounded by moats. Churches stood in the middle of each village. Everything in the villages was tiny. The homes were like little monopoly houses. Most were cream colored and a little on the sparse side. Homes in the US have adornments. Here the yards were small (if they even had a yard). There were no porches, no shrubs, no walkways, and no pink flamingos. Most residents cover their windows and doors each night using crank down metal shutters that latch tight. I wondered about this practice, especially since Herbignac had only one policeman and almost no crime to speak of. Perhaps some monster from the sea had long ago cast fear into these little hobbit inhabitants.

Which brings me to the sea. The beaches are in no way like ours. Their beaches have rocky cliffs, almost gravel like sand, and not much shore. You can crawl into caves (and be drowned there when the tide comes in). No tourists push by you; there’s no noise, and no planes flying over with streamers announcing free beer at Bernie’s. You could walk for miles and not meet up with another person. There were pig paths wrapping all around the cliff sides with lots of nooks and crannies to explore. I loved those bare beaches. They were clean and void of man’s mess.

(Well, we do still have our share of litter and trash, but thankfully you can play in the sand without much fear of stepping on someone's old hypodermic needles...)

As we walked high and low, most folks we passed seemed friendly. That’s not to say we didn’t get a few stares. There’s no hiding our southern accents and our southern ways. We have no qualms about asking questions in public or even pointing a finger at something interesting. Of course these characteristics (in France) made us look like idiots according to our children. Still they did not abandon us. They walked along with us, glad to have us embarrassing them again.