Members on the go
Article by Bitsy Gilfoyle
In early March of 2013, as I mulled over possible topics for my Osher summer mini-course, early twentieth-century American writers who lived in Paris quickly came to mind. I lived in Paris before grad school and have been back there many times since. I’ve also taught American literature for years. Clearly this was a logical and comfortable choice, and one that I thought would attract Osher students.
And so it did. A group of 22 people attended our June, 2013 class. We began our four-week exploration of Stein, Toklas, Beach, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald, with the finale being a viewing of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. However, it never occurred to me that this class might inspire an actual trip to Paris until the final session when Jane Dowrick and I had lunch and started talking about taking an Osher group to Paris. By the time the bill was paid, a Paris trip was the plan, which Jane announced to the group before we viewed the Woody Allen film.
To make the trip happen involved an enormous amount of planning, which Jane and I quickly divided. By early 2014, we had a solid group of 17 plus the two of us. On March 7, after another round of ice the night before, our group, all dressed in winter gear, met at 10 am in the Richmond airport to begin a wonderful week in Paris.
What made the week so wonderful? Many, many things, but most of all it was the people who were on the trip. Many of them had not even met each other before the trip. Most were two friends or husband and wife pairs. Yet throughout the week, groups chatted at breakfast, swapped stories about places they’d seen that weren’t on the itinerary, had dinners together, and clearly were becoming friends. One of the most successful events of the trip was a bike tour to Versailles, organized by Richard and Marlene Ebert, with almost all of the group attending. Throughout the week, there was a growing sense of camaraderie that has continued since the trip.
Another great pleasure was our location. The Hotel Claude Bernard, on the rue des Ecoles, is a central location in the Latin Quarter. It offered a generous breakfast, certainly no basic continental breakfast! The breakfast room was overseen by M. Pierre, who made certain we had all the coffee, bread, cheese, cereal, and all else we needed. The staff at the hotel provided excellent service and any special accommodation that was requested. Notre Dame, where many of us attended a Sunday mass, was a 10-minute walk from the hotel. The Luxembourg Gardens were also a short walk, which many of us took on the first afternoon. Many of the places where American writers, such as Hemingway and Stein, lived or the cafes that they frequented were nearby. Major museums such as the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, the Jeu de Paume, and the l’Orangerie were only a few metro stops away. Two blocks from our hotel was an open air market where many in the group purchased scarves, soaps, spices, and other items. Jane and Tanya Dolphin even bought coats! One metro station was a five-minute walk, and the major metro line was just a bit farther to the Right Bank. At Sainte Chapelle, many of us went for an incredible performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Then near the end of our week, the whole group enjoyed a most delicious meal at the Brasserie Balzar, one of the best-known brasseries in Paris and only three blocks from our hotel.
Finally, the weather was delightful. When we left Richmond it was below freezing. When we landed in Paris on Saturday, it was sunny and in the 60’s. So the week went, with no rain and warm temperatures that made outside café sitting possible, which many of us did for dinner or just a coffee. Some of us even got a little sunburned. Weather such as we had in the 60’s and low 70’s is NOT Paris March weather!
All too soon it was March 16 and our early morning departure. Leaving Paris was the easiest part of the return journey. We landed in New York that afternoon to learn that our flight to Richmond had been canceled because of an impending snowstorm. Steve and Kathy Barley worked with Delta to get our group flown as close to home as possible, which was Washington, D.C. Throughout the unsettling airport experience in Kennedy for a group of weary travelers, Steve and Kathy proved themselves to be natural leaders—calm, collected, and able to organize the anxious group. Jane, at several people’s suggestion, phoned to arrange rental cars once we reached Washington. Bussed over to La Guardia, we were barely in time for the flight. By the time of our arrival in D.C, snow was everywhere. After a long delay, in the cold and dark, as the snow was falling fiercely, four brave souls, Steve, Landon Woody, Jane, and Paul Porterfield drove the 19 weary Americans from Washington to their Richmond home.
As Hemingway wrote, Paris is a moveable feast, and these 19 Osher travelers fully enjoyed that feast in all possible ways.