July 6, 2017. Thursday. Paris. Today was the last driving leg of our trip. It was one of the longest days, approximately 7.5 hours from Heidelberg to Paris, with short stops in Luxembourg, Belgium, and Longwy — another four country day (Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France). I think we are all glad the rental company didn’t have the car I initially ordered, thereby giving us the larger van instead. The kids had adequate room, with a seat between them all — an essential component for sibling peace and love.

I think this morning we all felt a bit of travel fatigue. We got up a bit later and lazed around a bit before finally packing up and hitting the road just after 10 am. We were possibly going to walk the 5-7 minutes to the Heidelberg Castle, but I think only I (Lin) was into it.

Today was day 2 on the Autobahn, but I have to say it was once again underwhelming. Yes, there are sections where there is no speed limit, and yes, people do go very fast. But there are so many places where there is active construction, and the speed is greatly restricted (almost unreasonably so), and there are other places where the speed is lower near cities, etc. So the end result is a lot of speeding up and slowing down, plus constantly watching out for maniacs whipping down the fast lane. Perhaps if I wasn’t driving an 8-seater van I’d feel differently…

We could have driven a more direct route from Heidelberg to Paris, but we wanted to at least drive through some of the places Jo was in during her eight months in France in 1995. She was mostly living in Longwy, just inside of the French border, but very close to Luxembourg and Belgium (all places I had been when I visited her back then). Our first stop was Luxembourg, but we only stayed long enough to drive past a few sites and for Jo to take some pictures of the lovely gardens that are in a valley next to the old city. We hit a small corner of Belgium on the way to Longwy, but didn’t get out. That makes twelve countries for this trip, which is pretty fun.

Longwy has the potential to be cute, but to some of us it felt a bit depressing. Somehow it feels very small-town US midwestern, with all the plusses and minuses that come with that. After driving by the house Jo lived in 22 years ago (!), we headed to the downtown for lunch, but really could only find an Aldi open (strangely — during the workday!), so we opted for some grocery items and sandwiches on the road again. (For the record, baguettes are very messy when you have to cut and slice them in a car…)

After leaving Longwy, however, the scenery became really beautiful again, with classic rolling French countryside and endless golden wheat fields. Our GPS rather humorously yet again took us on the scenic route to the highway, but by now we’ve come to appreciate that, as we always see vistas we would miss otherwise. As we neared Paris, traffic got much heavier, so we didn’t get to our flat until close to 8 pm.

We decided to celebrate being in Paris again by gorging ourselves at a creperie one last time. Yum. It’s great to be back in Paris again — different in so many ways from Rome, Barcelona, and London, although each city we’ve been to has had unique features to appreciate. It’s hot here again, but as I write (11:15 pm), the cool breezes are blowing nicely through the flat. (As with most of Europe, no screens and no bugs — we are still puzzling over this one!)

Tomorrow: Back “home”: London.