BRUISED BUCKEYE LANDS IN FRANCE, ENDS TOUR IN PARIS

BRUISED BUCKEYE LANDS IN FRANCE, ENDS TOUR IN PARIS

BEAUVAIS to CHARTRES VIA GIVERNY

Our Ryanair flight from Barcelona to Beauvais, a small French town with a small airport about 48 miles north from Paris, took off on time and landed ten minutes early. Our rental car, this time a silver French four-door Peugeot, took us without incident to our night’s stay, a small motel a few kilometers away.

Although the weather between Barcelona and Beauvais was overcast, cooling things off for us in France, the following day the sun rose in a clear blue sky, making our drive through the grain fields that dominate the landscape where Brittany and Normandy meet on the Beauce Plain pleasurable and scenic.

Our destination of the day was the medieval city of Chartres, home to its eponymous two-towered Notre Dame Cathedral, which is one of the largest in Europe and “an unrivaled medieval splendor,” according to our Chartres guidebook. The French roads were enjoyable to drive on and with the roundabouts and clear signage along the way, our itinerary was achieved at each route point.

IMPRESSED WITH IMPRESSIONIST'S HOME IN GIVERNY

But before we would see the twin towers at Chartres, we would amble through and admire Claude Monet's home and gardens in the quiet, small locus of homes called Givern. Monet (1840-1926) is often called the father of impressionism. His beautiful country home is located in Giverny, a small town less than 50 miles from Paris where he lived and painted from 1883 to his death. The price of admission to his home and grounds [5.5 Euros per ticket] is good value because your mouth will water at the splendid display of greenery and flowers that surround his home like a quilted robe made of images from his own paintings.

His home, with its blue and yellow rooms that prominently feature his fascination with Japanese art, which hangs everywhere throughout his home [Van Gough was similarly smitten with the simple flourishes of oriental scenes], offers a view into his world and thus into his paintings. Next to his home is his painting studio, which is awash with natural light and that now serves as a retail shop for all products Monet.

Lunch at a nearby eatery, hugged in flowering trees and well manicured growings of all sizes and coors, was a cool and relaxing respite from our morning drive and self-guided tour of the impressionist's home and gardens, which include the famous pond [very Japanese, no surprise if you have seen the interior of his home] and its even more famous water lillys that he loved to paint.

In this region of France, where the quilt of wheat, bean and corn fields resemble the rolling farmlands of northwestern Ohio, the two towers of the cathedral, started in the 9the century, could be seen for dozens of miles away and served as guiding landmarks into the historic center of the city.

Our lodging for the night, the Chateau de Moresville, was still 20 or more miles away in the French countryside. Preferring not to return to Chartres the next day, we parked the car, walked to the cathedral, where we climbed the 300 stone steps to the crow’s nest at the pinnacle of the north and highest tower. After descending from the dizzying but panoramic heights, our plans called for us to find a boulangerie or chacuterie, where we would purchase bread, cheese, cold cuts, wine and something sweet to snack on overnight and in the morning. Our next day’s destination would be Blois, conveniently located about 48 miles to the south in the middle of the gorgeous, serene Loire river valley, home to a string of famous country chateau’s like Chenensceau and Abroise, where Leonardo da Vinci lived his last days.

NORTRE DAME OF CHARTRES

Acclaimed by our guidebook as “the most complete and well-preserved example of gothic Cathedrals, the climb to the top of the cathedral’s north [and tallest tower at about 121 feet], even 872 years after it was started is no easier now for the faint hearted or acrophobic than it was for the stone masons who no doubt climbed it repeatedly until their work was done. At 6.50 euro each for tickets to the top and with only 45 minutes until closing time, we wasted no time in ascending the narrow spiral stone staircase, which took us to the landing at the level where the tower’s giant metal bells hang silently. From this small landing, we mustered our energy to elevate our corporal bodies up the final flight of steps, which opened onto a narrow balcony that circumnavigated the tower. Looking down at the town far below us, whose homes appeared like tiny houses on a Monopoly board, the sheer height enabled us to see for miles upon miles as we peered out and scanned the semi-flat, agriculturally rich surrounding countryside from horizon to horizon.

60 years after the first stone was set in 1134, history says a fire consumed nearly everything except for the crypt and part of the western faced. I was amazed to learn that a crew of 300 hundred workers, building on what remained, reconstructed the stone structure in only 30 years, which was building quickly in an age when other cathedrals took hundreds of years to complete. The cathedral is registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Walking through the massive, dark stone structure, whose cool inside temperature was a welcomed contrast to the warm air outside, we found ourselves looking at, among many other unique contents, a small but impressive wood and gold case made in the early middle ages to hold the holy relic known as the “Virgin Mary’s veil.” Whether in fact it is her veil is clearly a matter of faith, but reputable scholars, according to a nearby written description of the relic that is folded and hangs behind glass panels, claim it unequivocally is from the Middle East and is dated to the first century A.D.

Once down on ground, we made our way through the town back to our car, which we parked in a conveniently located garage. Recalling how we exited from our parking garage in Milano by first validating our ticket through a machine, we followed a similar routine in Chartres and escaped without further embarassing ourselves or holding up traffic.

I openly confess: I have not walked into a boulangerie or pastiserrie I did not like. Boulangeries, bakery shops laden with bread, baguettes and all sorts of yummy treats, are common in France but not as pervasive as gelato shops in Italy. Nonetheless, we found one open and darted in and out with two small quiches, a loaf of dark crusty bread and a small but elegant tarte de pomme [apple].

OH BLOIS! THE LOIRE RIVER VALLEY, CHENONCEA AND TOURS

We arrived in Blois, which straddles the Loire River and is located about halfway between Orleans and Tours. We easily located and checked into our second Holiday Inn of the trip. Although it was early evening, the sky was still ablaze with pastel colors of sunset and night was still hours away. In Europe, it seems, the curtain of night does not fully descend until after 20:00 [10 o’clock GMT].

Although this Holiday Inn is not the equal of the one in Quarto D’Altino outside Venezia, it had one advantage – our nightly rate is only 65 euros [$83.20 USD], the second lowest of our trip. Conveniently located close to the city center, it was an easy walk downhill past shops, bars and restaurants to the river and the stone bridge that connects Blois nord with sud [north with south].

We checked out the local chateau, impressive with its now-public space and garden area, then enjoyed the evening with a glass of wine and a beer while watching Italy and America play to a 1-1 soccer World Cup tie. For those of us who did watch the game and are Italian, it was clear that Italy scored both goals but one went errantly into the Italian net by mistake when an Italian player, trying to clear the ball downfield, accidentally missed kicked the ball into the wrong goal.

CHATEAU CHENONCEAU

If you have to rule France from somewhere, Chateau Chenonceau is as good a place as any. Clearly, this is what Catherine de Medici [1519-1589] thought after ordering it out of the hands of her husband’s long time mistress and eminence grise, Diane de Poitiers, who was made a present of the picture-perfect structure when King Henry II of France took her as his mistress for 25 years, following the death of her husband, a friend and advisor to Henry. Following Henry’s death, Catherine reclaimed this property to show Diane that her privileged position, made possible only by her relationship to Henry, had come to an end and she, not Poitiers, was ruling it and the country.

The original and smaller structure was first constructed in the 1430s on the lazy, flowing River Cher, a tributary to the more famous Loire River. It came into Henry’s hands when he took it, essentially, for back taxes. Catherine, born in Florence, Italy, to Lorenzo II, used her Italian talents in style and cuisine to, among other accomplishments, become known as the “mother of French cuisine” and to create a style all her own that included the invention of lipstick, which historians say she made from beeswax [for its gloss] and coloring. Catholic by birth, she became also known for using poisons to assassinate her political and Protestant enemies of the day.

Her attention to architecture style manifested itself at Chenonceau when she added several floors of galleries that extended the small chateau to reach the south bank of the Cher. For a while, Catherine ruled France from a tiny room only steps from her bedroom. The chateau, which avoided destruction during France’s days of revolution by removing the “x” at the end of its original name to signal revolutionaries and their compatriots it was no longer a symbol of the ruling aristocracy, is now a tourist magnet with a strong field of attraction. Swarming with the other tourists who come in droves to see where its famous historical residents lived their lives of privilege and wealth, I marveled at its tantalizing tapestries and gazed in controlled awe at the nearby gardens, where Catherine grew orange trees, a popular, exotic addition to the grounds, and at the extensive timbered land where hunters harvested game and where the chateau’s farming operation were sited.

Looking into the chateau’s restaurant in the Orangerie, a magnificently maintained garden which features many orange trees, we choose not to dine there but instead to sit on one of the many benches that line the long path between the parking lot and the chateau that is shaded by the interlocking branches of the trees that grow along side it and eat the picnic lunch we had with us. In Blois that morning, I made crusty bread sandwiches of salami and cheese and tomatoes, which we ate leisurely with Provencal olives and that we coolly washed down with water collected from a public fountain in Blois. Although the weather was spectacular, it was a bit hot. But the breezes that swept through the shaded, wooded area cooled our skin and refreshed us for the drive to Tours and then home to Blois that night.

TOURS

Sunday or Dimanche in France finds most businesses closed, with the exception of eateries and others that choose to remain open. Accordingly, we found our way to the city center, where we walked through a lovely ceramic pottery exhibition in a panhandle park close to Tour’s impressive Hotel de Ville or city hall.

Now the capital city or prefecture of seven cantons comprising the Indre-et-Loire, Tours over the centuries has been a destination for Vikings, who came to sack it, Romans, who came to reorganize a small Christian community there, religious pilgrims who traveled to see the resting place of Saint Martin of Tours and where in the year 732 the northern march of Islam into Europe from Spain was stopped by the Battle of Tours. The name Tours, which in contemporary French means "towers," actually derives from the ancient Gallic tribe called the Turones. Now with a population of about 136,500, the town of Tours, where some way the purest form of French is spoken, prides itself on its moniker as Le Jardin de la France and serves as the ending point in the cycling race known as Paris-Tours.

PARIS IS BURNING

As we now know from the history of WWII and real records and research about the German occupation of France and Paris, one of the world’s most famous cities came within a hair’s breath of being both blown up and burned to the ground. But for one key German solider who uncharacteristically did not follow strict instructions to trigger explosives strategically placed to do great damage to the city’s signature monuments, cathedrals and the like, la Ville Lumiere or the City of Light would not be burning with the excitement, style, culture and cuisine that ignites the emotions of its contemporary residents and visitors today.

Although Paris, a name some say derived from that of a local Gallic tribe, the Parisi, which came to mean the working people or the craftsmen, was not set on fire by the Germans, it nonetheless is on fire each day. It's excitement is ignited each day by over two million residents who create flames of human movement and interaction that spread like wildfire from one of the 20 arrondissements or districts to another. Including the nine million or more residents who live in the banlieu or suburbs, Paris’ pulsating population, over 11 million or about the size of the population of the state of Ohio, is what makes this mega melting pot into a source of heat and light unlike any that could be produced by flames alone.

In our third visit to Paris, we retraced our steps to many of our favorite sites: Notre Dame on Ile de la Cite, Sacre Coeur on Montmartre, the Eiffel Tower and, of course, a leisurely walk up the Champs-Elysees from Place Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, where we again climbed an upward spiraling stairway [284 steps] to the top of the colossal monument celebrating Napoleon's greatest military victories. From this unique vantage point, and with the brilliant pastel colors from the setting sun, we could see a colorized picture of the the 12 streets that converged into it and the outlying areas, like Montmartre, as well.

MONTPARNASSE

During this third visit, which came by car not airplane and gave me a chance to drive in Paris – as exhilarating as Rome, for sure, but without the demolition derby aspect to it – we also were pleasantly surprised by the diversity and cornucopia of offerings we found in arrondissement Montparnasse, home to France’s tallest modern office tower that pointed us to our hotel home like a terra firma North Star.

Hotel Lenox, located midway on the short Rue Delhambre, which boasts a Metro stop at each end of it [and different lines at that; a real bonus in Paris], is a pleasing mixture of Parisians and tourists, with handfuls of ethic restaurants on it and close by it; plus, it has a boulangerie/patisserie, several bars, an Italian food store, an actual miniature modern American-style grocery store and a Laundromat that offers washing and drying machines, a real find according to my wife Kathy who was tiring of our impromptu clothes washing that allowed us to put the standard bidet included in our bathrooms to a new and good use [perfect for underwear and socks].

LA DEFENSE

Purchasing a 24-hour Metro pass [also good for buses, trains and finiculars like the one at Montmarte] for each of us [total = 27 Euros or $34.50 USD], we had our tourist transportation tool in hand and were ready to again conquer the city. Having been on our feet and/or walked on average five hours per day, or a minimum of three miles each day, we estimated that we had trod close to 100 hundred miles on foot, and a good Metro seemed a good deal at any price. Among the new sites we visited was La Défense, Europe's largest business district, that also hosts the head offices of almost half of all French companies, as well as the offices of major international firms and the headquarters of many international organizations such as UNESCO, the OECD, or the ICC, our guidebook tells us.

LUXEMBOURG GARDENS

Close to Montparnasse we found the Jardin du Luxembourg or Luxembourg Gardens, a large, quiet and romantic pubic park situated at the foot of the French Senate, which is housed in the Luxembourg Palace. The palace and gardens, according to information sources, were built between 1615 to 1627 and among the many wonderful, tranquil features featured there is a shallow oval pond where children play with miniature boats. Spread across the approximately 550 acre site are individual and groupings of statutes, fountains big and small and, to our pleasant surprise, an art exhibit or two, as we found walking through it at sunset on our second day in Paris.

INVALIDES

On our list of places to visit for the first time was Invalides, a sort of a Veteran’s Administration Hospital of its time that the Sun King Louie XIV had built in 1671 to house soldiers – about 4,000, historical reports say -- who were wounded in or became disabled from fighting in his various wars. The gold-gilded dome of Invalides, an architectural marvel of its time, is another unmistakable Parisian landmark.

With 15 courtyards in it, the biggest is the cour d’honneur or court of honor, Invalides was typical of its time until the Sun King, on the advice of his war minister, built the church Saint-Louis as an annex. Soldiers who were taken care of there were eventually required to attend daily mass. And at one time, way before Napoleon's remains were brought there, King Louie thought he would lie there in repose for eternity, which accounts for its spectacular splendor inside.

But in 1861 to house forever the remains of Napoleon Bonaparte, which were disinterred and moved from the remote island of St-Helena where he died and was buried in 1821, Emperor Napoleon I’s tomb, started in 1840, was built in the center of church Saint-Louis. It consists of six coffins built from five different materials – iron, mahogany, lead, ebony and granite -- that nest inside each other and are protected by an exoskeleton sarcophagus made of red Finnish porphyry granite, a royal purple stone historically reserved for honoring the likes of Caesars, kings, queens and other noble or famous people, according to audio information offered in a self-guided tour.

As Invalides was built for solidiers, it comes as no surprise that it is also a military museum that displays many unique, historical military items and groupings. One of those groupings consists of cabinets filled from end to end with miniature soldiers from ancient to modern times dressed exactly as they fought, from their headgear to their shields and swords. Keeping an eye on the maneuverings of the partisan political armies back in Ohio, where as a statehouse journalist I came to know the political players controlling the fields of power and those whose goal this year is displace them, one miniature soldier in particular captured my attention as a historical figure that captures the crusading zeal of the man running for Governor of Ohio on the Republican ticket. As an office holder and candidate who has carefully cultivated his relationship with Ohio's Christian Right and who has taken up their banner on the political field of battle, this soldier, to me, perfectly captured what this year's race for governor will be about in the Buckeye State.

ROUSTED AT THE RITZ BUT BUTTERED UP AT MAISON DU CHOCOLATE

My wife wanted to visit Place Vendome to again peer [emphasis on peer] into the extravagent windows of such famed shops as Piaget, Versace and other super-high-end shops whose impressive store fronts line the buildings that surround the square. I also wanted to visit The Ritz Hotel in its original location there and gander at its sumptuous decor.

As we made our way to Place Vendome from the Opera Garnier, where we had enjoyed a true treat on Christmas Eve of 2003 when we surprsingly secured what we thought was the emperor's box as we watched supple, flexible ballet dancers spin and twirl to the music of Tchaikovsky and others on the giant stage inside the dazzling structure, I remembered that the Maison du Chocolate was located nearby. Finding it [the only other one is in New York], we entered the door and gazed at wood-paneled interior and at the variety of exquisit chocolates on display. A chocolate expert soon came to our aid and helped us choose among many selections that would fit our pocketbook, giving us technical information as well as pedigrees of the various beans used to make different confections. We bought some Orinoco [Venezuelan] chocolate and a tin of Poudre de Cacao for those special occasions when only the best hot chocolate is served.

At Place Vendome, whose signature monument is a center-square column with Napoleon atop it and a history in relief of his military accomlishments that swirl upward around it, The Ritz Hotel occupies some very valuable real estate. "The façade was designed by Jules Hardouin Mansart, the creator of the 'mansard' roof...and the building was converted to a luxury hotel by Cesar Ritz; it opened on June 1, 1898 and...together with the culinary talents of minority partner Auguste Escoffier [the dean of French cooking], César Ritz made the hotel synonymous with opulence, service, and fine dining," according to an online synopsis of the world-class facility.

Walking past the doormen who looked impressive in their uniforms, we were spotted immediately upon entering the foyer by a well-dressed man with a wire coming out of his security guard earpiece. Knowing without hesitation that we were merely gawkers, not guests, he approached us as to our business there. When I asked him if we could enter, he said we could not. When I asked him if I could take a picture, he again said that would not be possible. Stranded a few steps from the front doors, I was left to take a mental picture of the elaborate corridor with mirrors, tables, flower arrangements and small seating areas that ran on both sides of it from its front to where it disappeaared beyond my vision. Needless to say, we left; but outside I did snap a shot as we hustled away to our next stop on the road back to our hotel.

OUR LAST SUPPER IN PARIS IN ST. GERMAN DE PRES

Readying itself for a day of music, stages and chairs were being placed in various venues across Paris, from La Defense to Invalides, where Napoleon’s Tomb is found, to smaller venues like the courtyard outside the Iglese at St. German de Pres, a church older than famed Notre Dame, where we would rendezvous with Kathy’s cousin living and working in Paris and sally forth to find a spot for dinner.

The day had started with more dark clouds than we had seen in a while and we hoped our god of good weather would not forsake us on our last day. As the evening approached, the excitement surrounding the city-wide music that everyone was talking about got to us as well, creating a new perfume of adventure for us.

Having scouted our route to the Point Royal RER train station on Boulevard Montparnasse, where we purchased our two one-way train tickets to Aeroport Charles de Gaulle [8 Euros each, compared to a 60 Euros taxi fare] that we would use the next day, we set off for Iglise de Saint-German-des-Pres, where we would hook up with Kristin, Kathy’s first cousin, and her friend Nina, a registered nurse now living in New Mexico.

We arrive early and milled around with the other hundreds of people who had gathered to listen to the musicians who would be playing from the stage in the courtyard of the church. Completed in 588, the church built beyond the city limits of Paris at the time in the pres or fields, was to house the stole of Saint Vincent, which was given by the bishop of Saragossa as reward for the French army relinquishing their siege of his city.

A few minutes before Kristina and Nina appeared, the rain we feared might arrive, did. The musicians retreated to cover inside the church and the four of us retreated into a slender street that lead us deeper into the labyrinth of passageways that spread out like a spider’s web on the Left Bank of the River Seine.

With the crowds thickening quickly, we walked by a head-banger band still playing despite the rain raining on their parade. I thought their Goth eye makeup streaming down their face added a new touch to the black-on-black theme of their act. Turning a corner, we found a row of small eateries. Signaling from the street with four fingers raised high to the waiter whose eye I caught and who nodded approval, we dashed inside out of the rain and happily claimed our table.

Being at its core a Greek restaurant with French offerings, we opened our last supper in Paris with a bottle of wine [24 Euros] and nibbled on the basket of bread our waiter has brought us. In Europe in general, salt and pepper are not sitting on the table as they are in The States, and you need to ask for it. Our waiter, who would first constern us then make us laugh later, arrived to take our orders. Looking at the order of the young man sitting next to me whose order had arrived and that displayed a whole fish, tail to head, with a soufflé dish of mushrooms and peppers sitting along side it, I pointed to it – it was the 12 Euro daily special as well -- and he wrote it down. My other table guests ordered mousakka, very Greek and very good, and a vegetarian salad plate.

Dinner was wonderful. My Dorade, a small Mediterranean fish with tender white flesh that when grilled evokes memories of pompano or red snapper, was delicate in texture and taste notwithstanding the need to filet the fish of its bones on my plate.

Near the end of dinner and the energeteic exchange of information about living and working in Europe, we decided to venture out for doux or sweet desert elsewhere. I asked our vested waiter the check. Looking back at me as he carried dishes from one table back to the kitchen, he acknowledged my request. As the minutes passed and turned into tens of minutes, we tried again to ask for the check. Again he looked at us, nodding that he understood what we wanted. But he continued to take orders and deliver plates to various tables as the small restaurant was now filled with laughing, drinking patrons. Even Kristin, who has lived in Paris now for over eight months and who has lost what ever Texas twang she had in favor of a lilting French accent, pleaded with him for the bill.

Approaching 45 minutes since we first asked for the check, I suggested we stand up, walk away from the table and head for the door, which we did. Either they would come with the bill or dinner would be free, which was becoming an idea whose time had come. Our waiter looked at us with a smile and a slight shrug of his shoulders, as if to say “I’m busy but don’t leave without paying.” Like the well-dressed, goateed villain in The French Connection who waves goodbye to Popeye Doyle with a hand-puppet gesture from the subway as it pulls away, I did the same from outside the restaurant, where the stone pavement was wet from the rain but the crowds were thicker than ever as the Spanish brass band at the end of the street was riling up the walkers with nationalist soccer songs generating that elicited shouts and yells of revelry.

He beckoned me to come back, which I did. In my stunted French, I thanked him for the free dinner and told him how delicious it was. He smiled and apologized for the delay, explaining he was only the order taker and that the owner, a woman with red hair, would make up the bill. Retreating to her small desk at the rear of the stone-walled space and huddling around her as she fumbled through a stack of orders to find ours, I told her the meal was great and that as a former restaurant owner myself, I would be glad to wash dishes because I had no money to pay the bill. She smiled and laughed a bit, then totaled it all up. The bill came to 83 Euros [$106 USD].

The hour was now late and wandering aimlessly for an evening-ending desert was no long an option. We bid our goodbyes to Kristin and Nina as we parted company with them in the Metro station next to our rendezvous church.

The following morning, or later that night would be more accurate, Kathy and I headed out from our hotel at 4:30 am to clatter through the streets to our RER train station, where we would catch the first train of the day to the aeroport and our flight.

BRUISED BUT NOT BATTERED, MY PREDICTAMENT IN PARIS IS A TALE OF TWO HEALTH SYSTEMS

From the first, surprise occurrence in my life of a blood clot [lower left leg] in February of 2005 and the installation of three coronary stents – bloodstream culverts -- later that year on August 29, the day Hurricane Katrina washed away New Orleans, I have been pressed into service as a new paying member of Club Coumadin and have begrudging become a daily pill popper of Plavix. The drug is a good match up with Coumadin by preventing blood platelet’s from “sticking together,” thereby helping to avoid further clot formations that in many cases can cause strokes or sudden death. Coumadin, a French word, is also known by its generic name, Warfarin, a blood thinning drug first used to kill rats by causing massive internal hemorrhaging.

Of all the Paris guidebooks and travel articles I have read over the years, not one of them, discounting for the moment websites like that of our Secretary of State’s that provides more than just classic tourist information, invests more than a few lines to discuss or list Paris hospitals and what to do if you need one.

What is an INR and why am I talking about it in a travel blog? INR is code for International Normalized Ratio, a global standard, like ISO is for manufacturing, for gauging the clotting or coagulating ability of blood. The INR gold standard is between 2.0 – 3.0, unless you have artificial heart valves, which then allows for a higher INR. If the INR reading is below 2.0, either more Coumadin is needed or a change is diet is required; the same applies for readings above 3.0. Coumadin also has upwards of a 72-hour lag time between when ingested and when it becomes active in the blood stream. Vitamin K, the nemesis of Coumadin, works in real time. Before leaving on my trip, my last three INR readings put me in the landing zone as I call the midpoint in the INR Gold Standard.

When your membership in Club Coumadin is granted because of blood clots or other hematological problems that require thin blood, a balancing act or dance commences between your medication and other factors; most especially diet, which affects the fuel mixture as I call it between a drug that thins your blood to prevent future blood clots and foods like spinach, cauliflower and other cruciferous legumes rich in Vitamin K that cause your blood to clot or coagulate, and that may hasten the formation of future clots, which may lead to strokes or sudden death.

On the go as we have been for weeks now, finding and eating Vitamin K foods has been slapdash at best because restaurant menus do not always feature items with spinach, especially in the quantity I needed, and green grocers, which are easily found, often did not have spinach, my vegetable of choice I now look at as I do with my man-made drugs of Coumadin and Plavix. Spinach, as I look at, is not just for Popeye, anymore!

Spontaneous bruising from my growing imbalance between drugs and diet first surfaced in Barcelona. A quarter-sized spot on my left rib cage hurt when touched or when my camera, which I wore under my shirt or CNN flak jacket, bounced against it while walking. A Post-it-note-sized bruise caught my attention in the mirror one morning, but unsure at the time of what had caused it, we went walking as we did each day but made visiting a vegetable market to hunt down spinach [or spinaci in Italian or epinard in French or espinaca in Spanish] a must-do in the day. I was taking the daily regime of pills but my diet was not keeping pace with that dosage.

My bruises expanded, literally and in brilliant blues and purples [bad skin colors] in Blois, where we discussed whether to go to a hospital there or take off a day early for Paris. One night while writing a draft story, I rested my left elbow on the table top and felt a sensation of padding on its tip I had not felt before. Putting my hand on the padding, I realized it was a small sack of blood that had formed over night and was hot to the touch. Also, in Blois, where we wandered into a church garden that featured many culinary herbs and other plants that were grown for their ornamental value, I purloined a couple large leafs of Swiss Chard and chewed on them like a rabbit eating its last meal. Vitamin K is where you find it, and that night, I found it growing in a beautiful container in Blois.

We left Blois for Paris the next day. With great weather again greeting us, we drove the local scenic roads until we came to Orleans, the prefecture of the Centre region of France located about 80 miles southwest of Paris. At Orleans, we joined the streaming freeway traffic and headed to Paris.

Finding our Paris lodger, Hotel Lenox in Montparnasse, and returning our Hertz Peugeot to the Gare [station] Montparnasse, we availed ourselves of a farmacia, where I displayed my bruised arms to the farmacist, who then directed me to a nearby hospital. All important matters having gone our way so far, the fact that we were staying in a hospital district was in step with our luck to date.

Passports, American health cards and international driving license in tow, we sought and easily found Hospital Leopold Bellan, a semi private facility, close by at 19-21 Rue Vercingetorix.

Walking into the emergency room, we approached the front desk, where we first laid eyes on Natalie, our Paris-born nurse who spoke a smidgen of English but whose Spanish later turned out to be the Rosetta Stone of our conversation, and who looked at my passport and wrote down my name and address. When she saw my bruises, which looked like the sugar spots on a too ripe banana, and learned that they were five days old, her jaw dropped slightly as she directed us to take a seat in a nearby corridor with a row of chairs. We did so. But all the while we wondered to ourselves how long it would take for me to be seen or what it would cost and how we would pay for it.

Within two minutes of nestling into our chairs, a door opened and nurse Natalie called for us to enter. Her first instruction was for me to take off my clothes. Following instructions but keeping my undergarment in place, I dawned one of the open-paneled hospital garbs common place in hospitals in America and abroad. In as little time as it took to be seen, my French woman doctor walked into the room. She sat at a desk and started talking with Natalie, who would then try in her pigeon English to translate the doctor’s instructions to me. As someone who is moderately conversant in Spanish and who knocked some of the rust off the language while in Barcelona, I asked in Spanish if either of them spoke it? Natalie immediately replied that she did. She told me that even though she was born in Paris, her parents were Portuguese and for reasons she could not explain, it is easier for the Portuguese to learn Spanish than for a Spaniard to learn Portuguese.

Kathy had walked back to Hotel Lenox, a few streets away, to retrieve my medical records, which we had wisely brought with us, that listed all my medications and included a brief history about them. In the course of the two hours I was told to lay quietly in my hospital bed, Natalie and Docteur Dominique Menez, chef de service, and her team of adjoints or assistants, took blood and ran a full profile report that included an INR reading; they also performed an electrocardiogram and a urinalysis along with a blood pressure reading. Both members of my French medical team told me that I would be kept for two days if needed, to which I made a feeble effort to argue that my trip to Paris would be squandered. I did not argue it forcefully knowing who I was up against. That was not a well received argument, as both their stares told me in non verbal but no uncertain terms.

At the end of the nearly two hour wait, nurse Natalie and Docteur Menez returned and told me I was alright and could go. They downsized my Coumadin dose to 1mg per day and advised me to cut down on walking by using the Paris Metro or its buses. We said we would do that. Natalie then took me to the check out desk, where she disappeared for a minute only to return with an appointment time for a blood test two days later.

The time to pay arrived. The young man serving as the caissier or cashier punched his keyboard as he looked at his computer monitor. He printed our bill and gave it to us. Looking at the bill with a large dose of trepidation, given what we thought such an event might cost in The States, we looked hard at the number at the bottom of the page. We looked at the figure then looked at each other. A small smile of incredulity crept over our faces. For all that had been done, especially to us foreigners who just walked in off the street, the tab was 43.95 euros, or $56.25 in USD. We paid the bill, which could easily have been a bottle of wine and two dinner entrees that evening, with our MasterCard. Natalie, without understanding the system well enough to explain it to us, even in her slapdash English, said that anyone in France who has a credit card has access to health insurance.

What a novel and intriguing idea for the nation with the so-called greatest health care system in the world to consider. But not holding our breath for that breakthrough of understanding or political will, my quest to become an Italian citizen through heritage and the ability to live and work in the EU as a result of it takes on even more significance as health care comes to play a larger role in our remaining years.

When we first looked at the bill, we suggested to our young bursar that in America, where upwards of 45 million people do not have health care insurance to begin with and whose only option is to use emergency room and pay emergency room rates, for those that do, a $100 dollar co-payment would be par for the course and that the cost of all the work they had done could easily have come to $1,200 or more. He looked at us as incredulously as we had first looked at our paltry cost of care. Even though the Paris clay court tennis tournament had ended weeks before, for us in Paris, it was “Game, set, match.”

Not being held hostage for two of my three days in Paris was exhilarating. And now knowing my INR reading count and what spontaneously happens to me when I reach that level through an imbalance created from medication, diet or exercise, I had a vivid portrait in blue and purple of why I need to be vigilant in juggling medicines, diet and exercise to my best advantage.

My next posting will come from "The Divided States of America" and feature a roundup of observations and tips.