Romancing the Stone

I felt like Kathleen Turner yesterday, or Joan Wilder, in the movie Romancing the Stone.  Playing opposite Michael Douglas, roar.
But, I was going to Carcassonne in France and she was going to Carcassone in South America, regardless, yesterday I was Joan Wilder, a young, beautiful and successful author of.... ahhh romance novels.
I started off in my Renault Elf, a tiny (dahhh) red car.  The woman at Hertz, obvious to the fact I was
an American, waved me off and said she's been to the United States, Las Vegas.  If that is her only impression of what the United States is like, I should have had some sequin number on.
The City of Carcassonne was a good hour and a half drive.  As I am driving I'm thinking what could
be the worst thing that could happen to me today?  This is outside of the routine getting lost.  The first
thought was getting in an accident, the fast impatient drivers, the hundreds of round abouts.  The thought
of defending myself when someone hit me, that would be the challenge.  Heck, I wouldn't even know
it if someone was swearing at me in sentences if they laced it with a thick French accent.
I made it to Carcassonne without incident.
I thought of my son, his years of playing Legos and his Playmobile castle, he must visit here now,
darn, he's doing his thesis at Bates College.
Carcassone is an amazing, first a Roman fort and then a medieval city, with 53 towers!  All over the
countryside there are castles and abbeys.  What makes Carcassone especially unique is the fact it
was restored, perfectly.  During the life of this defensive structure, the castle was never taken. The
thin rectangular windows, for shoting arrows, holes in the flooring made it possible to shoot vertically
downwards.  Yes, even a drawbridge.  Just like the movies I thought, so very cool.  Within the walls
there was a city, a city for tourists.  Candy stores, maps, linens, crepes and toy stores.  Toy stores
loaded with costumes of knights and toys: swords, shields and princess type dresses.
In light of just not Libya, I couldn't help but think, back then there were waves of great invasions
where empires collapsed.  Don't we still have barbarian warriors today?  I think yes!
On the drive back I thought, everything has changed over the centuries and nothing has.  When I
think of European history,  a great deal of the fighting was religion based.  Today religion is still
an issue but in my opinion, the forefront is government, not governing with ethics.  Sadly, it is
what it is and I don't see the cycle ever changing.  Does anyone ever want to surrender when they
are convinced, without a doubt, they are right.  You grow up in this environment, and the apples don't
fall far from the trees, resistance is in the blood.
The return drive, I intentionally went on roads that took me through villages.  Although mostly
stucco homes, tight to the road with colorful shutters, people were out.  I thought there is comfort
in village/town living.  There seemed to be more of a calm, maybe I was feeling tradition, it felt
different.  Why?  I think Americans are programed to a faster beat.  Do we really smell the roses?
I pass by vineyards, rented or owned plots, and the French are tending to the vines just as
generations gone by did and generations to come will.