Street Signs

Well, that's it for Paris this time. There are lots more Paris pix, of course, but they'll have to wait until later.

I've now started scanning a set of slides from 1989. First, a little background : Ken and I met in Paris in 1981. By 1983 we had rented our first apartment together in Washington, DC. Later, in 1986, we moved to San Francisco.

It wasn't until 1988 that we went back to France for the first time since leaving in 1982. That year, we stayed in Paris revisiting old haunts. The following year, 1989, we took our second trip to France and did a driving tour around the southwest. I had just started graduate school at Berkeley. It was the year I turned 30.

The trip began in Grenoble. Ken was there for a conference, and I joined him at the end. We rented a car and started driving. We had a loose plan, but not much of one. The only reservations we had were at the hotel in Paris the night before our flight home. Our drive took us to Nîmes, Arles, Aigues-Mortes, Sète, Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, Toulouse, Cahors, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Royan, Cognac, Poitiers, Chambord, and Chartres before we headed to Paris for the flight back to SF.

During that trip, we drove through a small, unremarkable town called Saint-Aignan on the Cher River. We had no idea, of course, that fourteen years later we'd actually buy a house and move there.

The 1989 trip was the first of many French "road trips" Ken and I have taken together over the years. I was just getting into photography then. So now, I'm digitizing the slides and will post some of them over the next few weeks. Stay tuned !