A Paris Adventure

Paris, Easter, 2019

The Spring of 2019 was hectic and stressful for Folke and me. We had made the decision to sell the Swedish farm. We had also visited Rochester where Folke’s daughter Rebecka and her husband had moved to from Hawaii. The last thing on my mind was travel for fun.

Still living at the farm, I visited my best friend Lola, an active 80+ year old. She was a widowed farm wife as well as a community activist and judge. She mentioned that her neighbor and two friends, who were sisters, were going on a trip to Paris. This really surprised me. I knew she had back pain, a newly replaced hip, and walked with a cane or rolling walker. The sisters were also elderly; one had been a physical education teacher, and if possible was even perkier than the rest.

Lola confided to me that she was anxious about the upcoming trip: wasn’t she too old to travel? How was she going to manage luggage with her walker? Besides, she spoke no French. She would never have come up with the idea herself.

But her friend and neighbor Britt, also an elderly widowed farm wife, was a whirlwind of ideas and had no fear. Britt had come upon a once-in-a-lifetime air ticket deal. The flight would depart from a small city not far from us and fly directly to Paris for a long weekend. We would enjoy three hotel nights, breakfasts included, for a great price. Suddenly there was a quartet of elderly women eager to see exciting “Paree”.

As Lola and I chatted, it occurred to me that if Folke and I went with them, we younger ones could help the group with logistical hurdles. Before we knew it, we were welcomed to the Paris group and had bought our tickets. Now we were a sextet.

Britt was our leader so we met at her farm which was close to Lola’s. We and the four women sat down to open-faced sandwiches, maps, and brainstorming. These women were examples of Sweden’s continuing education tradition. They believe everyone should learn and take classes as long as they live. They decided we’d make our own class; each of us would pick a subject, read up on it, and teach it to the group at regular coffee meetings before we left.

Britt had visited Paris before. She brushed up on her French and gave us some useful phrases. I picked history, especially the Viking expedition that sailed up the Seine River and attacked Paris at Easter in the year 845. They sneaked up the river with 120 Viking ships and thousands of warriors. They had a “field day” in Paris. They finally agreed to stop plundering when Charles the Bald paid a ransom of almost 6,000 pounds of gold and silver. The Vikings thought that it was fair, shook on it, packed up their ships and left.

With each mini class session, we became more excited. One of Lola’s sons was well-known in Kalmar and he called the airport director and said they better make sure his Mom had VIP status as she rolled through – and yes, we all did. A two-hour flight, a bus trip and there we were at our simple, but perfectly functional hotel.

We were, however, concerned about the violent “Yellow Vest” protesters who had been rioting against President Macron’s new tax on gas. For the first day, we had booked bus and boat tours along the Seine River so the first day would be fine. But then we would be on our own.

That first night we met in Britt’s room; she had thoughtfully packed a supper of roll-ups. Farm women never go anywhere without a packed lunch. Someone had already found wine so we toasted using the hotel’s little plastic water glasses. Such fun in lively company! Britt’s room became our staging and briefing room, with wine and storytelling after each eventful day.

The bus tour on the morning of the first day was not as planned. The yellow vesters had burned and smashed along the Champs Élysées – almost like when the Vikings sacked the city. Many streets were closed with more gendarmes (police) than I knew existed. We realized then that Paris alone had about the same number of people as all of Sweden – 9 million. It seemed they were all milling around that day. The bus tour proceeded, but not to the places we expected because of the protesters.

We had a Swedish guide who spoke a particular Swedish regional dialect that was quite different from how we farm women spoke. The ladies tittered amongst themselves now and then about the funny-sounding accent. We did get to visit the Eiffel tower. The boat tour was fun, but chilly, and we thought about the 120 Viking ships and their crews, also at chilly Easter time.

The next day was a thrill because we were on our own. One of the first orders of business was finding a place for Lola to buy a beret, which Swedes call a basker. When we found the hat store, they confused the clerk by asking for a basker. When our friends saw Lola in the pastel blue beret she tried on, they all needed to get their own. You know, the Parisians don’t wear berets anymore, so our troop was very easy to keep track of as we moved slowly along the sidewalks wearing our baskers, well, okay, berets.

They also decided to eat at a sidewalk cafe in Montmartre, the ancient artist’s quarter. We had a delightful lunch. The exciting part was when Britt, in her school French, attempted to bargain with the amused waitress.

The highlight was seeing Notre Dame – I loved the atmosphere, the soft light and the display of models showing what it looked like a thousand years ago.

Imagine our horror when this fantastic cathedral burned just three weeks later! We called each other and cried. That was 6 years ago. That tragedy is now coupled in my mind with the wonderful trip that proved that elderly women can have big adventures, just in the nick of time.

Copyright © 2025 Ann Sigford