The journey? The destination?

Thanks to a combination of popular acclaim and some people's difficulty accessing my blog site, I am continuing with these emails, as well as trying to make them into a blog.
According to my friend Susie, it's the journey, not the destination. I am often of the other school, finding the journey to be the uncomfortable parts, the diesel fumes, the cramped airplane seat, the ugly streets and interminable standing in line on the way to the scenic attraction. But how do we distinguish a destination from a journey? Videy Island was a destination, but we wouldn't have had the chance to go there, nor even heard of it, if we had not stopped in Iceland simply as a break in the journey. The Notre Dame likewise: fabulous, but we were in Paris on our way to Poitiers. Though we had to fly into somewhere (that makes it a destination, right?) once we had determined that we would be there, we stayed a while and enjoyed it. And that's where we left off those emails, with me stumping around Paris with a cane and my brother suggesting I take my life in my hands and rubberneck from a Vespa.
We took a bus to Gare Montparnasse and a train to Poitiers, where Nels's friend Shauna picked us up and took us home to Lusignan. We had no idea she didn't live in metro Poitiers, but I am delighted.
I guess Lusignan counts as a destination. Paris and Barcelona are simply the airports we are using along the way. We wrote to the three people we know between us in Europe. One didn't respond. One was going to be away. Shauna said, "Come. Stay as long as you like."
Lusignan is a village of a few thousand people on the old pilgrimage route to St. Jacques de Compostelle. I have thought of walking that road, as it clearly antedates Christianity. Sitting on the train I was thinking that an hour on the rails would be several days walk. So I'm glad to touch it tangentially.
It's gorgeous here, with ruins of the old castle and a view over the wooded valley. The people here trace their heritage through Melusine, who was an ondine or a serpent goddess or I guess both. My kind of people.
From the train we see wheat fields, cows, red poppies, little islands of wooded land among the ploughed fields. Old farmsteads with courtyards enclosed in stone walls. Rural and small-town France seems to me the epitome of the good life, permaculture in action not applied remedially to industrial ugliness, but as carried forwards from a time when building a life that endures was the only practical - or perhaps even possible - way to behave. It can be constraining, of course. The new buildings mimic the old. But constraint is a necessity for life, and creates a visual harmony that highlights both the little variations of detail and the life that the stone walls enclose.
France is not as bad as Iceland for the air quality standards, but still not California by a long way. All these Peugeots and Renaults and Citroens. Why don't we have them at home? Do they not measure up? I miss my 404. Of course even here, those are so old one doesn't see them.
We took the train to La Rochelle, accompanied by Shauna's thirteen-year-old daughter as our translator and guide. Lucky for us she had stayed home from school with a tummy ache. Saw the old towers and wall that defended the harbor in the days before cannon. Walked barefoot on the little sand beach by the port, but couldn't actually get out of the inlet to the ocean.
Went for a fancy dinner in Poitiers for Nels's birthday. Walked around the town a little first, medieval church with someone practicing the organ, 15th century university (loved the old stone staircase, was happy to find the unlocked washroom underneath), hilly nonlinear streets of half-timbered houses, beautiful green river with big fish, Worried that we wouldn't be able to be seated in the tiny restaurant we had chosen, so we got a reservation, but as it turned out we had chosen wrong. I don't know whether the food was as bad as it seemed, or whether the ugly mural and cracking plastic menus affected my appetite. Oh well. It didn't bother him as much as it did me.
Almost 50 degrees north, three weeks before solstice, it stays light too late to enjoy the stars. Many weeds I don't recognize. Many local foods I haven't tried. Seems like we are mostly taking it easy and staying home, but tell that to my knee. Want to go canoeing in the local marshes and canals, but not alone, and I have no one to share paddling. Lindens coming into blossom sweeten the warm air. Swallows, woodpeckers, bats. Tomorrow we're off to see chaateauux.