That’s 81 pics! The captions alone add up to a lot of words – maybe just look at the pics!
What were we exploring? Well, we’ve been starting to think about moving on.
After spending Christmas 2024 at home in Brittany – no children or grandchildren, sigh! – we drove down to our little flat in Murcia. It was warm and sunny almost the whole time there. Not like at home.
We decided that the Holidays should be warm and sunny, which sort of confirmed that we should leave our little cottage in northwest France, and if so figure out where to go next. Maybe Spain?
On a bike ride, Lisa and I were somehow separated by this flock as it was being ably shepherded – by a man and mostly his dog – along the path.Lisa with John Pascuzzi during dinner in Murcia. I worked with John at Atmel in San Jose in around 2000. He now works in Malaysia, and his wife’s family is from Murcia. Small world!The forum in Cartagena, the ancient Roman port city about 30 minutes from our flat. The centuries had resulted in this theater being covered with the town, literally, until it was rediscovered in the 1980s and uncovered in the early 2000s. I love Roman ruins!Sunset view from our back balcony over the driving range. No, we don’t use it!
After a month of sunny days, we made our way back to the cottage in Brittany. It’s about a thousand mile drive, which typically takes us three days and allows us to explore both countries en route.
As we did this time, spending a couple of nights in Arles, the Roman city where the Rhone opens its arms to the Mediterranean.
Zaragoza in Aragon, Spain is one of our regular stopping off points. Here is Lisa in front of El Pilar, the extraordinary church there which Franco ordered bombed. The two bombs which landed on the church roof failed to explode and are now displayed on the wall inside. God won that one!The Roman ampitheater in Arles. Arles did very well in ancient times, in particular by supporting Julius Caesar against Pompei while its neighbor and rival Marseille supported Pompei. That must have made sense at the time!Van Gogh’s “Cafe Terrace at Night,” one of the almost 300 works that he painted in Arles.An ancient street in Arles. Its most famous recent resident was Vincent van Gogh, during 1888 and 1889.
We only spent a week in Brittany before again moving on. This time, we were heading to the US. We had not visited our former home in northern California at all in 2024, and I was eager to get back. For her part, Lisa was equally eager to visit her daughter Shannon’s family, including her three adorable granddaughters, in Connecticut.
That meant that this was going to be a bicoastal visit, and it started in Paris on Valentine’s Day. One of the distinct advantages of living in rural France is that long journeys often take you through Paris!
In La Coupole on Valentie’s Day with attractive strangers at the next table. The dome is the waiter’s head! The shining ring on the red velvet cushion purports to be the crown of thorns worn by Christ. Right!! Yet when we approached it, we each felt something warm and wonderful in our chests, and we both wept.With the grandchildren near New Haven. Grandma Lisa and mom Shannon playing with baby Sylvie (who turned two while we were there) and Rosamond (age 7).The oldest granddaughter, Mabel (age 9), after her first salon haircut. Grandma Lisa treated the girls.With the three girls in their living room. We couldn’t wait to see them again. You can see Shannon, the photographer, reflected in the windows.We passed through Grand Central on our way to San Francisco. One good thing about New Haven is that you tend to go through New York City to go anywhere.
That was one coast done, and off we went to the other. Lisa’s dad Maxie, 85, always finds a way to pick us up at SFO, and he and her mom Iris, 84, always have a bedroom for us, which makes our visits to California so much easier than for many others. Thank you so much!
Some pics from our March Bay Area visit . . ..
Iris and Max in their living room. Iris has a thing for clocks!Left to right, Lisa’s Aunt Karen, dad, mom, nephew Levi, brothers Michael and Max, and Lisa.Newlyweds Tracy Masten and Jim Coats on their front porch in Sacramento. Jim and I were at Cal together.Dee and Lisa, friends since High School, in Oswald’s in Santa Cruz.With Tom Henry, another friend from Berkeley, hiking in El Toro Park near Salinas.Lisa and I in Stanford Shopping Center. That is the name of an actual street just off the Seine in Paris, next to O’Jason’s pub.Two signs that all is not well in paradise. First, this East Bay Target is now obliged to sell underwear behind locked doors!And second, Bloomingdale’s in downtown San Francisco closed its doors, one of several department stores to flee the theft and drugs running rampant on the city’s streets.
Next, pics during the three months we were back home in Brittany. . . .
Arlo and his delightful new girlfriend Erato took a few days off from their crazy work schedules in Athens and visited us. That’s Mont Saint Michel.Our landscaping has advanced well over the last year, and Lisa has been hard at work training the new fast-climbing vines.My law school friend George Paul, taking the pic, brought his wife Bonnie to Paris, and we visited with them for a couple of fun days.Lisa’s high school friend Julie and her husband Larry met up with us in Bayeux, the Norman town famous for its tapestry of a regrettable historical event in 1066.Callie on the trolley requesting attention by the simple expedient of looking adorable.Linda’s birthday celebration, with Elaine and Lisa joining in the champagne fun.Sadly, NIck and Charlotte abruptly divorced after 15 years together. Eliza visited us a few times.A weekend in London for a concert in Hyde Park featuring Van Morrison, Cat Stevens and Neil Young. Rock’n’Roll is here to stay!I honked a car in my village when he blocked all three directions of traffic, and he kicked this. It is time to move on.
In June, Shannon, Greg and their three daughters paid us a wonderful ten-day visit. They stayed in the cottage with us most of the time, before spending a day with us at Disneyland and another in Paris Montparnasse.
Rosamond in line waiting for the Dumbo ride at Disneyland in Paris.In Dinan with Mabel and Rosamond eating their ice creamMabel at the lunch table in a cafe on Mont Saint MichelLisa with her daughter, son-in-law and the three granddaughters on the beach in Saint-Malo. When the tide is low, you can walk to the old fort on the rocks behind them. Here they are walking back toward the shore with the rising tide already covering a portion of the path.
Next we flew back to northern California, where we spent a couple of weeks getting over the jet lag. . . .
At Zelda’s on Capitola Beach.Lisa’s friends Kim and Sam took us to explore a winery near Morgan Hill.Fog off Waddell Beach, north of Santa Cruz on the extraordinary Highway 1.
Then came our highlight of the year, driving across the country from the San Francisco Bay to New Haven, Connecticut.
Our Honda CR-V came with a 4,000 mile warranty, enough to cover us to get to Connecticut, which made it worth paying dealer price for us. Thanks, Fremont Honda!
There’s something truly rejuvenating about a long road trip. We took 13 nights to cover over 3,500 miles, and we had no idea where we were going to go after the Rockies.
We wanted to see the Colorado Rockies both because they are beautiful and because Lisa and Russ, her first husband, had ridden their bikes from Santa Cruz to Denver when they were in their 30s. I was eager to see the passes that they had biked over: pedaling over a Rocky Mountain pass sounds a little like a definition of madness!
The remaining 2,000+ miles we played by ear. Well, almost. We knew that we wanted to see Memphis and Nashville for example. Lisa would ask Grok for sights to see en route, and it gave us some great suggestions -as well as making a few real errors! AI remains engagingly flawed.
More on this trip, which somehow coincided with a few of the terrible events marking US political discourse these days, is in this post: https://iansmemoirs.com/looking-for-america/
Winnemucca, Nevada, Butch Cassidy’s Saloon, the “Hole in the Wall.” Yep, we’re in the West!On a riverside walk at dusk in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, gateway to Rabbit Ears Pass.The second pass that Lisa and Russ biked over thirty years ago, after Rabbit Ears. They averaged over 100 miles a day. Crazy!And talking of bikes, Mark Twain had this advice, which we saw posted in his home town of Hannibal, Missouri.We traveled with our own Nespresso coffee machine and creamer. Good coffee at a great price!President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s childhood home in Abilene, Kansas. The soldier in charge of D-Day.Graceland shows off many of Elvis’s toys, including this pink 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood, a favorite of his.We discovered Buc-ee’s this trip, with its great ads, monster gas stations and accompanying cafes and stores.Finally, a Buc-ee’s product which I could not resist! (Read the socks!)
We had signed a sublease in Hamden, Connecticut, right next to New Haven, so that we could explore areas on the East Coast of potential interest to us while also being able to help Shannon with Lisa’s granddaughters.
Outside my first year dorm room at the law school. My bedroom – it was a small suite – is under the billy club! The whole dorm is now, sadly, offices.
Having lived in and around New Haven for three years back in the early 1980s, I doubted that we would enjoy life there.
However, because Shannon and her family now live nearby, we felt that we should check if things had improved. But no, if anything I found that they have gotten worse.
Which of course did not stop us having an enjoyable stay.
The sublet was in a great location, with the rail trail from New Haven to Northampton Massachusetts running alongside it. Lisa ran on it, and I biked along it, regularly. A few pics. . . .
A privately-owned area for rest and prayer, maintained on the side of the Rail Trail. Thank you!Yale’s two newest residential colleges (2017) are on the Rail Trail. This is Benjamin Franklin College.The house on the beach where I lived second year of law school, with Bob Gilbert, Stacy Burns and others. Party city!New Haven Rail Trail sign.A disused lock on the Rail Trail. The railway replaced the canal before the trail was built on the abandoned railway.Lisa sitting on the balcony of our Hamden sublet one night.
Sometime while we were in Connecticut, Alex and Haley became proud home owners for the first time, realizing the American dream before they turn 30, and in northern California, no less! They’ve really done a wonderful job of working hard – especially Haley, who works in special ed, a truly demanding job – and conserving their resources over the years. They sent us a bunch of pix after moving in, and here are a few.
The landscaped back yard, featuring an awning for an outdoor living room / barbecue area and trees already planted to create a more private space.The happy couple in front of their new front door.The kitchen, ready for human and feline action (cats are an important part of this household).Pride of ownership.
Meanwhile, we explored parts of the East Coast from our Hamden base.
We weren’t sure what we were looking for in terms of finding somewhere new to live, but assumed that finding out would be fun. It was, even if we didn’t figure out where we could realistically and happily move to. And of course, when we did, it was nowhere near where we had explored! That’s the way things work.
Which did not diminish the explorations, based around John Paul Roy’s home in Greensboro, North Carolina. Thanks John Paul for putting us up!
Jean Roy lives near Albany, New York, and put us up on our way to Montréal.John Roy took this lovely pic of us in his home in Greensboro.Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory in Waterbury, Vermont, features graves of discontinued flavors!The Smithereens playing in the Kate Theater (as in Hepburn), Old Saybrook, Connecticut.The always charming Jim Blakey with Lisa before the Smithereens concert.
We were based back in Brittany for the last couple of months of the year. I spent a week in England to pay my respects to buried ancestors before again leaving them behind. Lisa did not want to join in what she called my “dead and dying tour!”
My paternal great grandparents’ grave in Reading, before clean up.And after clean up.Bernie and Leslie Scully near Glastonbury in Somerset. I visited living friends too!Mum and her family’s grave in Erdington, Birmingham, well maintained by cousin Ron Warrington and his son and daughter-in-law, Alec and Sarah.Hugh Murray and his four sons built our Marlow home, where mum lived for thirty years. They built it for themselves before their boys moved out and they sold it to mum and dad. That was in 1966. They are buried in the churchyard of St Peter’s Church, Marlow. Building the church’s extension was the Murrays’ proudest achievement.
Our future plans have started to gel.
A friend of our neighbors kept her stallions here for a few weeks in November – December, cleaning up our meadow. She had to move them because they had nothing left to eat!
Europe is out of the running. We each fled here after significant financial losses and trauma in our respective divorces – a kind of escape, if you will. We’re both over that.
The flat in Murcia is great for winter months, but too hot in summer and too far from family.
A sample of what we’ll regret leaving behind: the canal near Evran, on our regular 30-mile bike ride.
We have signed a contract to sell our Breton cottage at the end of January, when we’ll head down to Murcia. There we have been suggested a very good sales price for the flat. We’ll likely sell that too.
There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip, but that’s our general direction.
Back in the US, if all goes well next year, we want to be near enough to as many family members as possible. That means settling closer to the West Coast than to the East.
The spine of one of my bound volumes from WSGR’s Micron deal – my first visits to Boise.
Lisa’s parents both live in northern California, as do her two brothers and their families, two of her children, Mars and Liam, and my son Alex and daughter-in-law Haley.
Lisa’s extended Irish family is also in California, as are my sister Sue and brother-in-law Derek, married for 50 years in 2025, and their two children each with three grandchildren.
That’s a lot of family! Maybe we’ll be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with a few of them each year!
Our divorce losses have not been recouped, meaning that we still can’t afford to live in California itself. But we can move closer to it. And we can find better weather than in Brittany!
Our destination looks to be Boise, Idaho.
I first suggested it during our drive across the country, remembering visits there while working for Wilson Sonsini in 1998 (the firm was helping Micron buy TI’s memory chip business). But the idea didn’t take off until Grok suggested it to Lisa back in Brittany after she fed in a bunch of criteria encompassing what we were looking for.
It’s only a 1-1/2 hour flight to SFO (10-11 hours by car), has 300 sunny days a year on average in the high desert, and boasts a lot of techies (e.g. HP and Micron) and friendly Mormons. It features good college football at Boise State (we’re thinking season tickets), plenty of trails for running and biking, winters not too cold, an active, walkable downtown with plenty of live music, and a purple political environment (blue city in a red state).
Check back next year, and we’ll tell you how it’s going.
In the meantime, here are pics of our Christmas Season, wishing you all a very Happy New Year!
There’s no beating Christmas decor in France. And the medieval buildings in Dinan help!Then there are the Chirstmas windows, here in Printemps on Boulevard Hausmann in Paris.The Dior shop on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, with Lisa by the traffic light!Charlie took a break from his demanding Amazon job in London to visit us for my birthday. Thanks kiddo! Dinner at the Lion d’Or in Saint-Malo.Nothing beats home cooking when Lisa is doing it! Count the scallops!With the Nashes at Villa Park for the Man United game. Don’t ask! Derek was reserving a table for his crew, and Courtney took the pic.Lisa spent two days preparing our Christmas dinner, a triumph which easily overcame the catastrophes! I did most of the clean up, including the catastrophes, delighted to participate despite a complete absence of cooking skills. Linda took the pic on our deck.Linda and Stewart, our Christmas guests, livened up the evening with side dishes, good champagne and a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Thanks a bunch, you two!
