To say that it rained while we were in France would be a serious understatement. It's like saying Mount Everest is a nice little hill. So I'd like to give you a more accurate description of the relentless precipitation we faced, and how we ultimately came to accept it – at times, even embrace it – as part of our adventures in Normandy and Brittany.
When I say we saw rain (or as the French call it, la pluie) , I don’t mean occasional showers or a brief thunderstorm. No, I mean it rained much of the day, almost every day. And it wasn’t just a light drizzle; it was often a heavy, steady rain, with a few days of constant monsoon-like downpours.
When this happens on a trip you’ve eagerly anticipated, you can react one of two ways. You can go with the flow, like rainwater flowing effortlessly down a sloping street ... or you can allow yourself to be miserable. On the first day of our trip, I reacted the second way.
On that first day, we’d arrived exhausted in Rouen after a long redeye flight into Paris followed by a two-hour drive. We had to park our rental car several blocks from the hotel, hauling our luggage and my camera backpack across narrow cobblestone streets during a torrential rain. When we got up to our room, thoroughly soaked, I checked the weather forecast and saw that it was expected to keep raining – lots and lots of la pluie – through the entire 10 days of our trip.
I was peeved. I envisioned all our plans for exploring and taking pictures getting washed right down the storm drain. I remained peeved as we walked to dinner in a pounding rain. And I went to bed peeved, thinking about the gloomy, drenching week ahead.
But then, in the middle of the night, the clouds parted and a ray of light shined through – not in the sky, but inside of me. I woke up around 3 a.m. and I had a sudden change of heart. I realized that I couldn’t change the weather, but I could definitely change my attitude toward it. And that’s what I did.
At 5 a.m., I noticed that Bonnie was also awake. I asked her: “Do you want to go out and take a walk with me?” She agreed. So I grabbed my camera, wrapped it in a protective rain cover and we headed out before dawn, walking the cobblestone streets of the city in a heavy downpour.
Bonnie and I got wet that morning (drenched, actually) but we saw beautiful early hour views of the empty, rain-soaked streets. We saw small pastry shops coming to life for the day ahead. We saw birds pecking for crumbs on the front steps of the cathedral, which would later be surrounded by tourists with umbrellas.
And despite the abundance of la pluie, I was able to take pictures while keeping my camera and lens dry, thanks to the protective rain cover.
The rain cover stayed on my camera through most of the trip as the rain kept falling. But in the end, even the heaviest rain couldn't prevent us from enjoying our French journey. A good life lesson, courtesy of la pluie.