The Drive

When we were back in Philly, we drove to my hometown a couple of times, over the dreaded Pennsylvania turnpike and then through the hills and eventual flat of the Midwest. It always felt long. I’ve never been one for car trips, and the trip across the four or five states seemed to drag on forever.

The U.S. is big. Huge. And it’s a driving country. I know people from Ohio who hop in their cars every winter and drive to Colorado for the skiing – practically in one sitting. People who have driven literally all alone from the California coast to Tennessee without so much as a shrug. People in Philly with a little place on the coast of North Carolina. Ten hours’ drive. For a long weekend. No problem.

When H. proposed driving down to Corsica, my eyes got wide and I shook my head slowly. What? Drive? Are you serious? It must be, like, twenty hours. Through the entirety of France? That’s just not doable. It turns out, as Google maps showed me, it’s more than doable. It’s doable in a day. Well, friends, we did it. We left after work on Friday and drove to Strasbourg, then completed the trip the next day, between the mountains of Switzerland, heading down to Italy, through the rolling hills of Tuscany (if we squinted and waited for a part in the bushes, we could actually see the Leaning Tower of Pisa!), and finally to the port town of Livorno, where we (and our little two-door car) caught the ferry at 8 a.m. the next morning. And the drive, quite honestly, was beautiful. And doable.

Everyone talks about the differences in mentality when it comes to distances between Americans and Europeans, but the fact that southern France is reachable in a mere day still comes as a surprise – and strikes me as a romantic luxury. When we got back, our car dusty and ready for a break, H. nudged me and smiled. This opens up so many possibilities for travelling! he said. Prague is probably the same distance by car! He knows I’ve always wanted to visit Prague. And do you know? It’s even closer.