May 17, Saint-Ismier.

Today is a holiday in France (another one of those Christianity-based holiday religiously honored as a day off in the most non-religious country in the world) and we drove to the Vercors mountains and to the town of Villard-de-Lans, where I spent most my childhood summers.  It was the last stop for my brother Patrick, who died there another summer almost twenty years ago.
We hiked a short trail, had lunch at the café we always went to, walked the streets we always walked and where I remember a perfect childhood bliss, and everything looked exactly the same, the same shops, the same atmosphere, and not even a new building around to spoil the scenery, breathtaking, the town looks as pastoral and postcard-perfect as it did thirty years ago, and it was resplendent in the spring light.