CHAPTER 16. SOUTH WEST FRANCE CONT.

It is late before we leave Tournefeuille and drive thru beautiful green hilly country to Quillan. We call the therapist and he is expecting Betty at his facility at 2 PM. He gives her a good workout for an hour (no charge). His wife, Chantal, is also a therapist and they have a fine therapy facility including sauna and pool in the first floor of their home. We go to the Cartier Hotel and rest a while before returning to the hospital for an appointment with the surgeon. He removes the stitches and tells Betty to wear the cast for another three weeks. We finish paying our hospital bill; a total of $1,200.00 for everything: surgery, room, X-rays, doctors, therapy, canes, etc. (It cost more to have the pins and wire removed by outpatient surgery at home a year later)

We are invited to Dymos and Chantal Elefthériou’s home for an “informal” French supper starting with champagne, nuts, and chips. Their 11-year old twin daughters are darling and so well behaved; they go off to bed when the adults move to the dining room. The only thing informal about the meal is our attire as we have six courses: sausage and pate, quiche lorraine, roast veal and rice with minced mushrooms, butter lettuce salad, cheese, and dessert of lemon cake and floating islands made by Chantal’s mother, Irene, who is there too. All three are delightful people and we have a most interesting evening of conversation, mostly in English. Chantal spent part of her childhood in Washington, D.C. where her parents worked at the French embassy. Her English and Irene’s are excellent, and Dymos’ almost as good.

We go on to South East France (#17) for ten more days, sightseeing from the car, before returning to Quillan on our way back to Barcelona. Dymos gives Betty more therapy treatment and won’t accept payment, so we stop at a florist shop on the way out of town to order a plant sent to them. We go back thru Andorra and stay at the Cardona Parador in Spain before arriving in Barcelona. The flight home isn’t too bad; by then Betty can take the splint off while seated, which helps with limited coach legroom. TWA reserves wheelchairs at each airport; this is very helpful, especially going thru customs at New York’s JFK Airport.

It is nice to get home, but we are glad we continued the trip after getting out of the hospital. We wouldn’t recommend breaking a kneecap at any time, especially on an European trip. But if you do, you couldn’t find a nicer place for it than Quillan, France. (An article on our “knee-cap” experience was published in the July, 1987 issue of the International Travel News).

We have kept in touch with the Elefthériou Family and have planned five more trips that take us thru Quillan for a short visit with them. We usually stay two nights and are their guests for supper one night, and then have them as our guests at our hotel restaurant the other night. Our last, and probably final, visit was in 2000 when we took a cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to Barcelona. We rented a car for two weeks in order to see them and revisit a bit of southern France.