The Weather - What, Me Worry?
The weather has been, simply said, awful. Europe is suffering through the coolest and wettest Spring in the last 25 years. Last Friday was the coldest May 24th ever recorded in Paris, and they started recording temperatures in the mid-1800s. In the two weeks we've been here, we have had one beautifully sunny (if cool: about 62 degrees F), two sunny mornings, and the rest rain.
This is an advantage of an extended stay. Yeah the weather's lousy, but we can shrug and say that it will, sooner or later, improve. If I had planned and paid for a two-week stay in France in May, I would have been an unhappy camper. Any two week vacation in Paris in May this year would have netted you two or three days of non-rainy weather.
Even in the bad weather, we've been out every day, driving around the beautiful countryside, seeing small villages, walking when we can. We figure that, no matter how much we worry about the weather, our worrying and fretting and complaining doesn't change the flight of one single drop of rain, so why do it? We say, "Well, it's lousy weather, but if we have to be in lousy weather, it's nice to be in lousy weather in France."
Next week the forecast calls for improvement: partly cloudy, no rain, temps into the high-60s and low-70s, starting Saturday. We're planning our first foray into Paris Saturday; we have just not wanted to do that until we had some assurance that we wouldn't be slogging around in a downpour.