Search This Blog

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Travel in the Age of COVID--The French Version

I am newly home from a ten day trip to france and while it is certainly still possible that I might have gotten COVID while I was gone, France is certainly doing a good job of making both it's citizens and it's visitors feel like the risks are minimized. I was very trepidatious about traveling abroad. I was fretting and I am not one to do a whole lot of fretting. One of my friends noted it as being unlike me, what exactly was I afraid of? And what would help me to feel better? If it had been up to me, I would have stayed in the US, vacationed somewhere, to be sure, but close enough to get home without much fuss. My spouse, on the other hand, was adamant. He needed a vacation that approximated a pre-COVID vacation, and because I love him, I agreed. That did not mean that I planned. Oh no, we were still booking accomodations after we landed, but go we did. France is higly vaccinated, far more so than the US, and in order to go into a public building or a restaurant you needed to display your helath pass, issued by the government after reviewing your evidence of vaccination. They QR code is scanned at every place you enter--wearing a mask-- and so in many ways, I felt safer than I have any reason to feel at home. It was a breath of fresh air to see people masking up and protecting each other.

No comments:

Post a Comment