We are fortunate

 We took two of our grandchildren on vacation with us for 10 days. Since the end of the French "confinement", we'd seen them a couple of times: a picnic in the yard the first weekend of deconfinement, a birthday party in our house and then off we went. From mid-May to mid-July, when we took them, they had been back to school and had spent a couple of weeks with their other grandparents. Their parents had been back to work sporadically and we adults had all gone food shopping and been out for appointments. We wore masks, but not when we were together.

France, on the whole, is not doing too badly with containing Covid. The numbers have been creeping up, though. The RO number announced this weekend was 1.32. Ideally, it should be under 1. Restrictions can become quite serious, again, if it goes over 2. As it is, Paris, suburbs, and other cities with crowed streets have decided masks must be worn outside, too, when in crowded areas or on crowded streets. In Nogent, that's the walk along the Marne, along the main street Grande Rue, and the outdoor areas of the market place. I have an appointment in Paris on Monday and the street, Rue d'Avron, is on the list. I couldn't find the RO number for the US, either as a whole or in parts.

Our vacation was in an area with remarkably little Covid. We stayed at a hotel, the one we always stay at when we visit E and G. L'Hôtel la Belle Rive, which gets shortened to Le Belle Rive (for grammarians, that is the result of an ellipsis between LE hôtel and LA rive). Covid prevention rules were strictly adhered to. The kids, though, under 11, did not have to wear masks indoors. In Najac, all was calm - eerily so. There are hardly any tourists. Wherever we went (and we really didn't go anywhere), we saw that people were putting their masks on before entering any place.

So, how were we, perhaps, slack? We spent our days with E&G. Not a problem. The family from the U.K. arrived with their trailer: 2 under age 11, a teenager, and 2 adults. That brought us up to a group of 11 people, from different areas. We were joined for the last few days by our other daughter coming from Paris. She had stopped to visit friends in Lyon on the way. That means that just our little family created a rather large group of 12 at its peak. In fact, when we had an end-of-vacation family dinner at the hotel, we had a children's table and an adults' table -- not so much because we wanted the peace and quiet of not sitting with the kids, but because a restaurant cannot serve tables of over 10.

We are fortunate that none has shown any symptoms of the illness. In retrospect, perhaps we should have worn masks more when around one another. But we spent the whole time outdoors and not all that close, when you think about it.