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Date published: 6/29/2008
DALLAS-- A friend e-mailed the other day to say she and her husband were off to France this summer. "I know, the dollar," she said. "But we're not getting any younger, and France is France."Go! I told her, and don't even think twice about it. The door is closing on a marvelous era, and such pleasures should be savored while they can be. The era of cheap airfares As a country boy visiting my great-aunts Hilda and Lois in their cabin, I would sit between them on their red leather couch, with a weathered Rand McNally Using my finger as a pointer, we would take imaginary trips, with my elderly tour guides describing the people and places I'd see if Well, I certainly hoped so. But people like us didn't go to Europe. In 1974, when Ten years later, I was standing on the Champs-Élysees. Our family hadn't gotten rich; rather, in 1978, the airline industry had been deregulated. Suddenly, ordinary people could afford to fly to Europe. I started buying inexpensive, off- Europe changed my life. One example, among many: On that first trip, as a teenager, I stood in the magnificent medieval cathedral in Chartres, utterly overcome by its beauty and complexity. What kind of religion builds such a temple to its God? I thought. I staggered out of that Gothic pile a different man, walking a new road.
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