On the morning of September 5, we were ready.  Our regular airport driver has retired, so we took an Uber. We recalled previous airport trips when it took an hour for us to reach JFK. The amount of traffic has increased greatly, and so has the time it took us to get there. Our driver was from the Dominican Republic, so I practiced chatting with him in Spanish. We noticed a difference at JFK: the employees there were friendly and cheerful. When an agent saw my passport, he started singing Barbara Ann by the Beach Boys.

We flew from New York to Paris, and from there to Biarritz, which is in the southwest of France, arriving on September 6.

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