We were in our noir phase in those days: black from our turtlenecks to our shoes. Mother, in her all-too-infrequent tours of France, often wears what I call her “Russian hat,” a big, furry, black thing that I must admit makes her look a lot like Audrey Hepburn as Natasha.

The restaurant was almost empty. A few tables away, an American family was having breakfast and oohing and aahing about everything. We could tell they were looking at us and whispering. We also could pinpoint their accent. “You can’t just go over there and shoot their picture,” hissed the mother. “They might get upset. Ask first.”

“But I don’t know enough French!” her husband protested.

I rose, approached their table, and in my very best Clouseau, said, “Pardon me. May we be of the assistánce?” Yes, they said, we would like to take your picture – photograph! – but don’t know how to ask.

“Mais, that is easy to do,” I assured them. “You are speaking my native language.” They clearly were nonplussed, so I dropped into pure Central Noo Yawk and said, “You gotta be be from Syracuse, or Cortland, or Binghamton, right?” They were – Binghamton – and I’ve often wondered, when they show that slide back home, how they identify us.

Ah, we’d love to go again, but we’re pretty much stuck here with a very old dog who thinks she needs us around and a dollar that’s dying against the Euro. So we’ll wait a while. While waiting, we’re noticing the silver linings on our clouds right here at home. “Think how much people from all over the world spend to come see the place we call home and hardly ever notice,” says Mother. She’s right. Maybe we’ll never find in the United States a restaurant like the one in the medieval hostel in Poët Laval, France, where the chef owner, Bernard, does things you can’t believe with local food like pigs’ feet and rabbit, and comes into the dining room to see how you like his cooking. (He also does not say, “How is everything, guys?”) Maybe the White Mountains aren’t quite as spectacular as the Alps, but the mountain huts strung along the trails are just as lovely as, and more friendly than those above the valleys of Switzerland and France. Maybe our highways in the East don’t dive in and out of the mountainsides like the road above the Gulf of Catania on the south shore of Sicily, but the Northway past the Adirondack high peaks is one of the most beautiful interstates you’ll ever drive.

Besides, you can’t always get away from America in Europe (assuming you want to). We had lunch one day on a flowered bridge above an old canal with tour boats rippling swanlike beneath us. Mother had garden salad with Ranch Lite dressing; I had a Quarter-Pounder with cheese and a Diet Coke. Another day, with evening approaching and no reservation ahead of us, we stopped for a meal at a roadside franchise restaurant before going room-hunting. It was kind of fast-foody, very unFrench, and there was “American barbecue” on the menu. I ordered it. It was the best I’ve ever had anywhere! So after supper I walked up to the high counter window looking into the kitchen and in horribly mangled French told the cook his was le plus meilleur barbecue du le monde!

“Thank you,” he responded. “You theenk so? You know New Orleens? I go there one time, I cook, I learn le barbecue Americain.” Because of the chest-high counter dividing us, I couldn’t kiss him on both cheeks. Just as well; Mother’d’ve died of embarrassment.

What brought all this on was the recent spell of warm weather after a great winter. Driving through Montpelier on a sixty-degree evening, we saw people dining alfresco as if they were basking in eighty degrees at a seaside cafe in Cannes. Only in New England! Or maybe Norway or Finland. We’re still learning our way around the dining scene, so we tried another new place. We have a rule: Whoever asks, buys; whoever buys, chooses. She asked, and chose a tiny place off the main drag called That’s Life Soup. There was a table on the porch, but she chose inside.

I was expecting Sixties funky, but instead got virtually European elegant. Tables cheek by jowl; you’d have to be almost a misanthrope not to talk to the folks next to you. Mother had a deep bowl of soup, and I a grilled sandwich, which is not an adequate description of its perfection. We finished off with a shared slice of cheesecake and great coffee, finding it easy to pretend we were in a different hemisphere and about to retire to a creaky little hotel nearby beside a river. The old buildings across the street could have been almost anywhere, the people passing could have been speaking any language. But we paid in dollars, climbed into a Plymouth van, and drove home through a soft New England spring evening that some people travel thousands of miles to see.