Day 1: Wednesday: Anticipation in Atlanta

In the fall of 2010, Lloyd and I signed up with a tour group comprising artists and friends from historically black colleges and universities who planned to fly from Atlanta to Paris for a long weekend in May 2011. We invited Lloyd's sister, Ann Marie, and her husband, Richard, to join us; it wasn't a hard sell. We were looking forward to the trip as planned ... but then the law of serendipity intervened.

Early in 2011 we received an email from Bernard Daubard in France. He had seen our genealogy on line and thought he and Lloyd might be related. Lloyd and Ann Marie's mother's maiden name was Dobard. There are a lot of Dobards in Plaquemines and Orleans parishes, and our own research had found many ancestors who spelled their name Daubard. We traced the family to Millien Daubard, who emigrated to the Louisiana Territory in the mid 1700s with his wife and children. Without knowing the name of the village or the province from which they emigrated, we could not follow him back to his home in France.

Bernard was able to fill in that information and much more about the French ancestors; we were able to help him with information about the Louisiana descendants. It turned out that Bernard and Lloyd are each the tenth great-grandson of a common ancestor, Jean Daubard (1636-1694).

We quickly decided to extend our visit to France. The Plan: when the rest of the group goes home, we'll rent a minivan and head into the countryside, where we'll enjoy some of the history, culture, and architecture of the Loire Valley. We will meet Bernard and his immediate family and many other cousins.

Lloyd and I drove from New Orleans to Atlanta on Tuesday, May 24, 2011, checked JoJo the chihuahua into his doggie spa, and then checked ourselves into in a motel near Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, where we watched the reports of tornadoes near our home in Missouri. Ann Marie and Richard flew from Houston to Atlanta on Wednesday; their flight skirted some bad weather, but all went well. Unfortunately, Richard arrived at the motel without his suitcase, which he forgot on the shuttle bus. No problem; when the shuttle made its next round, the suitcase came back to the motel. Here's Richard, waiting for his suitcase.

We had a great dinner at Gianna's, an Italian restaurant on Virginia Avenue across from the Econo Lodge.

If this entry seems to be a bit of a ramble, it is. The anticipation of what's to come had me pretty hyped up. The idea that France and Family would fill our next several days is pretty exciting.

We fly to France tomorrow; Friday morning will find us in Paris. Wheeeeeeeee! Life is good!