One of These Days

Curious about my history

If you won a free trip to any foreign country, all expenses paid in your own private jet and had the time to go (and there were no travel restrictions due to a global pandemic ), what is the first foreign country you would visit? Who would you bring with you? What would you spend your time doing?




So, going on the fact that it might be the only chance I get to go to Europe, I'd love to go to France and well maybe Spain. For the sole purpose of my last name. Originally, it's French, although they left and went to England. From what my dad and grandfather figured out, our last name is Roncevaux in French, although there is also a Spanish village by the name of Roncevalles and a mountain pass through the Pyrenees called the Roncevaux Pass (Roncevalles Pass) (there was also a Battle of the Roncevaux Pass in 778 AD  ). I've just always been massively interested in the historical relevance of my surname and the path it would go on. I guess maybe I should include England?

I'm probably breaking all of the rules by having three countries instead of one. But it's all Europe though, right?


...Right?


Anyway, It's probably because my dad and, although I never got to meet him as he passed a couple of years before I was born, so was my grandfather. My dad was always incredibly interested in where we came from. They had a whole family tree esque thing done in the 1970s and both Matt and I got the 23 & Me and the Ancestry DNA thing done and it was incredibly accurate as far as our make up. Ancestry DNA was more enlightening that way though. So it continues to keep me intrigued and I'd love to see it. I'd have to find someone that knows Spanish more than I do. At my best I knew a handful of words and could count to 100. Then I was incredibly close (still am but we live in different states ) with a Puerto Rican and a Mexican, which I learned a lot from them as so far as Spanish, but like anything else there is a big difference in lingo and such with Spain. I would be lost, but it would be really fun.

Am I a boring nerd? Yeah, probably. I mean I'm getting a free all-expense paid trip to anywhere in the world on a free personal jet and instead of going somewhere fabulous, I want to go into rural Spain and into the Pyrenees, possibly France and possibly England. And probably none of the really fun and wonderful places that people would want to go see. I mean who goes to France and doesn't even go to Paris or at least the tropical getaway in southern France?

Yeah, me.



P.S. I would bring Matt because he is a historical nerd and would probably enjoy this about as much as I would.