For all the genius of Mummy Holmes, she has always believed in simple pleasures, namely dancing and music. Such simplicities ease the whirring of her mind, much like the violin does for her youngest son and top quality scotch for her eldest. Papa Holmes, for his part, understands the soothing effects that these things have on his extraordinary wife, and has made it one of his missions in life to see that she gets them, whether it takes them to Tulsa, Oklahoma for line dancing or to Saint Petersburg for the ballet is completely irrelevant. And sometimes they just like to get away from home, to experience something new – or something familiar, revisited.
Many times they've visited the beach with its far-distant horizon, then there was the Masai Mara that one time to see the lions, and occasional trips to the mountains for the rush of a waterfall. (Reichenbach is beautiful in the summer, as they well know from one visit before the whole Saint Bart's affair with Sherlock.) If they're honest, they've never been fond of New York – too ordinary for her taste, and too many people all crammed in together. Time has given both of them an appreciation of space, of sunlight filtered through the leaves, of a gentle breeze across the land, of no words needing to spoken. It's a simplicity neither thought they could ever fully have, not with two sons as brilliant as they are.
It's Mycroft's idea to send them to France, the tickets having been a gift for Mother's Day. Both know that it's more than likely an elaborate ploy to get them out of Britain for reasons of his own, but they can't deny that they've been long-overdue a trip across the Channel. Paris has always been somewhat sacred to them, anyway, being the location of their honeymoon all of those years before. He remains inordinately fond of the small bistros which are difficult to find, but delightful all the same, while she still adores the Louvre with its glorious art. Yet, both agree that the highlight of trip of over forty years ago was the leisurely cruise along on the Seine, with the sun on their backs and a light breeze through their hair. (His was much longer back then than most would suspect now, including their sons.)
So on this gift of a trip, they attempt to re-create that first time once more. Though the bistros are a little harder to find, and the Louvre is more crowded, their river seems to remain the same, almost timeless but nonetheless indefinably changed. And though they can't quite re-capture the magic, they find that that doesn't matter. (Turns out, there's more than enough magic between them still.)