Saturday 10.16.2010


Moving Day

There is one big concern with our rental house in Arles and that revolves around Friday night/Saturday morning and the ensuing Saturday market. There are very specific areas in front of the house where if one is parked there overnight, one will be towed away. There are signs in the house reminding us not to park where we shouldn't and all of our documentation for the house screams at us to be careful where we park. Apparently it is a big deal. We think concern number one was resolved in that we found a legal parking place on the other side of the road and since others were still parked there last night we "assume" we're ok.

Concern number two is that with the market people setting up on Saturday morning, will we be able to get out to get Pat to the airport? Yes. Pat and John take off at 7:20 to the airport in Marseilles for her 10:40 flight to Paris and on home. It is an hour drive into a Great Pumpkin sunrise over the hills above Marseilles and a flashy memory for Pat to take with her on the trip home. Au revoir Pat! The transition goes as smooth as possible and John gets back to the house at 9:15 where Mary has finished packing and is ready to go.


That brings up concern number three which is, will John get a place to park within a mile of our house with the market in full swing out the front door? The answer is "yes'" sort of. He parks like the French in that he pulls into an area that really blocks a little side road just up from our house, but he pretends that he has left enough room for someone to get by. He hasn't. M and J both hustle getting trash out to the dumpster and suitcases into the car before there is a roadblock uproar and they are sucessfully on the road within minutes. No reason for concern.

The Great Pumpkin sunrise has turned into another hazy but sunny cool morning as we head northwest through pretty flat farm country. Our destination is Sarlat just southwest of the center of France and we have an all day drive to get there. We stop for some supplies near Montpelier and take turns driving the next five hours. The sun gradually gives way to clouds and occassional drizzle and our farmland turns into low slung mountains and heavily rolling countryside that feels like our eastern mountains in Pennsylvania. On a clear day this would be a beautiful drive and even today it is pretty good. We stop at a rest stop on the motorway for a couple of pretty bad tuna sandwiches and turn up the heat in the car as the temp has dropped into the low forties.

Sarlat is in the center of goose and nut country, as in over-stuffed geese for foix gras and walnuts for everything else. There are walnut orchards (?) along every roadway and signs for farms where we can view the feeding of the geese and purchase a few tins of their product. Much more than anywhere else on our trip, this really feels like France. We have an easy check-in at our B&B with Amanda and Chris, a couple of fiftyish Bristish ex-pats who moved here for the climate. Our room is huge with a street view and a bathroom as big as many hotel rooms in Europe.


There is a square across the street that leads into the historic center of town. There are lots of people still milling around late on a Saturday afternoon and most of the shops are still open. If you would like to buy a supply of foix gras from the goose, from the duck, in combinations together, whipped into pates, or blended into spicy spreads, this is your spot. Or maybe walnut cake, candy, pastries, bread or any other conceivable thing "walnut", you won't go wrong here. There is still a spitting drizzle but for a change we don't mind and really think we will like this place.


Le Bistro de l'Octroi is a block from our new home and comes highly recommended. Most tables are reserved for the night which means we are hustled off to a small table somewhere between the door to the kitchen and the door to the toilette. Once again, Mary is not pleased since others after us are led upstaires to tables that she assumes are much better than ours. She seems to be done with French service. Anyway, she has a good shrimp risotto and John has the "Grand Plat" which is about 12 different things on one plate from salad to dessert including various goose and duck products. Very tasty. In spite of the lying, thieving, cheating waiter at our restaurant, we still think we will like Sarlat.


No TV in our room so it is reading and bed tonight.

Todays weather:  Sunny early turning to clouds and rain.  low 40, high 52

Friday 10.15.2010


The Luberon


It’s clean out the refrigerator day this morning so a few scrambled eggs with ham, the leftover potatoes from the chicken, a bit of fruit and the last two chassons aux pomme from the patisserie.

Today’s schedule is for a leisurely drive through the Luberon, a hilly grape and olive laden area to the east of Arles dominated by hilltop villages, fortress chateaus and lifetime views every fifteen minutes. We all read “A Year in Provence,” the definitive English language work about the area by Peter Mayle and we are now in his world.

Our first stop is St. Remy, a picture-perfect town about 30 minutes from Arles. Just outside the village are the ruins of the original settlement dating from a couple centuries B.C. which have been preserved and restored over the last hundred years. The Romans “liberated” the area about 70 A.D. and erected a mammoth intricately carved arch as the village gate along with all the appropriate monuments. Just touching the same carvings that guys in togas were touching a couple thousand years ago is pretty impressive. Right next door to the ruins is the mental hospital that housed Van Gogh after he lopped off his ear and the good people of Arles decided he was a bit deranged. Some of his more famous works were done here during his recovery. The olive trees are heavy with fruit and John and Pat both taste the unfinished product—don’t ever do that!


We are in full program mode with GPS chick Monique trying to get her to follow a leisurely scenic loop around the countryside. We finally just go our own way and she catches on and gets on the team. We are still in a bit of inversion with a heavy haze in the air but in spite of that, the ambience as we drive through fruit and olive orchards and miles of grape vines sharing the miniscule back roads with farm equipment is just what we have been looking for in Provence.

We make our way up to the little medieval village of Bonnieux for a late lunch. We have driven most of the way up the hill and into the village where we find a parking spot with the city walls on one side and deep drop off across the road on the other. It is still another ten-minute hike straight up to get most of the way into the center of the village. There are a few fellow travelers about and even a couple American college kids from a local art school. Well, it’s pizza again (the “Luberon”) for Mary and Pat while John opts for a really good Nicoise salad. The café is across the road from the “view” but it is unobstructed and we can see for miles down into fields and across into other villages.

There is a touch of the “Mistral” wind chilling the air at this elevation but it feels good on the hike back down to the car. The journey continues redundantly through a loop taking us through the afternoon from one picturesque village to the next, all the while staring out at rural heaven on earth. This will be boring to the reader, but memorable for those who were there.

It is well after five when we get back and Mary gets laundry started so we can pack up to leave tomorrow. A final cocktail in Arles as a couple weeks with Pat wrap up in fine fashion. John has made reservations with Madame at Au Brin de Thym Restaurant for 7:30. He is convinced that Pat has to have something French to eat before she leaves France and this place leaves no alternative. He notices that she has a second cocktail before dinner tonight.


This is the perfectly typical French restaurant with 25 seats, Monsieur in the kitchen, Madame in the dining room and each with one helper. They open at 7:30, are fully booked for one seating by 7:35 and are on their way home before 10:00. Not a bad way to make a living if you aren’t greedy.


Mary gets the seat in front of the door to the toilette so she is a little cranky and just has the salmon appetizer. Being a trooper, Pat has the full three-course dinner with a nice pea soup starter, a fish cake with rice and local vegetables and a crème caramel for dessert. Well done. John opts for the fish soup (a red “Manhattan” style) and the lamb shank once again. Madame stops by to visit before we leave and gets her helper to be a translator for the conversation. Very pleasant except for that toilette door thing.

A late night farewell drink at the Hotel Pinus (pronounce it however you like) where the famous and infamous French have done the same thing for centuries and then a cold breezy walk home whipped by le mistral. It’s an early wake up tomorrow with departures all around.

Today’s weather: Sunny, cool and hazy, low 42, high 66

Thursday 10.14.2010


To See the Sea


All our players are back in the game, and we’re back to a bit of fruit and egg this morning (no pastries) before we hit the road for the Mediterranean. The target this morning is Marseilles and then we will see what’s next.

It is about an hour drive to Marseilles. We start south from Arles and then swing to the east as we near the coast peeking between peaks at industrial looking, oil based port cities. It is a hop and skip from the middle eastern oil producing countries through the gulf of Aden into the Med and across to here.


Marseilles is France’s largest port and its second largest city with a million and a half people in the area. We enter the city along the water and port where there are dozens of ships from cargo monsters to passenger liners to fancy yachts, with dozens more at anchor out in the harbor. Busy, busy busy.

There is a tunnel under an inner harbor that takes us into the heart of the city and into the middle of some sort of major demonstration. The police have closed off one of the main streets through the city and the usual participants are streaming into the area on foot. The French enjoy nothing more than a good revolution, but they do it so often you lose track of their mission.

We have read that the one place to go in Marseilles is the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, high on a hill above the city. After a few false starts we climb on winding urban streets through the heart of the city to the top of the highest point around. The sea and city views are spectacular from large viewing areas all the way around the church. It is a bit hazy today but we still see virtually every major site in the city using the identifying photos mounted at convenient spots. We can’t see the protesters but hear plenty of sirens.


The church itself is brilliantly ornate with gilded statues inside and out. The golden statue of “Our Lady” on the peak of the building is over 70 feet tall including the base. There are bullet holes on the back of the church from the liberation of Marseilles in August of 1944.


We pick the sleepy little fishing village of Cassis as our next stop along the coast. The 20-mile road from Marseilles takes us inland around the craggy seaside outcroppings and then swooping back down into Cassis. We motor confidently right into the middle of the action where the beach, marina and town all meet, and this is no sleepy fishing village. There are hundreds of folks milling around the sun-swept row of cafes and hotels soaking up the atmosphere and Cote d’Cassis wines. There are also zero parking places available. We spend 20 minutes driving around in circles and into dead ends until finding a pay lot a half-mile from the action.


It is after one so some of the outdoor cafes have a few seats opening up and we snare a table in the sun just feet from the moored boats. It’s a pizza day again today. There is a reason for this pizza addiction we seem to have. The French don’t eat lunch the way we do. The offerings on midday menus generally include what we would consider to be full dinner choices as well as a plat du jour, or full meal special. We rarely see sandwiches except at small take-away stands or brasseries (bars), so the choices come down to pizza, pasta or salad to satisfy our American habits.

After lunch we take a stroll to the beach and Mary does her water touching ritual. It is sunny and well into the 70’s with people in the water and lounging on the sand.


It is now 2:30 so we pick a leisurely route that heads north and then rounds back to the west to Arles. Unfortunately we do not communicate well with GPS chick Monique and she starts us back into Marseilles. Before we can get her squared away we are stuck in a major traffic jam right in the middle of the city where we spend the next half hour. When we finally spring free it is off through grape and olive covered hillsides, small villages (Roquefort, as in cheese) and gorgeous landscapes. This is the Provence we have read about and almost makes the traffic fiasco worthwhile.


At 5:30 we get back to Arles and Monique hasn’t quite finished with us. In the heart of the old city she directs us into a dead-end alley that takes the efforts of all three of us to get out of. Mary spots an arrow-sign that she thinks might be for through traffic and sure enough we get loose once again. Finally home.


Dinner tonight is at the place we enjoyed our first night here, Palao. The food was good and our server was the best we have seen on our trip to date. She is back on tonight and seems genuinely pleased to see us. After chatting for a bit in broken French and broken English we find out that she is “Italiano!” Molto Bene! No wonder she is so good; no wonder she is happy to see us; no wonder she is so pleasant. A riddle solved.

We start with a cheese plate, wine and beer. Mary has a terrific salmon pasta, Pat has a saffron pasta and John has a rare beef filet smothered in a peppery gorgonzola sauce and tasty mashed potatoes. We would eat here once a week if we lived in the neighborhood.


The day had many more good parts than bad parts.

Today’s weather: Sunny, warm and hazy, low 60, high 79.

Wednesday 10.14.2010



Birds and Boars and Bulls, Oh My!

It’s market day in Arles, at least one of the market days. Today's is on Square Lamartine about a half hour walk from our house. The plan is to walk there, find a pastry vendor for breakfast on the fly and then check out all the stuff.


It’s a nice morning again and we walk most of the way along the river where it seems a little brisk without jackets. The Wednesday market is the smaller of the Arles two-a-week extravaganzas, but it seems plenty big to us as it extends for at least a half-mile on the streets adjacent to the square.

Entering through the river end, our first encounter is with dozens of leather goods vendors with purses, belts, bags and shoes. They quickly give way to the food folks. The produce vendors seem to be spread throughout the entire market, but the rest of the food is pretty well grouped by category. First are the fish stalls with every imaginable sea creature known to be edible. They are supplemented by others with massive wok shaped cauldrons of paella, bouillabaisse, stews and one-pot dishes. John samples a salad with tentacled creatures and vegetables and it is delicious. Just the right lead-in to a French pastry. Pat finds a couple bananas and Chassons du Pomme while John picks up olives for later.

One of our goals is to find sausages, cheese and fancy bread for a rustic supper tonight. That changes as we move into a number of stalls with chickens roasting on rotisseries and the juices dropping down onto pans of potatoes below. Oh Baby! We walk the rest of the market while we consider our options for later. The food eventually gives way to clothes, kitchen tools and assorted odds and ends.


Here’s the new plan. We’re getting a chicken with scoops of those potatoes, a bunch of perfectly ripe tomatoes and a baguette for dinner and some huge slices of bread and more tomatoes to make sandwiches for lunch. We add “un petite” slice of wonderful cheese to fill in where necessary. The whole thing is about 15 euros for two meals for the 3 of us.

It is now 11:00 and the market is bustling. We previously mentioned the diversity of southern France but you can see it clearly here. The shouts of the vendors and the orders from the customers are in various dialects and languages, people pulling and pushing and greeting with kiss-kiss-kiss and costumes from around the world all set a scene worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.


We find some new streets to get us home for lunch where we add a can of tuna, a glob of mayo, a hard-boiled egg and some chips to our new purchases for a great meal. This afternoon is the Camargue, a wilderness area just to the southwest of Arles which is unique to France. While we are getting in the car, Mary announces that she is skipping this segment as the latest to fall to the dreaded vacation food disease.


John and Pat use their wiles rather than GPS babe MMD to get started and are promptly lost within five minutes. Quickly realizing their mistake they whip a U-turn and are back in action. The Camargue is an area of wetlands, swamps, lagoons and brackish backwater that extends most of the way to the Mediterranean. It is the winter home of millions of waterfowl from the northern countries as well as the nesting area for thousands of flamingoes. The birds are joined by land creatures like wild boar, wild bulls and allegedly, wild white horses.


We see flamingoes early on and then find a gated (but unlocked) dirt maintenance road that extends along a shallow but wide river/canal. We hike down the road for a few minutes, look to our right and there posing for us is a wild boar. He wasn’t very big or threatening so we get a bit closer before he does a slow amble in the opposite direction. We consider the possibility that he is going to get Dad and decide we shouldn’t pursue. A bit farther we again look into the brush and there are three massive wild black bulls grazing on skimpy grasses. No white horses but pretty good for a couple of city-folk.


Traveling farther by car we reach a series of dikes extending into the lagoons and south to the sea. Again we park, have a close encounter with a lone flamingo near us and see hundreds more out in the water. We probably don’t have the same appreciation that others would have for this type of environment, but we enjoy our afternoon. We reward ourselves with a beer on a bar patio in tiny Salin-de-Giraud before heading back. It’s 5:00 when we get to the house and Mary claims to be fully recovered. A peaceful afternoon for her was just what the doctor ordered.

We have some cocktails, put the chicken, potatoes and all the lovely juices into a pot which then goes into the oven. We're noisy ugly Americans eating with our hands, arguing and generally enjoying our "home cooked" meal. It was all delicious.


Somehow it is 11:00, we review plans for tomorrow and get to bed.


Today's weather: Sunny and hazy, slow 60, high 79.

Tuesday 10.12.2010

Sunny Provence

We are back to full strength on our team and the sun has come out of hiding so all is right with the world this morning. For the first time in France we are skipping the patisserie this morning and having a bowl of fruit, glass of juice and a hard-boiled egg from our shopping yesterday. Yecchh! It's probably good for us.

We are finally on track to get our real exploratory day in Arles started. Arles (pronounced "Arl") has been here for a couple millenniums and became a major trading route hub between Italy and Spain when the first bridge across the Rhone River was built here. Caesar thought his retiring Legion officers ought to have a little perk in their dotage so he gave them this part of the world as a retirement bonus. They have had some good centuries and some bad centuries, but the town of 60,000 seems bustling today.


Our first order of business is to walk past the restaurants we tried to get into last night to see if we can make reservations for tonight. We score "Le 16" for 7:30. Almost next door is the forum which served the same purpose as the one in Rome. It was a gathering place for all the folks walking around in togas, sipping red wine and sharing big ideas about who should be conquered next. Even though this is Columbus Day, America was not on their radar. For a couple years in the late 1800's, Vincent Van Gogh hung out here, cranked out a few hundred paintings and lost an ear. There are concrete "easels" around the city with reproductions of some of his more famous paintings in the original locations. Here is the reproduction of the "Cafe at Night" scene with glowing yellow colors from the gas lamps offset by the dark (but starry) night. Our picture of this is slightly tainted in that this is the cafe where we ate last night.

We revisit St. Trophime Church with a better understanding today of what we are seeing. The stone carvings on the front of the church are an entire volume of biblical history combined with promises of salvation or damnation, depending on one's behavior. Inside we see dead people. There are scores of relics (bones and skulls) of local saints and tombs of church big shots from centuries past. This is also a stopping point on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Postello in Spain which we will visit later in the trip.


A couple right turns out of the church takes us past the outdoor theater we visited briefly on day one. This is a "BC" building so there really isn't much salvageable except the outside walls, but the restoration work continues with the goal of using this as an entertainment venue with seating for 3,000, down from the original 10,000.


We return to the Roman Arena just around the corner and John decides to pay the six euros to visit while the ladies each take off in separate directions to browse neighborhoods. The exterior walls of the arena, built in 70 AD, are still in pretty good shape and the repair work being done seems to match the original pretty well. The restorers think they have found the source of the original stone and are using that where necessary in the restoration. There are dozens of ingress and egress points around the arena and certainly a good model for today's stadiums. Most of the original interior seating is gone--the place was used as a fortress in the Middle Ages--so there are now bleachers all around and a fairly large rodeo-size dirt performance area. Originally they would squeeze 20,000 citizens in here to watch the gladiators kill some wild creature or vice versa, but now they hold "gentle" bullfights along with concerts and other outdoor events. John climbs to the top of the tower to get 50-mile views over the city and up the Rhone.


We meet on the steps of the Arena at 12:30 and continue out to the Rhone to find a couple more easels. Vincent used this point to paint his "Starry Night over the Rhone" (still not the other "starry night"), and right behind us is the site of his original home, also featured in one of his famous paintings. His original house was taken out by American Army bombers in WWII as they worked on blowing up the nearby Rhone bridge. A couple American pilots lost their lives here and the French put up a monument for them in the square in 2002. The fact that it took almost 60 years to build the monument might have something to do with bombing Vincent's house.


We find a nice outdoor restaurant with seats under huge trees on an active street and lunch feels very French. Mary and Pat have really good Croque Monsieurs with pomme frites and John has a nice Nicoisse salad. We spend the next hour just slowly working our way in the general direction of our house, poking into shops and peeking in windows when something catches our eye. We're home a bit after 3:00 and ready for a break.


Our dinner tonight is a much better experience. Mary and Pat both have the smoked chicken salad while John splurges on cauliflower soup and braised lamb shanks. Pat also has a mini-Heineken and J and M have their best bottle of wine in a while. For another splurge the three of us share two orders of Profiteroles, a warm flaky pastry filled with cold ice cream and covered with warm chocolate. That'll show that hard-boiled egg for breakfast.


We watch some Brit chef shows (Gordon Ramsey is much nicer here and they don't bleep him) and the beginning of the end of the miner ordeal in Chile.

Today's weather: Sunny and warm, low 62, high 72

Monday 10.11.2010

Another Player Down


The French are taking their toll on our team. Pat has succumbed to the 24/7 restaurant food and strange germs and was laid low for most of the day today. Surprisingly it rained all day (Hah!) so Mary and John were more than happy to take another day to rest up. It’s a marathon not a sprint.

John went out in the drizzle at about 8:30 for his morning pastry run, but the pickings were slim. The two closest patisseries were closed which forced a return to the house for a map and more research which led him to a third patisserie a few blocks farther away. Alas, no chassons du pomme. After 45-minutes out in the rain all our intrepid warrior had to show for his efforts was a bag of croissants and a box of pain du chocolat. Sometimes when you lose a player, the rest of the team has to step it up. And we have coffee here.

John and Mary walked to the tourist info center to help with plans for the rest of the week and then on to the post office. The only guided wine tours in the area are headquartered out of Avignon so we decide to save that for Bordeaux which leaves us a free day (today) to do nothing. We keep walking around the city in a drizzle and climb the ancient city walls into a new-to-us section of the old city. We wriggle around in the warren of back streets until we find something we recognize and figure out our way home.


We stop for sandwich makings at a little grocery store and have lunch at home. We also need a supermarket run which is the next chore for this afternoon. Parking spots are hard to find and we hate to leave, but know it will have to happen sooner or later. We are only lost in some industrial park for about 15-minutes when we see the “Geant” sign and cut cross-country into their lot. Mary cornered some guy asking direction to the “ouefs” which is a word he doesn’t recognize. After much repetition and restarts she finally resorted to “eggs” and he pointed “right over there”.


A word about the language. We are now able to conduct simple purchase or restaurant transactions in French and are adding a couple handy words each day. In the northern countries earlier in the trip virtually everyone spoke English and even here most folks have a couple words they recognize to keep an interaction moving along. What we miss from our visits to other English-first countries are the TV news shows, the newspapers, the radio programs and all the other little information providers that help us get inside the heads of the locals. We don’t have a good understanding of what they’re fighting about, or happy or sad about. This trip is much more about the visual rather than the immersion into the culture that we enjoy. With nine countries and nine languages, there isn’t much we’re going to do about that, but it is decidedly different. In 11 more days it will be Spanish so there is no sense crying over spilt lait, or is it leche?

We score the parking place right in front of our front door when we get back from the store. Now we can’t leave for the rest of the week for sure. A bit of reading and some bookwork fill out the afternoon. Pat is much improved but not interested in dinner out. She will forage through the leftovers from lunch to see if there is anything appealing.

John and Mary have a list of a few good restaurants near each other about a ten-minute walk away and figure one or all of them will have room. No chance. The three we look at are all full with happy people inside laughing, eating and sipping wine while we stand at the window looking forlorn. We resort to the massive tourist spot on the “forum,” an historic Vincent Van Gogh café. We get a nice appetizer Provencal which is encouraging, but it was downhill from there. Mary has the Dorado (fish) with a hollandaise type sauce, all an unappetizing lukewarm temperature. John orders the beef stew which turns out to be another Waffle-House steak with cold french fries on the side. Tomorrow we make reservations.

Pat is back in bed when we get home, and we will be soon.


Stupid Vikings!


Today’s weather: Cloudy and rain all day, low 58, high 66

Sunday 10.10.2010



Down Day

John took last Sunday off, but we are all taking today away from touring. We have plenty of chores to be done and we need to get into some sort of routine in our house in Arles for the week.

Speaking of routines, John goes out early in search of the next possible leader in French pastries. There is a little Patisserie a couple streets up from us that has chassons du pomme and plenty of croissants, but we think that the baker has Sunday off and baked these yesterday. They're pretty heavy and don't seem as fresh as we have become accustomed to. No new winners here.


John tackles the computer/Wi-Fi set up in the second floor study, while Mary figures out the washer/dryer and Pat and Mary sort clothes into what appears to be about four loads of wash. With some level of aggravation everything eventually works and we busy ourselves with our assigned tasks. We are missing some towels so John emails our landlord who promises to have someone get everything up to speed before the end of the day.


It's 2:00 before we get in control and take off for lunch and a walk. It has been raining lightly all day so it is umbrellas all around. Since it is Sunday afternoon, once again our choice (not choices) is limited to an Italian pizza and pasta joint about six blocks from the house. The food is cheap, plentiful and delicious so we make pigs of ourselves sharing Mary and Pat's pastas and John's chorizo pizza. We are blown up like puffer fish, and, rain be damned, we are going to take a hike around the old town.


We didn't see much yesterday and plan to do the real tour tomorrow so this is a continuation of our introductory walk. Tucked into the center of the old town is a half -round theater that seats 10,000 and dates from the first century BC. Just around the corner is a Roman Arena that seats 20,000 and was built in the first century AD. Both of these are in heavy restoration mode and the goal is to be able to actually use both of them as entertainment venues in the future. How cool would that be? The price tag is about 107 million euros, but that's a small percentage of the Target Field price. It's probably the electronic scoreboard that costs so much.

We know we won't be hungry for many hours and with limited dining options on Sunday, we opt to pick up some ham, cheese, eggs and a baguette to eat-in later.


We all go back to our chores when we get home, our towels arrive as promised, we each sneak in a little rest period, and we get the results of "Strictly Come Dancing". John whips up some scrambled eggs with the ham and cheese, we chew on the baguette and then we all pack it in.

 

Mary says these posts are getting way too wordy, but the day sort of defines the post. On our lucky day of 10.10.10 we didn't have much of a day and so don't need much of a post.

 

Today's weather: Cloudy with rain all day, low 52, high 64

Saturday 10.9.2010

Grand Tour

It’s another crispy clear mountain morning. John hustles out early to find the patisserie from yesterday to repeat the best ever chassons du pomme but it has disappeared. We did see a place a bit farther down the main village road and they are open with plenty of selection. On his way back John sees that a large truck has moved and the little patisserie was hidden behind it but c’est la vie. As we gather we now decide that the chassons du pomme today are even better than yesterday so we have a new leader.


We wave au revoir to our humbled mountain and begin our grand tour of the French Winter Olympic sites. Our route today follows the mountains for the first hundred miles beginning in Chamonix (1924 first Winter Olympics), through Albertville (1992), and finishing in Grenoble (1968). We do find the Olympic venues in each of the cities and are amazed at the size of Grenoble, a very big city. The drive is scenic following streams and mountainsides, but a bit slow and tedious.

Leaving Grenoble we gas up the car and fuel ourselves with some supermarket take-away ham, cheese and egg sandwiches. It’s well after 1:00 so we reprogram MMD to see if she can find a speedier route for the rest of the day. She curls us in a fish hook shaped route to get us paralleling the main highway, hopping on when there are no tolls and hopping off when there are. She is pretty amazing.


We’re back in farm country now as we plow through south central France on our way to the Cote du Rhone and our weeklong stay in Provence. The highlight is the nougat town of Montelimar which is dominated by a huge nougat factory and nougat shops on every corner. You learn something new every day.


We are finally passing through the vineyards of Provence and into our new home in Arles. The south of France has been multi-cultural since the Romans showed up a couple thousand years ago and is now home to an influx of North Africans, Gypsies from Eastern Europe, and of course, retired Europeans of every ilk.

Our home for the week is on the edge of the old city and the neighborhood feels very Moroccan/Algerian. Out our front door is the parking lot for the area so while the drive up appeal leaves a lot to be desired, the interior of the house is very nice. First floor living room and kitchen, second floor study (with computer) and master bedroom and bath and third floor bedroom with half bath and rooftop terrace.


It’s 6:00, the day has turned gray, we’re tired from the drive and we take a cursory walk around town before collapsing in front of “Strictly Come Dancing” on the BBC. We stir a bit at about 8:15 to find the closest place for dinner.

There is an Italian (again) place a couple blocks down with a few tables outside and mostly full inside. We snare an inside table and as we look around we realize everyone else has also just arrived. No drinks on tables, no food on tables, a few menus floating around and one server running her rear end off. She has a perfect ballet performance as she pirouettes from table to table taking orders, opening wines, moving menus to the next table in order of arrival. Yes, it’s slow but the food is fantastic (Mary a Mediterranean fettuccine pasta, Pat a Bolognese penne and John a perfectly seasoned and sliced Italian steak) and the server’s efficiency is a beautiful thing.


Our walk back is easy enough and we’re taking the day off tomorrow. We all read until late.


Today’s weather: Clear turning to overcast, low 38, high 70.