France – Page 2 – Taran's Tales

Cat-sitting in Montpellier.

It was a big wrench leaving Ospedaletti and returning to France again. Something magical there had grabbed both of us and, as we got into our car to drive away, our final memory of our Italian tryst was the beautiful sound of waves crashing against the rocks twenty feet away. So, long before we arrived at our next destination, we were quite convinced that we had to spend more time in La Bella Italia and had already started planning our next trip to Europe!

Alas that was not to be for a while – hopefully in the last quarter of 2018 – and we had to focus our minds on living for three weeks in a stranger’s home, and looking after their beloved cat. Montpellier is a five-hour drive and we arrived there in the early evening darkness, eventually finding a parking space a short walk from the apartment building. We soon discovered that on-street parking is a major problem for Montpellier residents, and the locals were extremely adept at squeezing into the tightest of spaces, using a little gentle bumper contact to assist them as necessary, a technique we approached warily in our lease car!

Tight parking – the driver of the VW had carefully placed some sort of cushion between his rear bumper and the utilities box and then more or less levered his car into the space, leaving his paint on my rear bumper!

We dined well that evening at Bistro Alco, with Kevin our host, while his wife Sheila stayed home finishing off some on-line business before their departure the following morning. Our charge, a black house-cat named Mr.D’Arcy, was not overly excited by our arrival and immediately hid under the bed, quite obviously well aware that his “parents” were departing imminently; animals have an uncanny understanding of the meaning of a pile of suitcases by the front door!

The second floor apartment on rue de Barcelone was only a ten-minute walk from Place de la Comédie and yet, surprisingly quiet, which was a relief for my city-living phobia. With about a third of the city’s population being university students, there was always lots of life centred around the many cafes and bars in the old town. The University of Montpellier, officially established in 1289, is one of the oldest in the world and has been a centre of medical excellence from an even earlier date. The city is, of course, very much more than just a university town, but the atmosphere of studious, intellectual, youthful activity pervades many aspects of the life there and made for an agreeable ambience for this worldly pair of travellers. Which was just as well, as with the problem of parking, we were loath to lose our spot any more than necessary and spent much of our stay on Shanks’ pony, exercising my deteriorating knees to the max, but at the same time getting a good feel of the city-dwelling life. Actually this was quite a good experience, residing as we were in a city with so much to see and appreciate.

So it was back to a life of wandering the streets, seeking culture wherever we could, window shopping mindful of the approach of Christmas, and of course, enjoying French café culture yet again. But having said that, our first attempt to partake of same was a failure. On our second or third day, having finally made friends with Mr D’Arcy, we walked up to Place de la Comedie, thinking we would enjoy a brief late morning coffee and watch the world go by awhile, before taking an afternoon drive to the seaside. But our choice of venue was marred by a waiter who seemed to have no idea of time whatsoever, and after waiting more than fifteen minutes for our order to arrive, our patience frayed and, remembering our midday date with the parking meter, we upped sticks and hot-footed it back to rescue our car from imminent clamping or, worse still, being towed.

The nearest seaside in Montpellier entails a fifteen minute drive to Palavas-les-Flots. However we decided to go a few minutes further to the fishing village of Le Grau-du-Roi, the driver not wishing to stop at La Grande Motte, a purpose-built resort from the sixties, full of concrete apartment buildings, the only redeeming feature of which was the avant-garde architecture.

Avant-garde architecture of La Grande Motte

Le Grau-du-Roi was much more traditional, and hence more to our liking. We walked along the seafront, neatly paved with modern mosaics, braving the brisk wintry breeze raising white caps on the bay, until we came to a touching statue of a mother and her child peering into the distance, searching the horizon for their husband/father’s fishing boat; it was yet another reminder of this coast’s strong traditions with seafaring.

Statue of mother and child in Le-Grau-du-Roi

A canal passes right through the centre of the village, its banks lined with fishing boats, old and new and various pleasure craft and tour boats; tours into the étangs (lagoons) of the nearby Camargue are popular tourist activities, though not such an attractive proposition in early winter. We stopped awhile at one of the cafes lining the quay on the right bank (that’s the bank on your right as you float downstream!), before a late afternoon drive through La Petite Camargue, where we were happy to see some of the famous pink flamingoes.

Another day we drove to Sète, an interesting town built upon and around a hill, Mont St Clair, that was a separate island until the mid-seventeenth century when Louis XIV decreed that the town and port be built to provide an outlet to the sea for the Canal du Midi. This work included reclaiming land between the north-east corner of the island and the mainland, building canals and bridges, and constructing a long isthmus connecting the southwest corner to the land and effectively creating the sea-water lagoon, Étang deThau. The reclaimed land is where most of the town’s industry is found, and the isthmus has nature reserves and vineyards planted in the sand, the wines from which are said to have a distinct flavour of the sea. We spent an hour or more wandering the paths of the small wooded park that covers the peak of the hill, and enjoying the views. Eventually we drove back down into the port area, and looked around the shops before having our usual afternoon coffee break at a café on Quai de la Résistance, overlooking the fishing boats moored either side of the main Royal Canal.

One more trip to the seaside found us making a return visit to the Camargue, on a glorious, sunny, windless autumn day, stopping first to befriend, and feed with fresh green grass from our side of the fence, one of the handsome white horses for which the Camargue is so famous, before arriving at the quiet little low-key tourist village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where we hoped to find a place to eat a late lunch. In this we were totally thwarted, as everything closes down at 3pm sharp, so we contented ourselves with admiring the impressive old church that had been built to be as much a place of refuge as a house of religion.

From there we drove back through the Petite Camargue in the late afternoon sunshine, towards the splendid, small, medieval walled town of Aigues-Mortes, hoping, in vain sadly, to see some of the powerful Camarguaise black bulls, bred for the corridas in both France and Spain. This drive included taking the ferry across Le Petit Rhone, on a most unusual ferry that is guided by a cable strung across the river upstream from the boat; a simple effective idea as long as the river is always flowing seawards. It wasn’t clear how they handled an incoming tide!

It was getting dark when we arrived at Aigues-Mortes and we restricted our stay to a walk along the main street, Grande Rue Jean-Jaurès, stopping for a much-needed coffee at Café Express on Place St-Louis, and then succumbing to the temptations at La Cure Gourmande, famous for its sugar cookies, a tasty end to an enjoyable day away from the big city.

With Nîmes being slightly less than an hour’s drive from Montpellier, we arranged to meet my step-sister Selina for lunch one day, and unfortunately, chose a very damp rainy day, prompting us to drive straight to Parking de l’Arènes in the centre of town. We did a bit of shopping before the appointed hour, successfully finding Berenice Nîmes, a milliner we had patronised a couple of years earlier and, naturally, we failed to come away empty-handed . . . either of us this time! We had a good lunch at Ciel de Nîmes, personally waited on by the proprietor, one of Selina’s neighbours; the restaurant is located on the rooftop of the fine new library on one side of Place de la Maison Carré, its ultra-modern architecture being an interesting juxtaposition with the wonderfully preserved Roman temple which gives the square its name. On the drive back to Montpellier we stopped off at Sommières, a medieval fortified village, that I had believed could be a good place to live. This time the grey weather made the place seem a little less desirable, and we contented ourselves watching a huge flock of starlings doing their dramatic flying sculptures, catching sight of a couple of rare coypus along the riverbank, and admiring the graceful passage of a small group of swans which included a black one, another comparative rarity.

We returned to Sommières for a second look a few days later, seeing the town under clear blue skies and bright sunshine. As we were crossing the pedestrian causeway across the river, Le Vidourle, a hot-air balloon arrived, seemingly low on gas as it skimmed the treetops seeking a safe place to land. Nice day as it was, the town still seemed rather gloomy, and somewhat limited in what it offered, so we crossed it off our list of nest sites!

Apart from these few sorties to the countryside, we easily filled our time in Montpellier, strolling around that lively, elegant city. Celine’s niece, Martinka, joined us for one weekend and we enjoyed her young company as we discovered more and more new places.

The neo-classic architecture of Antigone.

Antigone is a new neighbourhood built in the early 1980’s, mostly comprising low-income housing (proving that where there’s a socially conscious will, even the less well off in society can live in attractive surroundings) plus public facilities and local shops. Designed by the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, it is an extraordinary collection of “grand neo-classical structures, enlarging classical motifs such as pediments, entablatures and pilasters to a gigantic scale” [Wikipaedia], and yet complimenting the aging grandeur of much of the town centre.

More classical imagery at the entrance to Le Polygone shopping centre.

It is definitely worth taking a couple of hours to stroll around, ending up at the Polygone shopping centre.

Another morning we chose to join a guided tour around the Faculty of Medicin. As we were the only non-Francophones in the group, the French-speaking guide kindly assured us that he would be happy to describe in English anything that we didn’t understand; but when we tried him out on that a couple of times, his English was far more difficult to understand than his French and we reckoned we would do better to rely on our own translations.

The imposing front door of La Faculté de Médecine.

The main building is very impressive with a lot of history and the portrait gallery of past professors includes such worthies as Francois Rabelais. However, it was Le Musée d’Anatomie that was perhaps the most memorable part of the tour. Glass cabinets lining the walls of the long hall, displayed an extraordinary collection of bits of bodies that have been preserved as exhibits for the students to study, dating back to the days when surgery was still very much the domain of those known affectionately as “sawbones”.

Cases of body parts lined the walls of La Conservatoire d’Anatomie.

And nothing was left to the imagination. Veneral disease was rife among students in the nineteenth century and all those stricken were required to make a very realistic scale model of their affected parts for the educational benefit of their colleagues; thus one fairly large case contained well over sixty scarily detailed models of genitalia in various stages of the diseases, which must surely have frightened many a young man away from the joys of casual sexual encounters! However, the display that particularly interested me was a case of dissected knee joints, making me realise just what I was letting myself in for, having committed to bilateral knee replacement surgery upon our return to California.

Two other places well worthy of a visit in this historic city of learning and culture are the beautiful elegant Opera House and La Musee Farbre. The latter includes in its treasures, a fine collection of Dutch and Flemish masterpieces, as well as various French works of art. The museum was practically deserted apart from us and several security guards who seemed to pop up around every corner. We chatted to one, an Englishman in his sixties who seemed to have a somewhat obscure past; he told us that he liked the work there as there was so little violence in art galleries . . . compared to???! Attached to the museum is L’Hôtel de Cabrières-Sabatier d’Espeyran, a lavish nineteenth century mansion, that gives the visitor a good taste of what life was like for the upper classes in those days.

Preparations for the holiday season were well under way by the end of our stay. The Jardin du Champs de Mars was filled with the little huts that are so much a part of Christmas markets everywhere, “Les Hivernales” as they called it in Montpellier, and we spent a couple of evenings supping gluhwein and consuming hot sausages as we perused the many stalls displaying the usual collection of seasonal offerings. A twenty-foot high, brightly illuminated globe, and giant inflated clowns wandering around, added to the festive atmosphere for the delightfully cosmopolitan crowd of revellers of all ages and from all walks of life, that crowded the square. The city also had its own take on the Festival of Lights, Coeur de Ville en Lumières. A dozen or more of the more significant public buildings were used as the backdrop for a series of excellent audio-video presentations that combined musical scores, both modern rock and classical, with graphics that ingeniously used the architectural details, to tell different stories, some historical and some pure fantasy. Each presentation lasted five minutes or more and they were phased so that we had time to stroll from one to the other; it was very impressive.

And, it seemed, no sooner had we arrived than it was time to move on again. Kevin and Sheila were on their way home and we started our own preparations to hit the road again.

Mr Darcy relaxing with his stuffed animals.

Mr.Darcy had been a very easy feline to sit for; he seemed content in his life as a housebound cat, was clean and tidy, and showed no inclination to follow us out into the great outdoors. As long as we fed him regularly and emptied his litter box, his only slight sign of frustration was a tendency to hump his stuffed animals, which was probably more his daily equivalent of an early morning stretch for us mere humans. And I have to say that, with its large balcony and views over the nearby rooftops towards the rising sun, their compact apartment was actually a very easy place to live. Being so close to such a vibrant city centre, I came to understand what attracts people to live like that. However, it didn’t dissuade me from my need to once more feel the freedom of living life in a smaller community with views of sea or countryside, and I looked forward to our next destination, Calella de Palafrugell in the Costa Brava of Spain . . .

PS Writing this over a year later, I am very conscious that the photos do not always do justice to the subject matter. I have told my Facebook friends earlier about my frustrations at having had a catastrophe with our HDD holding our enormous collection of travel pictures. Luckily we recovered perhaps 80% of the files, but the random way the damage affected them has left me without some of our best images. So, my apologies!

It takes all types! An alternative view of the other South of France.

It is Sunday morning, market day in Espéraza in the Aude department, the day of the week when the alternative population of this small corner of Languedoc gather together, come rain or shine.

Like many of the local markets in the area it can be an eye-opening experience to visit one of these colourful events. If you believe the hippy culture ended along with the closure of the Vietnam War, you’ll think again when you go out for your fruit and veggies and artisan loaf of bread, whether you are in Espéraza or Mirepoix, or any of the other gathering places of those who like to turn their backs on conventional life, and wear their old bellbottoms, afghan coats, tie-died T-shirts and hand-knitted shawls. They come to the market to sell to each other, as well as to delighted tourists, home-made soap, soup, baked goods, paella, sheepskins, and cute stitched, knitted, woven, carved, and forged objets d’art. The stalls are a cornucopia of eye-catching, as well as mouth-watering goodies; but even more interesting is to wander round and observe one’s fellow humans, basically made the same as oneself, but now seemingly living in a different world.

Celine and I were staying for part of the winter in the tiny commune of Rouvenac (population around 200), where we had been able to arrange a house exchange for five weeks with a couple of English artists who lived and worked in a small three-storied house overlooking the village square. Exploring that rural area of Languedoc was part of our search to find somewhere to build our nest in the future, but, more importantly, we were staying there to celebrate the holiday season with Celine’s sister, Dagmara, and her family who, very conveniently, lived a ten minute drive away in the much larger commune of Antugnac, population about 325.

In France a couple of years earlier, we had our first taste of the alternative lifestyle, when Dagmara had taken us to the market in Mirepoix, a sizable commune of more than 3,000 people. There, we had our initiation into the world in which Dagmara and her partner Willie live, though little did we realise then just how extensive that world is. The market is held on Place Marechal Leclerc, three sides of which are bordered by 13^th to 15^th century buildings, creating what is said to be one of the finest surviving arcaded markets in France. The multifarious stalls filled the square, actually a long rectangle, and overflowed into some of the side streets, and as we wandered around, fascinated by the plethora of colours, tastes, and smells, of foods, incense, carved woods, fresh-baked goods, clothing and knickknacks, we often lost sight of our dear sister as she stopped to talk with anyone and everyone. For someone who had arrived from another country, Poland, just a few short years before, speaking hardly a word of French, she had assimilated extraordinarily well and seemed to know nearly everyone there. For such is the goodwill to be found in this community, that no-one is treated like a stranger, everyone is made welcome, and all look after each other in one way or another.

So we should not have been surprised that cool December morning in Espéraza, to witness once more this bonhomie that we found all around us, as we stopped at one stall after another, being introduced to yet more of Dagmara’s and Willie’s friends and acquaintances, from all corners of the globe and all walks of life, all having one thing in common, a lively disdain for “convention”.

One friend of Dagmara’s, a Turkish lady, was hawking her delicious soup, which she kept in a large insulated tureen resting in a baby carriage. We had a long interesting discussion about life in general with Marcial, Willie’s martial arts teacher, a young Frenchman with a Taiwanese wife, who had a table filled with garlic. And we took home with us two large portions of steaming paella, from a Catalan man who is a regular favourite of our hosts. From another friend, Celine was strongly tempted to buy yet another sheepskin – we bought one the previous year from the Scottish Wool shop at Chatsworth House, one of England’s grand country mansions – and then we were both fascinated by one of Dagmara’s soulmates who had a small stall selling three types of very tasty dairy-less cheese, a product she had developed when she realized her son had a serious allergy to dairy products.

Wooed as we were by so many friendly people selling so much interesting stuff, the people-watching was still the most fascinating part of the experience. The stall-holders tended to be on the younger side, well, less than sixty anyway, but our fellow shoppers were of all ages, the older ones obviously clinging to a genuine 60’s youth. There were also several gents of more dubious age and lineage, who we often saw sitting or standing around outside the two or three cafés on the square, that the average American tourist might have mistaken for homeless, but they never begged for money and they troubled no-one. We did have an amusing incident another day, as we were walking back to our car after buying our daily baguette from the boulangerie down a little alley off the square; one of these gents got up as we walked past and said in French, slightly menacingly, something to the effect “You know this is a dangerous place?!”, but he just laughed when I retorted with something like “Why, because you’re here?” They just seemed to be locals down on their luck, with nothing much to do, except, drink beer, smoke pot and maybe bemoan the state of the world!

We were fascinated by the many ways these good people found to make a small income to supplement whatever handouts they were able to get from France’s social security system. Our sister, although very cautious about some aspects of modern technology – she and Willie refuse to have a micro-wave oven in the house – made good use of the internet and Skype. She seemed to have an effective way of talking to women who were having difficulty conceiving, and were willing to pay good money to have her calm their inner selves and help them realise their dreams. Willie believed he could help those with aches and pains, with hands-free massage therapy, and again he found people who also had faith enough in his abilities at €xx a session. On a more practical side, as winter drew in and night-time temperatures went negative (deg C), we were looking for a cheap source of firewood to feed the very necessary log-burner in our little house in Rouvenac. Dagmara and Willie led us on a walk up Sentier des Plâitres, an ancient track, used a couple of hundred years earlier by the lime quarry workers to bring lime down to the windmill on the brow of the hill. Half a mile up the track we turned off, went through an old farmyard where the buildings were in various states of renovation and repair, and arrived at a ramshackle bungalow that appeared to be half wooden chalet and half lean-to garage. This was the home of their friend, Antoine, a gent of Germanic origins, who made some pocket-money with a bit of woodcutting on the side. Alas, his prices turned out to be even higher than the local wood yard, and he didn’t seem inclined to socialise, so we didn’t stay too long.

The history of his home was however more interesting. Originally Antoine and his partner lived in an old bus that they parked in the woods below the farm, and over the years they extended their accommodation over and around the bus, which was still part of their living quarters and was what we had seen in the “garage” part of the building. Probably not totally built to planning regulations, but definitely in accordance with the norms of an alternative lifestyle. Anyway, our walk wasn’t entirely in vain as Willie helped me to collect armfuls of fallen dead twigs and branches, to supplement our store of kindling, another essential item for the never-ending job of “keeping the home fires burning”!

Walking in the lovely countryside above Antugnac

The alternative life in a valley near to Antugnac

Another day we learnt about some people who had taken to living really rough in a sunken valley set in the hillside behind Antugnac. Unknowingly, we had driven past the wooded end of this valley many times, but only when we hiked above the village and saw all the little huts and rusty old camper vans distributed in that small valley below us, did we realise people were living there, people who were, no doubt, among the crowd we saw at Espéraza market. As expected, Dagmara had already befriended several of these valley dwellers, who were just another part of her social scene, equal in many ways to all the others, however they chose to live.

Donkeys are also a big part of life in the Aude. One bright sunny afternoon, Celine and I were hiking up a track outside Rouvenac when several pairs of pointed furry ears poked up behind the rocks. Establishing that we offered no threat, half a dozen very tame donkeys then ambled out to us, eventually all vying to be stroked by these friendly strangers. They were quite delightful and we spent a good fifteen minutes with them before realising the day was drawing in and carried on up the hill. One particularly friendly little chap decided to adopt us and followed us until we finally managed to convince him that, even though it was the Christmas season, we were just a passing pleasure and not friends for life.

This little chap was quite determined to stay with us, and looked so forlorn as we explained we couldn’t take him home!

Local character with his lantern in Puivert.

Home-made lanterns were the order of the night in Puivert.

A few days before Christmas, the slightly more upmarket commune of Puivert (population around 500) held a festival des lumières. As the afternoon sun disappeared behind the surrounding hills, all the villagers and other locals, including many who would have looked quite at home at Woodstock all those years ago, gathered in the old market hall where we lit up our glorious mix of simple candles and crêpe paper lanterns. The master of ceremonies then led us off on a colourful procession through the village, lit simply by small nightlights in home-made paper cups placed on walls and on the parapets of bridges over the little stream. Stopping two or three times on the way, for story telling, poetry recitations and folk songs from other lands, we eventually arrived beside the lake in the park outside the village, where a bonfire was ready for lighting, and hot wine and pastries, prepared by the ladies of the village, were on sale to ward off the wintry night air. The pageant already had a slightly surreal feel about it, lit only by the flickering of hundreds of candles, but that became even stranger when the revelers set fire to a string of brushwood laid out on the grass in the shape of a star, some twenty feet across.

The fiery star burning in the field outside Puivert.

Finally, we all took Chinese lanterns and, once lit, they were released up into the dark night sky to drift slowly away over the lake and into the darkness beyond. A beautiful ending to a quite zany evening, well suited to the alternative world we were experiencing in our little corner of Languedoc.

Provence part seven – Another touch of seafaring history and more of the fleshpots.

The French Riviera is, in reality, much more than a hedonists’ paradise, including as it does two of France’s most important centres of maritime and naval industry. We were already favourably impressed by Toulon [see Provence Part Six] when a rendezvous with Celine’s sister Dagmara, gave us a good reason to visit the other great seaport at the extreme western end of that coast.

Marseille and the islands from the Basilique.

Marseilles is a real working city, historically important to France’s foreign trade, and somewhat renowned in the past as a place one needed to be careful where one trod, that is, in the best traditions of the seafarer’s way of life, it used to be a bit rough around the edges. Therefore, in homage to its maritime past, we made la Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde our first stop.

Impressive architecture of La Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde

Built on top of an impressive rocky outcrop in the 6^th arrondisement, this stunning piece of religious architecture, visible from all over Marseille, is the place to visit if you want to have the best views of the city, the old port and the islands in the bay beyond. It also houses many fascinating artifacts, paintings and models of ships that set sail from the port over the years, commemorating the seafaring heritage of the city. Afterwards, we three took a short stroll through the old city, where we found artists and some amusing grafiti and back down into the port area; but, alas, the day was fading fast and we realized we had to return another day to do the town justice.

Walking back down to the port from the old town, with the Basilique in the distance.

Musée des Civilisations d’Europe et de Méditerranée

And one week later we did just that, Dagmara needing to meet up again with her ride home to Antugnac. Once we had said our “Adieus”, Celine and I proceeded to discover that this was yet another town where one can get hopelessly mixed up in it’s traffic system, and our assumption that the car park named “Les Terrasses du Port” would be convenient for another visit to the old port, proved to be very wrong. In fact Les Terrasses du Port is a modern shopping centre better situated for ferry passengers visiting the new port area, so we relocated ourselves to the car park nearby the somber-looking Cathédrale La Major and wandered down past Mucem, the ultra-modern Musée des Civilisations d’Europe et de Méditerranée sitting in its moat, and around the rebuilt Fort Saint-Jean, the sea-wall battlements of which provided many quiet corners for courting couples, including ourselves, to enjoy the afternoon sunshine away from the madding crowds.

Once in the old port, we decided to make the most of the autumn sunshine by taking a boat trip out on the bay of Marseille, to visit Château d’If, the island fortress on the tiny Île d’If, the smallest island in the Frioul archipelago about three kilometres off shore. Originally built in the mid-sixteenth century for King Francis I, to defend the port of Marseille, it never had to prove its worth in battle. Instead, the nineteenth century saw it become one of the most notorious jails in France, being escape-proof, even if Dumas’ fictitious hero, Edmond Dantès, proved otherwise in “The Count of Monte Cristo”. This fantasy resulted in one rough-hewn cell being maintained in honour of Dantès as the main tourist attraction! There really isn’t very much else to see in the chateau itself and the best parts of the afternoon were the boat trip itself, and the lovely views back towards Marseille, and of the two larger islands further offshore. I could see a large well-protected marina on Île Ratonneau which got me thinking what a great place it would be to berth my yacht, but then I get that dreamy feeling whenever I see a large fleet of sailboats!

A couple of other attractive small towns to the east of Marseilles are Cassis and La Ciotat, the latter also being the home of a small shipbuilding yard, Chantiers Navals de La Ciotat, where I once spent an interesting couple of weeks in my professional capacity as a marine engineer, and first discovered the French capacity for obstinacy when it comes to using the English language. Both towns were horribly busy on that late Saturday afternoon and as parking seemed to be a near impossibility, we decided to drive strait through; but it was evident that they were both popular places to live and, perhaps, for the wealthy Marseillaises to wine and dine.

With the more down-to-earth ports of Toulon and Marseille ticked off on our bucket-list, it was time to return to the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur, first stop Monaco. Our arrival there was a nightmare. In an effort to reduce the amount of traffic flowing above ground through the tiny municipality, the hillsides are now a warren of underground roadways, and having taken a wrong turn somewhere deep in the rocky depths, we found ourselves in an enormous never-ending tunnel, going goodness knows where. No longer in the most positive of moods, we eventually found our way out into fresh air and what we hoped would be a convenient car-park at the base of Le Rocher, upon which the ruling House of Grimaldi have built their palace, claiming for themselves the best views of this city-state. And then again, Grace Kelly, the subject of my early adolescent love, lived there once upon a time, so I could never hate the place whatever problems it presented.

It was easy to imagine how beautiful Monaco must have been a couple of centuries ago before the Casino opened in 1869. However, it is now the most densely populated state in the world and as one turns to face the city behind Le Rocher, the view is a seething mass of high-rise apartment buildings that severely mar the view of the hillsides on which they are built, and seem to extend in every direction except for seawards.

The spoiled beauty of Monaco greatly enhanced by my travelling companions!

It is by no means a pretty sight. However, the Jardins de Saint-Martin that stretch down from the front of the Palace around the edge of Le Rocher, with views over the Mediterranean and down over the Port de Fontvieille, are a pleasant place for an afternoon stroll among the lawns and interesting sculptures. But once you reach the eastern end of the gardens overlooking the marina crammed full of enormous luxury power yachts, the awfulness of such concentrated development smacks you in the face. One saving feature, the police do seem have a sense of humour; when asked to indicate the quickest way down to the quayside, one fine officer, standing outside the city hall, pointed straight towards the requested destination, that is down a fairly precipitous cliff face, then laughingly turned round and pointed us towards Avenue Saint-Martin, the road that curves down around the end of the rock, slower but decidedly safer! The pompous ceremony of the “changing of the guard” at the palace gates was also a bit of a farce, there being literally only one guard to change!

We eventually made our way down to the quayside and as we wandered along admiring the magnificent super yachts, we were apalled to find a large funfair spread across the end of the marina, making the place seem more like Blackpool on a drizzly Lancashire afternoon than the posh sophisticated ambience of Monte Carlo and its casinos that we had expected. Undeterred we continued our walk round past the Casino de Monte Carlo itself, till we arrived at La Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, thinking we would visit the advertised Musée de la Poupée. That, alas, was another disappointment when we learned that the doll museum had actually been closed for the last five years, and there was no other exhibition installed to replace it!

Whilst I am quite sure Monaco is still “The Place” for some people, I’m afraid it left us feeling very negative about it and so we quickly returned to our car for the less than 20km, but 45 minute drive further east to Nice, which, with it’s more demure fading elegance, was a great improvement. You arrive driving along the now infamous Promenade des Anglais, the scene of such terror just a few months earlier. This long boulevard is lined with lots of elegant houses and hotels facing the sea, and yet in stark contrast, the road just behind these buildings looked really very impoverished. We found a spot to park in Parking du Phare at the entrance to the small port just around the headland at the end of the long curving beach. Retracing our footsteps, we passed the powerful Monument au Morts de Rauba-Capéu, a memorial honoring Nice citizens killed during WW1, and once back round the headland of the same name, arrived in the Vieille Ville, the type of warren of narrow streets among old buildings, with restaurants and cafés at every corner, that are such a joy to wander through. Sadly the day was coming to an end and we had little time to really appreciate the place, let alone get a true impression of what is France’s fifth most populous city with a population of about one million, and the holiday destination of around four million tourists every year.

A couple of days later we headed back in that same general direction, to visit first of all, Grasse considered to be the world’s capital of perfume, up in the hills a few miles inland from Cannes. Following a succession of signposts, we eventually arrived on the edge of town at the Fragonard factory, where we took a guided tour to learn about the history and processes involved in perfume production.

According to my two sophisticated lady companions, our young guide was not very knowledgeable; and the inevitable sales pitch at the end of the tour was all rather nauseating in more ways than one, as we really didn’t like any of their perfumes, let alone their aluminium perfume “bottles”! Nevertheless, I was quite impressed to learn that some three thousand different essences, sourced from all over the world, are used in the manufacture of their range of perfumes and soaps, and a good “nose” can identify and distinguish each and every one.

The ingredients of today’s perfumes are sourced worldwide

The local perfume industry started to prosper at the end of the eighteenth century, and centered around Grasse because the micro-climate is particularly beneficial for the flower farming industry. Ironically, whereas in 1905 nearly six hundred tons of flowers were used in the local perfume production, modern methods and synthetic ingredients

Isnard, a local family-owned parfumerie.

mean that less than 30 tons of flowers were used in early 2000.

Heading back into the town centre we were much more impressed by visits to one or two of the many perfume shops, and especially liked that of Isnard. The proprietor, Mlle. Isnard, comes from a long family line that was able to trace their association with the town of Grasse back to the Middle Ages. And because we liked her products so much we came away with a bag well filled with perfume, soaps and even a liqueur to satisfy the driver!

Realising a need to fortify the body as well as the soul we had a delicious late luncheon at “Lou Pignatoun”, deep in the historic centre of the town, lured by their Friday speciality, “L’Aïoli”, a Provençal speciality of a platter of fish, prawns, hard-boiled eggs and lots of other tasty morsels served with a dip of garlic and olive oil mayonnaise. Sadly, we were just too late for that particular dish, but we still ate well of veal, steak, a mix of potatoes and smoked lentils . . . yummy. A quick visit to the very attractive cathedral completed our visit to Grasse, and a second brief stop in Cannes completed our Cook’s Tour of the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur and also actually marked the end of our stay in Provence. Time for a change of language, and for a short tryst across the border in Italy, but that’s another story . . .

“Habit de Perfume”
Tomek Pawiak 1997
after a 17th century engraving.

Provence part six – Our first taste of the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur

Provence means one of two things to most people, either sun-filled landscapes with a scattering of small medieval towns and villages perched artistically on hillsides, separated by never ending vistas of vineyards and olive groves or, the exotic lifestyles of the rich and famous in the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur. More commonly known amongst the anglophones of the world as the French Riviera, the Côte d’Azur nominally stretches from the Italian border in the east to Cassis, near Marseilles, in the west. My dear Celine is torn between the culture of big cities and the beauties of nature, whereas I am more of a dedicated countryside fan myself; nevertheless both of us approached the French Riviera cities of Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo, with no real expectations of finding our optimal nesting place. A couple of other big cities that also interested us both, especially me as an old sea-dog, were Marseilles and Toulon; whilst not typically on the average Cook’s Tour of casinos and the lives of the high-rollers, they are both interesting old seaports with lots of history. Still we were determined to experience all that Provence had to offer which included a day or two “at the seaside”, and so one mid-October day, with a forecast of “periods of clouds and sun” we set off for our second of several visits to the azure waters of the Mediterranean.

We had already briefly tasted the Riviera lifestyle when visiting Saint Tropez [see “Provence Part Two – Saint Tropez”], but Cannes was to leave us with some very different impressions. A town of just 72,000 people, it seems much bigger than that, with an infrastructure and hinterland to support the vast numbers of tourists that descend on it every year. It is well known for its various film festivals but all the same we were surprised to find it so crowded on that grey autumnal day. Unknowingly, we had arrived for the first day of MIPCOM, a festival of television programming where 14,000 delegates, including 1,600+ of the world’s film and TV producers and 4,800+ buyers from TV stations, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like, descend on the Palais des Festivals et des Congres to criticize and barter each other’s made-for-television films and series.

Looking for somewhere to park near the promenade we found ourselves competing with a mass of oversize limousines and luxury black sedans with dark tinted windows, and finally ended up at the Parking de la gare de Cannes in a slightly less salubrious part of town. The Palais des Festivals monopolises the western end of Boulevard de la Croisette, the main street alongside the promenade, from Le Vieux Port round to Pointe Croisette at the eastern end of the bay. Not having any great interest in television soap operas, we set off towards the old town, past the pentagonal bandstand on Allée de la Liberté Charles de Gaulle, past Mairie de Cannes, the impressive Town Hall with it’s clock tower and the war memorial in front, then down Quai Saint-Pierre and Quai Max Laubeuf, enviously admiring the flotilla of luxurious sailing yachts with their perfect teak decks, moored stern-to, Mediterranean fashion, awaiting a visit from their well-heeled owners.

Mairie de Cannes, the city hall in Cannes.

A couple of weeks later, when we made a second shorter visit to the city, showing Celine’s younger sister Dagmara the sights, we got into conversation with a lucky young man walking ashore from the British yacht “Latifa”, who proudly told us he was helping the owner prepare for a five year circumnavigation of the world, in which he would be one of the five crew. This legendary 70ft yacht, a successful competitor in three Fastnet Races in the 1930’s and post-war, was designed and built by William Fife in 1936 at a small shipyard on the beach in the village of Fairlie in Scotland, and its present condition was a compliment to the boatbuilders of old. It had me fair droolin’!! And I like to think my dear wife and sister-in-law could be quite tempted to go to sea on such an elegant craft! [see www.sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk for a fascinating history and more photos of SY “Latifa”].

The elegant sailing yacht Latifa, being prepared for a five-year jaunt around the world.

Anyway, Celine eventually managed to drag me away from the quayside and we enjoyed our walk the narrow streets and up the stairways of the old town and up the hill to the church of Notre Dame.

We had great views of the port below us as well as a cruise ship moored offshore, and, looking inland, we appreciated the true size of the city and beyond. Descending back to sea-level, we headed towards the festival with its pavilions bedecked with enormous hoardings of TV programmes vying for the attention of the delegates, and the entrances of its perimeter of steel barriers guarded by snappily dressed young men, all identical in their black leather shoes, black suits, white shirts and red ties, to keep us common people away from the celebrities.

And as if that level of security wasn’t quite enough, heavily armed soldiers in combat fatigues mingled “discreetly” among the crowds of mere mortals enjoying the small funfair. We followed the Walk of Fame, where we found, among others, the handprints set in stone, of Timothy Dalton, Vanessa Redgrave, Dennis Hopper and, appropriately, Sharon Stone.

The afternoon was getting greyer and damper and we walked around the edge of the event till we found the famed red carpet where my own A++ celebrity made her entrance.

Celine receives the red carpet treatment.

By this time my tummy was rumbling as usual and we found a small café overlooking the beach where we took shelter from the drizzle, across the road from the elegant old hotels, luxury apartments and casinos that lined Boulevard de la Croisette. Somewhat fortified we turned our backs on the festival and walked back into the normal life of the city, to find our car, stopping only for a few groceries at a little Arabic store on Place de la Gare, as well as finding some rather tasty pastries in a local patisserie, to consume as we drove back through the pouring rain to Lorgues.

Not exactly convinced by the attractions of Cannes, a few days later our next trip to the coast took us on our first of two visits to Toulon, France’s main base for its Mediterranean Naval Fleet.

Also the centre for many different industries, Toulon had seemed to be a rather inauspicious place to visit as we did our research back in California, until one damp evening in Lorgues, I sat and read the city’s reviews in the Michelin Guide I found on our host’s bookshelves. And we really did enjoy our visit there, starting with the busy port itself, a delightful mixture of yachts large and small, fishing boats, local ferries taking commuters back and forth across the bay to Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer, larger ferries servicing the island of Corsica, and of course, warships of all shapes and sizes.

Toulon, home of the French Mediterranean Fleet.

Some of the small inshore fishing fleet alongside in Toulon.

As usual we headed off into the mainly pedestrianised old town behind the port, initially poking our noses quickly inside the elegant 18^th century convent church of Saint-Francois de Paule, and then walking along Cours Lafayette, an ordinary shopping street with market stalls down the middle, catering to a pretty broad cross-section of this port-city’s society. We took a closer look inside the more magnificent 19^th century Cathedrale Notre-Dame de la Seds, before finding ourselves in Place Puget with its extraordinarily calcified fountain, on top of which a veritable copse of small trees and shrubs grows in and around the central sculpture of three dolphins, now nearly lost among the greenery. It is always easy to get a strong, tasty, but decaffeinated café in France, so coffee in the late afternoon is never a problem for those of us who don’t wish to stay awake all night! So in this square, once frequented by the likes of Dumas, Flaubert and Hugo, we indulged ourselves in the café culture once more, watching the late afternoon ladies passing by with their shopping and young lads challenging all on their skate boards, as we enjoyed crèpes with our decaffs.

Old Toulon is pleasantly ordinary, with some eye-catching architecture, yet not at all sophisticated or overtly touristy. Its streets and passageways are somewhat artsy, sometimes a bit dilapidated and one passageway in particular smelt so strongly of urine that, in spite of the beguiling street sign indicating more artistic work at its far end, I could not persuade Celine to explore further! With the day nearly gone, to finish our visit we searched out, with some difficulty, the route to the top of Mont Faron, from where, in the light of the setting sun we had a terrific view over the town and the port laid out below us, the peninsular of Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer that protects the port, and all the way west to the nearby village of Sanary-sur-Mer.

Traditional fishing craft, “pointus”, line the dock in Sanary-sur-Mer

I had wanted to visit Sanary-sur-Mer ever since reading “The Little Paris Bookshop” by Nina George, in which the narrator, bookseller Jean Perdu, winds up there at the end of an extraordinary odyssey on his floating shop/home/barge, along the inland waterway of canals and rivers from Paris to the Mediterranean. So one of our last day-trips in Provence was to explore that lesser travelled part of the Côte d’Azur to the west of Toulon, starting in Bandol, which we liked a lot. It has to be said that everywhere on this coast is extensively developed, but Bandol seemed to be less than most.

Celine relives her childhood on the waterfront in Bandol.

A pretty sandy beach, a busy little marina with plenty of sailing boats of all sizes, including a large fleet of pointus, the traditional fishing boats of the area, a late eighteenth century carousel, and a waterfront of modest buildings with the usual mix of cafés, restaurants, small hotels and local shops, all combined to give the village a warm friendly feeling that beckoned us inwards, where we found more tidy narrow streets and a pretty tree-filled square in front of the small church. Sanary- sur-Mer, a few miles further east was equally likeable and we even managed to find a little second-hand bookshop that I easily imagined to be the one where Jean Perdu ended up his days. Between them, these two villages gave me renewed hope that there were places along the Riviera where life was lived at a more normal level than we had seen in the fleshpots! But then again, we weren’t there in “the season”! We had barely scratched the surface of the Riviera’s hedonistic offerings, and we still had to visit another seaport renowned for it’s lowlife past!

Provence part five – The Gorge du Verdon

Living in the geocentric world that is the USA leads one to believe that there is only one “Grand Canyon” worthy of the name. Well, however magnificent the eponymous one may be, carved out over millions of years by the increasingly defunct Colorado River, France is also a country that has several beautiful river canyons not to be missed by the discerning traveller. One such is the Gorge du Verdon. Often considered to be one of Europe’s most beautiful canyons, it is really a baby compared to “that other one across the pond”; just 25 miles long and never more than 700 metres deep, it is narrow, varying from 6m to 100m wide at the level of the river; it is also strikingly pretty, carved out by the river Verdon, the turquoise-green waters of which have cut through the limestone mass of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.

After a couple of days of heavy rain, we were in a mood to get out and see the countryside again and a trip up into the hills to the north where the air would be fresh, and the scenery wild and unspoilt, seemed to be the perfect anti-dote to our meteorological malaise. Having previously visited other French canyons such as the Gorge du Tarn, we were eager to experience the “best of them”.

Undeterred by the Saturday-morning mist, we set off early in a north-westerly direction towards the waterfalls at Sillans-la-Cascade, our first destination of the day, passing through Salernes, a village best known for its many ceramics factories. Visits to waterfalls are always hit-and-miss affairs, especially at the end of hot dry summers, but those two days of rain were a good omen and the prognosis was in our favour. Sillans-la-Cascade is a small medieval village (population about 600) on top of a low hill, encircled by the river La Bresque. When we arrived soon after midday everything was closed, so coffee was not on the cards, and we started walking downstream of the village along a track through the woods and beside the river, passing a surprising number of diseased and dying trees, figuring the falls would be close by.

La chute d’eau on the peaceful river above the falls.

After taking a few dead-end trails, we got directions from a friendly couple visiting from Marseilles, and finally found the steps and trail down through a fragrant, leafy glen leading to the wooden platform looking up towards the Cascade de Sillans. Our expectations were not misplaced, and water aplenty was cascading over the small cliff into the blue-green depths of the pool, flashing in the bright sunlight.

Difficult to leave such an idyllic place!

The picture was perfect and we could not have asked for a prettier setting to tempt us to stay longer. But, as always, we had an agenda for the day which did not include tarrying awhile, looking dreamily at wet mossy rocks, splashed by the deluge from above, glistening red and green in the sunshine, and soon we started to wend our way up the worn rocky steps, for a quick tour around the charming village of Sillans itself, before heading once more towards the Gorge.

Where it exits the western end of the Gorge, the river Verdon flows into an artificial lake, Lac de Sainte-Croix, and our route along the D957 first took us to a little bay with a few sailboats moored just offshore and a small pebble beach where we sat and ate our tasty picnic of “bio” sandwiches prepared by my beautiful bride. Further along the road we arrived at the unattractive, and practically deserted village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon on the shores of the lake, where we tried, again totally unsuccessfully, to find that elusive cup of coffee. Still caffeine-free, we popped our heads inside the modern church and then wandered down through a lakeside park to another stony beach, to enjoy the peaceful emptiness of the place and the view of the mountains in the distance. Then we climbed the steep path back up to the village centre, where we got into conversation with a very chatty guy, about my age, who quickly let us know his skeptical views about the benefits of capitalism, communism and all the other modern “isms”; we asked him about life in this quiet corner of the world and he clearly loved the peace and solitude of the place in autumn and winter; however, he held ambivalent views about tourists who, he said, ruined the ambience in the summer, yet provided him with a living from selling his jewellery! And we learnt all that speaking French which was pretty good going!

But, we still had to see the Gorge, and we set off along the edge of the lake to join the D19 leading to the D71, the road following the southern side of the canyon, “Route de la Corniche Sublime”; we chose that side mainly because we didn’t want to be taking pictures into the afternoon sunshine. Even then our photos really don’t do justice to this fine example of nature’s work.

It was a twisty little road climbing upwards to give us views back towards the lake, and then many enticing glimpses of the gorge itself, its white rockfaces dappled with patches of green shrubs and small trees, hanging precariously onto the steep slopes, and the river far below. Again, out of the tourist season, we could enjoy it all at our own speed; but there was a downside, the only café along the route was closed, and the effects of our delicious lunch having worn off in the late afternoon, we ended up munching on the pieces of ginger at the bottom of our thermos of tea to stop my tummy grumbling. After about twenty miles, the road parted company with the gorge and we soon came to the turning for Trigance, another ancient village on a hillside, miles from anywhere.

Trigance, a medieval village in the middle of nowhere.

The countryside all around was still dramatically wild and empty, particularly as the sun started to go down behind the hills, and Trigance looked to be a very lonely place to live. However, once we had parked just outside the village gateway, and walked a few yards inside, joy of joys, we found it to be full of life centred around an open café, where we purchased a bag of very edible fresh pastries and the all important, for me at least, dose of liquid caffeine, for by this time of day I was beginning to fade!

Suitably re-fuelled, we poked our noses around the village, as we tried to get a closer look at the ramparts of the castle high above. We eventually discovered its entrance, and learned that this impressive 11^th century edifice was now gainfully restored as “Château de Trigance” a posh hotel and restaurant, the menu prices of which made skinflint-me glad to have already found our tea-time vittles at the little café below.

Château de Trigance, a medieval fortress becomes a posh hotel.

We had still only seen about half of the Gorge, but with daylight fast disappearing, we realised we had to leave something for our next visit. So we turned away from the wild hills and drove back through the dusk to Lorgues, to plan our next excursion. Was it, perhaps, time to sample the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur once again?