Searching for the future – Page 5

Home-exchange newbies, experiencing life in a very small, very rural French village.

Our European saga was nearly half-over by the time we arrived in the little village of Rouvenac, deep in the countryside of western Languedoc-Roussillon (now part of the recently created Occitanie region), and close to the foothills of the Pyrenees. Up till then, we had experienced big-city living in Lyon, spent six weeks exploring Provence, passed six glorious days on the Italian Riviera, cat-sat in Montpellier, and had another enjoyable week overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Spain’s Costa Brava. Each experience was different in its own way and we were beginning to get a better idea of what it was we were searching for; we certainly had found out what we didn’t want, though as you continue to read our story you may begin to wonder if even that is true! [See my post “On finding somewhere to build a new nest . . .” published May 30, 2017]

Celine and her sister Dagmara admiring the Christmas decorations in Rouvenac

Whilst making the initial grandiose plans for this voyage of discovery, we had quickly realised that to be able to travel so extensively involved either unlimited finances or more judicious planning and, in the absence of the former option, researching the latter had led us to discover two new worlds, those of the house-sitter and of the home-exchanger. Our initiation into house-sitting, looking after a cat named Mr Darcy, had been a great success, and is certainly something we would be very happy to do again; it just requires finding the right host in the right place at the right time, and Montpellier had proved ideal. Now, in Rouvenac, we were about to experience our first entry into the world of exchanging homes, having met on Home-Exchange.com, Barbara and Michael, a pair of artists originally from England who had a yen to go and visit California at just about the same time as we wanted to be near to our sister, Dagmara, in their remote corner of France. The process was simple; we interviewed each other on Skype, came to the conclusion that we were compatible and sufficiently honest to trust each other with our homes and all our possessions, and finally met in the flesh the day before they started their journey westwards. We knew very little about Rouvenac, except that, to an Englishman’s way of thinking, it was no bigger than a small hamlet, and that it was a short ten-minute drive from Antugnac where Dagmara lived with her family. Our new temporary home overlooked the village square and after getting the Cook’s tour of the house from our hosts we quickly settled into this very different life.

Winter was approaching, cool winds whistled along the valley and through the village, and we were very glad of the large wood-burning stove in the living-room, along with the ample supply of firewood that had been left for us, and we soon learned the necessity to stock up on kindling during each walk into the surrounding countryside.

The family all helped with the vital job of collecting kindling.

My long-stated interest in living in a small French village was definitely being put to the test!

It’s difficult to know how we would have reacted to this new life if we didn’t have family living so close by, but with the holiday season fast approaching we found our days well-filled with visits to each other’s homes, as well as numerous forays together into the countryside and visiting the local towns and villages. We also had our eyes opened by experiencing a bit of the alternative life-style that is the reason so many ex-pats move to these quieter parts of the world [see my recent post, “It takes all types! An alternative view of the other South of France.” published January 4 2018].

Although we were deep in the countryside, there were many fine places to visit within a day’s drive. One day we visited Celine’s niece Martynka, in Toulouse, France’s fourth largest city and in spite of it’s size and being the centre of the European aerospace industry, we enjoyed walking around the partially pedestrianised city centre, which, like Montpellier, is very student oriented. The main church in the city is the enormous Basilica of Saint-Sernin; constructed at the end of the eleventh century, it is the largest remaining Romanesque building in Europe and has lots of superb sculpture of that era.

A very different city is Carcassone, famous for its medieval hilltop citadel, La Cité de Carcassonne, with its many towers and walled fortifications that watch over the newer city on the other side of the river. The Cité was extensively restored in 1853 by the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, whose fanciful designs and slate roofed towers are sometimes criticised for their lack of authenticity to the original structure. The new town was full of Christmas markets and amusements when we visited but we weren’t overly impressed.

The small market town of Espéraza was our main shopping venue, with a gas station, a decent supermarket, a very good Bio store and a couple of boulangeries that well satisfied your scribe’s needs for tasty carbs. It is also the home of an interesting museum, Musée de la Chapellerie, that celebrates the town’s past connections with the millinery trade.

Enjoying our new headgear after a visit to La Musée de la Chapellerie.

Somewhat further afield was Limoux, famous for the vineyard that produced the world’s first sparkling wine known as Blanquette de Limoux, originally made by the monks at the nearby abbey in Saint-Hilaire; it might not be champagne but it’s a pretty good, economical substitute! Limoux was also where we found a very accommodating young dentist who, finally, satisfactorily resolved the nagging toothache that had plagued me on and off since our stay in Lorgues; and he did the work at short notice and provided all the necessary prescriptions at a fraction of the price I would have paid back home in California.

Always wanting to see the seaside, one day we took ourselves down to the Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border, for a return visit to the little towns of Banyuls-sur-Mer and Collioure.

Pretty street in the old town of Banyuls-sur-Mer

It was a grey day with rain threatening but we still found Collioure in particular to be every bit as attractive as we remembered from our visit three years earlier. Not as quaint as Calella de Palafrugell, seventy miles south on the Spanish Costa Brava where we had spent a wonderful week in early December, it nevertheless appeared to be a much more liveable town, quite busy with locals on the streets, in the shops and dining out even at that time of the year; Calella had been virtually shut down for winter with 75% of it’s homes occupied only during “the season”.

The foothills of the Pyrenees make for some very attractive countryside in and around Rouvenac and we visited many beautiful villages; some, such as Ginoles, Quillan and Puivert, nestled like Rouvenac at the bottom of valleys, and others, such as Rennes-le-Chateau, were perched on top of one of the many hills with beautiful views of mountains and valleys in the distance. One never lacks somewhere to go a for a strenuous hike, or a gentle amble in nature.

A frosty morning along La Vallée de l’Aude.

For ski-bunnies, the slopes are not far away either, and another day Celine, Martynka and I had a fairytale drive along the Vallée de l’Aude, among frosty snow-covered woods, alongside the partly frozen river Aude which has cut itself a rocky ravine as it tumbles down from the mountains, up to Formigueres and thence higher again to Les Angles. We stopped for a picnic on the edge of the village, enjoying what little warmth the January sun still had at that altitude, the snow-covered slopes above us, a grassy plateau and a lake below us, the high Pyrenees in the distance and cars with ski racks everywhere.

Most country people keep guard dogs. Our neighbours were the exception!

In many ways the Languedoc is a magical environment, well removed from big-city life, full of eye-appeal, and well capable of satisfying your scribe’s desire to lead a quiet life close to nature. Real estate is very affordable, all the services one requires to ensure one’s comfort into old age are reasonably close at hand and we would even have family close by. It was a great experience for two newbie home-exchangers and we have nothing but good things to say of our hosts, Barbara and Michael, and their interesting artists’ pad in the boonies. But the lifestyle we led there, lacks most of the attractions of big city life, offers few, if any, cultural activities and requires a high degree of self-sufficiency that doesn’t suit everybody. So Celine and I realise that it is most probably not an option for future nest-building if we are to both be equally happy, which is a prime requisite to be satisfied by this long-term search we are on.

Heading west . . . the Pyrenees to our left!

After six weeks or more of this rural life, we were eager to experience another region we had read so much about. January was two-thirds gone when we picked up sticks, packed our life back into the car, and drove off in a westerly direction, keeping the peaks of the Pyrénées to our left. The morning drive to Foix can only be described as glorious, the countryside steaming gently in the morning sunshine. The route got even better as we climbed higher beyond Foix and continued to follow the sun till the countryside flattened out and we passed through lots of fertile farmland until we finally reached the city of Pau, and our first taste of French Basque life. That city is in a beautiful setting with the ever-present Pyrénées as its backdrop, some fine architecture and a very walkable city centre, the Boulevard des Pyrénées leading past elegant hotels and apartment buildings of an earlier era and up to the castle of Château de Pau.

We still had a long way to drive to our destination near Bilbao across the border for our second excursion into Spain, and we were only had enough time to get a cursory glimpse of what the city had to offer. This was a shame as Pau had been on our bucket list for a long time and deserved a closer look. (And to add insult to injury, every single photograph that we took of Pau disappeared in the hard disc drive disaster – see my earlier post of October 30 2017, “Mense horribilis!!” Or “I wish I had backed up my photos earlier!!”) Thus, after a necessary pit-stop at one of the many cafés, we strolled back down to our car parked alongside the river in the shadow of the castle, and, as the sun sank behind the distant mountains, (armed only with our mental photographic memories) we drove towards our next, very different home-exchange experience in the small town of Gatika, in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country.

Au revoir Provence! Buongiorno Italia!

After six weeks of close encounters with nearly every aspect of autumnal life in all four corners of Provence, and entering 52 pages of analytical critique in our travel journal, we felt we gave that corner of France every opportunity to wow us in any way it cared to do.

We visited numerous “picturesque” villages, tramped our way around a good few towns and cities, took several long walks in the countryside and gave ourselves a superficial view of the famed French Riviera. We met many friendly locals, exercising our ever-improving knowledge of the French language as we learnt from them about local life, their attitudes to immigrants, the vagaries of the weather and simple politics.

One or two villages such as Cotignac, Bargemon and Tour Tour enticed us enough to want to go back for a second look, and we enjoyed a return visit to Aix-en-Provence which we had last visited a couple of years previously when staying with my step-sister in Nîmes. But in the end all the villages were either too remote from the culture to be found in larger cities, too small to offer us the mix of social life we enjoy, too grey and dreary, or catered too much to tourists and ex-pats at the expense of losing their French charm. Some aspects of one or two of the coastal towns and cities made us think they would be good to live near to, but overall the Côte d’Azur held very little allure for us. In particular, we didn’t enthuse at the idea of living with the massive influx of tourists five or six months of the year. It is a shame, though hardly surprising, that such a beautiful coastline has become so over-developed.

Our next scheduled stop was Montpellier where we had arranged to house and cat sit for a couple of weeks. This left us with a week to fill-in and, reckoning we had had more than our fill of la vie francaise for a while, a few days on the Italian Riviera seemed a pretty attractive tonic.

St-Jean-Cap-Ferat, the really posh part of the French Riviera!!

So one cool, mid-November, Saturday morning found us driving east along the Corniche, drooling at the gorgeous villas spectacularly located on promontories such as Juan-les-Pins, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferat and Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, skirting round the edge of Monaco and eventually crossing the border just east of Menton.

Our destination was the little town of Ospedaletti where we had found an apartment with a balcony overlooking the sea. But before we even got there, we were struck by the contrast with the French coast we had just left behind. There were no high-rise apartments and hardly any housing developments on the hillsides to our left, just lots of vegetation, quite a few greenhouses, and unspoilt views up the many narrow valleys. We learnt that land that can be cultivated is very precious to the Italians – and to the Spanish Basque as we were to discover later in our trip – so much so that it is very difficult for developers to despoil such land.

Ospedaletti, our new digs overlooking the azure waters of the Mediterranean

We met our host, Simone, at a car park by the beach and followed him along a narrow road next to the sea, to an apartment building a couple of hundred metres away. Looking upwards, Simone pointed to our balcony five stories above us. Fortunately there was a lift, and we were soon inside a recently renovated one-bedroom apartment, delighting in the view from the balcony which, literally, seemed to be suspended over the rocky shoreline.

What a delight after our disappointing rental in Lorgues, with its view of the back wall of the local grape and olive crushing plant !

That first evening we dined on our left-over French groceries, as the evening sun disappeared down behind the distant headland. There is always something magic about watching sunsets across a large expanse of water and we indulged ourselves with the beauty of being so close to the sea.

The next morning we were greeted by bright sunshine and the sound of gentle waves washing lazily against the rocks below us. The Mediterranean was working its magic !

Ospedaletti is on the Riviera dei Flori, just a couple of kilometres outside the bustling city of Sanremo, yet our first impression was of a quiet little town with an unspoilt charm of its own. A 26km long cycle path, the Pista Ciclabile del Ponente Ligure, ran past the front of our building providing us with an easy walking route into the town centre. The path follows the course of an old railway line that once ran alongside the sea, all the way from Ospedaletti to San Lorenzo al Mare and is considered one of the best purpose-built cycle paths on the Mediterranean coast [pistaciclabile.com]; sorry to say we found so much else to do in and around Ospedaletti and Sanremo that we never got around to riding it.

The next morning was a Sunday, a day of rest for this travel weary couple, so after a relaxed late breakfast we took our first walk around the neighbourhood. We followed the bike path to the disused station building beside the little town beach at Piazzale al Mare and then climbed up to Corsa Regina Margherita, the main road through the town. There we beheld a fine avenue of trees behind which stood several elegant old villas dating from the turn of the twentieth century, pretty gardens on either side of the street, and a wonderfully located tennis club opened in 1962, where one’s game could easily be distracted by the views of the sea!

Our first priority was to replenish our pantry and, even though it was a Sunday, we did this very satisfactorily at Salumeria Alimentari da Nicola. It was just on 3pm when we arrived and the shop was closing; luckily the proprietor was very obliging and we came away with strawberries, apples, a tasty looking cheese and a loaf of Italian bread that made us want to nibble it as we walked on through the town. So a few minutes later we found ourselves sitting on a bench overlooking the beach munching a bread and cheese picnic, which we followed up with a very welcome coffee at the nearby Bar La Bussola. A good first impression of this pleasant little seaside town.

The next day we were greeted by clouds sent scudding across the sky by a brisk breeze, dramatising our wonderful view over the Mediterranean. Soon after midday, with the sun shining brightly through the wispy cirrus clouds, we set off on foot to explore the town further. As per usual we looked into a couple of small churches, Chiesa Parrochiale di San Giovanni and the delightful little Chiesetta dei Marnai Sant’Erasmo, another religious house dedicated to the seafarers of the Mediterranean, full of models of local ships and stories of danger on the high seas, much like the Basilica in Marseilles we visited a couple of weeks earlier [see my earlier posting “Provence part seven . . . “]. The Tora Saraceno, constructed to defend the area in 1579, is another interesting old structure in the town which appears to be permanently closed.

On Tuesday morning we decided to make a foray into nearby Sanremo, “La Capitale della Riviera dei Flori”, the self-styled “Riviera of Flowers” as they call this section of the Italian Riviera between Ospedaletti and San Lorenzo al Mare, which explains all the greenhouses on the hillsides.

Our first destination was the Villa Nobel, the long time home of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish scientist who invented dynamite, who owned Bofors the armaments manufacturer, and who, “after reading a premature obituary which condemned him for profiting from the sales of arms, bequeathed his fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes” [Wikipaedia]. Alas, when we arrived we discovered the house was closed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. So we only had a brief walk down through the garden and out of the back gate, where we found ourselves on another section of the cycle path, which we followed back along the seafront, ending up at the Forte de Santa Tecla.

Memorial to Italian Resistance against Mussolini outside Forte Santa Tecla.

This impressive triangular bastion, which was built in 1755-56 on the orders of the Republic of Genoa after the citizens rebelled a couple of years earlier, remains abandoned and closed to the public, ever since the prison it later housed was closed down in the 1990s. However, on the grass sward outside its walls, there is a very impressive statue celebrating the sacrifices made by the Italian resistance fighting against Mussolini during WWll.

Feeling hungry after our walk, we investigated the many busy restaurants with alfresco dining along the waterfront by the old port, “Porto Vecchio”, and ended up at Ristorante delle Palme, mainly because they offered “polpa alla griglia”, which to my delight turned out to be a whole grilled octopus that I ate with great gusto as Celine enjoyed an equally delicious sea-bass.

Grilled octopus for lunch at Ristorante Delle Palme

Our gourmand needs fully sated, we headed away from the port and up the hill into the old town. Like a lot European cities that started to develop in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, many of the streets are narrow and buildings are five or six stories high. But it was clean, well maintained and very comfortable to walk around. In tune with other Riviera destinations there is the very elegant Casinò di Sanremo on Corso degli Inglesi, opened in 1905. And as one might expect in fashion conscious Italy, coming back down into the main shopping streets we found lots of good clothing stores; so realising how under-prepared I was for the onset of cooler, very un-South-Californian, weather, we bought for me a stylish winter coat.

It was dark before we retraced our steps to our car, parked near the main railway station, and found our way back to our delightful pad in Ospedaletti, where Simone, our very thoughtful host turned up with the missing spaghetti strainer, a must for any Italian kitchen! Already this combination of quiet little town next to a busy small city was starting to feel like a good place to live and when we said as much to Simone, he let on that he was a realtor and would be delighted to show us a few properties before we left at the weekend, how convenient!!

Wednesday arrived and, realising we were already half way through our little Italian tryst, we felt that we ought to get out and see some of the countryside. A river called Fora di Taggia flows down through the Vallee di Torrente Argentina from high in the Ligurian Alps until it reaches the Mediterranean Sea at the small community of Prai five kilometres east of San Remo. Near to the source of this wild river is the small village of Triora, known in the tourist industry as “The Salem of Europe” being the site of the last Italian witch hunt that began in 1587. That year a famine was the result of bad weather and pitiful crops, but the locals were convinced that their misfortune was the work of witches. This led to the imprisonment of 30 or more women and girls, their torture and, for some, their death by being burnt at the stake. What better place to visit on what was to turn out to be a grey, damp overcast day.

Strada Provinciale 458, the road we joined after leaving Strada Statale 11, followed the river closely copying every twist and turn that nature had dictated over many millenia. Dense green forests covered the slopes on each side of the river, with a scattering of houses clinging to the hillsides here and there. Eventually we came to the comune of Badalucco, where we stopped briefly to stretch our legs, and take a stroll along the bank of the river as it curled tightly around the edge of the village on it’s headlong rush to the sea. But with time pressing and clouds appearing over the mountains we decided to push on up the valley. However, as it so often does, nature soon called and we were obliged to stop in the hamlet of Montalto Ligure at a rustic looking little cafe, “Bar Trattoria Ligure”, to partake of the homely facilities and enjoy a coffee and a couple of croissants stuffed with Nutella, not super-healthy but very satisfying. We also bought a kilo of delicious rich dark honey, an inherited weakness of yours truly.

It was mid-afternoon when we finally arrived at Triora ; the clouds that had by then completely covered the sky had also started to descend, enveloping the village in a fine mist, adding to the spooky feel of the place. Triora was built on a formidably steep slope and the road up to it was a series of sharp hairpins. Only residents are allowed to take their vehicles inside the village’s maze of steep streets and we parked at the entrance among a fairly modern group of buildings that included a medical centre, a school and the town hall. A short walk and we were immediately in amongst a very ancient complex of houses, many of which were linked together, providing each other support, and many ‘streets’ were no more than narrow footpaths running between and often under buildings as they tumbled down the hillside. We headed up hill, following the sound of sheep bleating and their bells tinkling, the houses becoming more and more rustic the further we got away from the bronze sculpture of a supposed witch near the village entrance. Walking through a small farmyard we were greeted by a very official sign advising us that “Mushroom picking was regulated and banned to unauthorised persons” and then out of the forbidden mist-covered hillside a herd of sheep came rambling down the grassy path, nibbling on the way. The town was practically deserted as we wove our way back down along ancient cobbled passageways between the houses ; a group of children playing tag in the church square were the only reminders of which century we were in.

Sheep returning to the fold as the clouds descend on Triora

The next morning the sun was shining and the sea was calm as we had a leisurely breakfast during which we sampled our miele ligure ; with a rich, flowery flavour and the dark brown colour of damp autumn leaves, it has to be the tastiest honey this life-long honey fanatic has ever had the pleasure of enjoying. So good in fact that we made a return visit the next day to buy a couple more jars to see us through the upcoming holiday season!

Sanremo also deserved a return visit and we spent this November Thursday exploring the town. But first things first, it was lunchtime when we arrived, so following our landlord’s recommendation we sought out the strangely named seafood restaurant, “Ittiturismo m/b Patrizia” near the port.

Time for desserts at Ittiturismo m/b Patrizia. Unpretentious but again, the food was delicious.

There, in the company of two or three tables of businessmen and no other tourists, we had another very good meal of Tagliolini al gambero, cappon magro, a couple of glasses of a tasty dry white wine, closed out with tiramisu, zabaglione and coffee. How the Italian way of life was starting to change our eating habits !

We needed to walk off this sumptuous repast and so we set off uphill walking through yet more cobbled passages and climbing endless stairs till we reached a quiet lawned park, Piazza S.Costanzo where gnarled old trees pushed their roots over the edge of the retaining wall, and from where we had marvellous views over the city and port far below.

Symbiotic relationship ‘twixt roots and wall.

At the end of a short avenue there was the impressive Santuario della Madonna della Costa, another rich edifice dedicated to the Catholic faith. While I sat on a wall and admired the scenery, resting my knees after the long climb, Celine walked up to the church and reported back that it was typically decorated in standard baroque style and that I didn’t miss anything special. So I reckon I made the wise choice.

The afternoon was drawing in by the time we reached the bottom of the hill and out onto the busy commercial streets. We came across one square that had more scooters per square meter than either of us had ever previously encountered. We mentioned this to Simone the next day and he told us that Sanremo was renowned for having the highest per capita scooter population in Italy. And yet in spite of that somewhat alarming statistic we found most scooterists to be very polite and unthreatening, unlike my driving experiences in many other large European cities. We wandered around in the evening darkness, enjoying the busy atmosphere of an unpretentious, ordinary working town. It made us think that just such a town would be good to have close by wherever, and whenever, we find somewhere to build a new nest.

Friday arrived far too quickly for our liking as we were really starting to enjoy this little corner of Italy. We opted to spend the morning visiting Villa Nobel which was fascinating. Alfred Nobel was working happily in Paris for many years until the French government accused hom of high treason against France when he sold to Italy, his patent for ballistite, one of the many specialist explosives he had formulated. Sanremo was a popular health resort in the mid eighteen hundreds which well suited the ailing inventor. The Moorish-style villa that he purchased, and lived in for the final five years of his life, was formerly owned by a Polish poet, Josephy Ignacy Kraszewsky, who named it “Moi Nido”, “My Nest”, just the kind of place we would love to find . . . and be able to afford ! He set up a laboratory in the grounds of the villa, which reached down to the sea and carried on his research, in delightful surroundings. The villa, which the city bought in the 1960’s, is now a museum of his life and works and we found it utterly absorbing.

A Bofors cannon, hardly the kind of toy you’d expect to find in the garden of the man whose legacy led to the Nobel Peace Prize!

Time passes quickly when you are enjoying yourself, and as we had a late afternoon appointment with our host Simone, to visit one or two homes for sale, by the time we managed to drag ourselves away from the Villa, we only had time for another quick drive back up to Montalto Ligure to purchase two more kilos of that delicious honey, and a final short walk around Ospedaletti.

Simone picked us up and we drove into Sanremo where he nonchalantly double parked his Mercedes in typical Italian style, across the road from the Casino, and walked us to his office, stopping to grab an exceedingly quick coffee on the way. We had read somewhere, that one big difference between Italians and French was the way they consumed their daily doses of caffeine. And how true it was, we had no time to stop and people watch as we had got used to across the border, this espresso was gulped down standing upright at the counter of the rather posh cafe, and we were immediately off again! Unfortunately our friendly realtor’s interpretation of our stated likes and dislikes home-wise weren’t very close to the mark, and out of the four places he had picked to show us, only one was vaguely interesting. Part of the problem was the lack of properties with gardens, and the other was the shortage of anything other than apartments in our price range. However, unfazed, Simone promised us that now he had a better idea of what we were looking for he believed he had one more place he could show us the following morning, before we departed back to our next destination in France.

This was so close to becoming the view from our new home!!

And so it was that on that sunny but blustery Saturday morning, we found ourselves clambering across the rocks and through the grounds of a small resort apartment complex, enjoying the sea spray-filled atmosphere, till we arrived at a small apartment building with views of the sea nearly as good as we had been enjoying all week. It was in so many ways just what we were looking for but, for reasons you can read about in my earlier blog (“On finding somewhere to build a new nest”, posted May 30, 2017) we decided to pass, much to the disappointment of all three of us !

Thus, we sadly came to the end of our Italian tryst. Ospedaletti had done great things for us, our optimism was renewed and we set off in high spirits, back to France and a couple of weeks of cat-sitting in Montpellier. . .

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 . . .