tourism – Taran's Tales

SFTF: Solvang, our release from lock down!

If only we had known what was coming in 2020, we might have made more voyage hay in the pandemic-free sunshine that was 2019. How many other frustrated travellers around the world must be thinking the same way?!

Now, nearly one third of the way through 2021, we have at long last broken free from self-imposed restrictions and have once again slept away from home. Admittedly, it was only two nights and a measly three-hour drive from our suburban life in beautiful downtown Belmont Shore, a small oasis of relatively sane living in the corner of Long Beach, the southernmost quarter of the Los Angeles megalopolis. But what a delightful way to express our new-found freedom.

Solvang, sometimes referred to as the Danish Capitol of North America, is the nearest thing to a quiet little European town to be found in these parts. Founded in 1911 by a small group of Danes, disenchanted by the Mid-Western winters chosen by their immigrant forefathers, and anxious to live the life their families had left behind in Denmark, the town was built from scratch on almost 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) purchased from the Rancho San Carlos de Jonata Mexican land grant. Initially the town’s architecture was strictly reminiscent of traditional styles found in their homeland, even using traditional materials wherever possible; modern artistic ingenuity with concrete has allowed the visual style to continue throughout the town centre although these days there isn’t so much solid brickwork and real timber used to produce the desired effect.

One can always find an excuse for a holiday and for this particular journey of discovery the guilty party was my 75^th birthday. Celine had booked us into the Hotel Corque, a fairly large, comfortable, stylish, so-called “boutique” hotel close to the town center and well within walking distance of the multitude of restaurants, cafés and eateries that abound. Our room was on the second floor, overlooking the pool and with delightful views of the lush green hills that surround the town in nearly every direction; whether or not that verdant image survives the hot dry summers we will have to determine some other day. One of the joys, for me at least, of finding ourselves in surroundings that are reminiscent of so many of our travels is the promise of once again sampling café culture, good coffee and home baked patisseries, and Solvang delivers all of those in plenty. The thought of fresh baked Danish pastries for breakfast, mid-morning snack time and afternoon revivers was irresistible; the only serious question was which of the many hostelries was most worthy of our attentions; the other consideration was how many such pauses in our short stay could our stomachs accommodate, without causing unwanted digestive trauma, let alone long-term bodily harm! A three-hour drive demands a reward for the participants and soon after our arrival, too early to check into our room, but armed with a map of The Village of Solvang thoughtfully provided by the hotel receptionist, we strode purposefully the fifty yards towards Copenhagen Drive where we found the promisingly named Danish Mill Bakery. In true Euro-café fashion, the pastries were temptingly displayed in long glass-fronted cabinets yet for some reason we decided to opt for the tastefully presented but rather uninteresting triple open sandwich platter, accompanied unfortunately by very weak filter coffee from a thermos flask due to the failure of their espresso machine. This was altogether an unfortunate mistake as this sixty-one-year-old establishment has good reviews, is comfortable and quaint and we even had a talking mannequin of an old moustachioed Danish pastry chef sitting next to us; I am sure their pastries are every bit as tasty as many to be found in Solvang, but our poor choice of comestibles did kill any inclination to return.

Our travellers’ hunger appeased, we were suitably fortified to continue on our tour of the town, or perhaps village is a more suitable epithet for this compact little community of around six thousand seemingly contented residents. There is a touch of Disneyland about Solvang that is perhaps inevitable in such close proximity to Hollywood, and yet it manages to avoid being tasteless. As well as the multitude of eateries, there are plenty of interesting shops to browse selling everything from recycled clothing to fine art, quite enough to make a slow stroll through the main streets a pleasurable pastime; but we still had a mission which would be satisfied appropriately at the far end of Mission Drive, in Olsen’s Bakery. Whilst the Danish Mill Bakery was, to be honest, a bit of a tourist trap, Olsen’s Bakery was the real McCoy. The baked goods looked and smelt totally enticing and before we had even tasted their wares we had placed an order for two loaves of Swedish Limpa bread and an aeblestrudel to be ready for our departure two days later; and after a few minutes drooling over the tempting array of pastries we opted to stop longer and share a Bear Claw and a “cream puff thing”, washed down with a couple of very welcome caffè lattes.

It was a beautiful day for a stroll around the town, warm sun ameliorated by a cooling breeze, and it being mid-week and out of season we took pleasure in the lack of crowds until finally the weariness that results from any long drive on California’s freeways took its toll and we decided to take an early night, determined to “do the town” properly the next day. Fortune was not completely on our side as we were caught out by the one and only fault issue we had with the hotel. Beautifully equipped with all “mod cons”, one little item, a very neat personal bedside light built into the lush headboard, decided it was definitely not going out of its way to embellish the hostelry’s image any further than necessary and to our great discomfort, several times during the night managed to turn itself on unaided by human intervention. The first time was before “lights out” and the bellhop who was sent up to resolve our problem reckoned a good hard thump would do the job, which it did for a while. One beef we both have with many hotel rooms these days is the plethora of little lights that serve no obvious purpose other than to annoy the light sleeper; the bed-side radio needs to remind us that it is always there at our beck and call; the TV not wishing to be forgotten in the middle of the night, winks its red light at us across the room; the fire detector proves it remains alive up there on the ceiling by flashing another light from about where the panhandle of Ursa Major should be located to those back sleepers amongst us; and inevitably management leaves a message of welcome on the internal phone, indicated by an otherwise insignificant little orange beacon that only becomes visible as one’s eyes become accustomed to the dark. Personally, unlike my dear bride, I am one of the lucky people who can usually manage to ignore all of these small nuisances, but even in my deepest sleep the sudden flashing on of a high intensity LED reading lamp focused directly onto my right eyelid – I am a left side sleeper – left me quite frazzled after two or three repeats.

Somewhat surprisingly we did actually sleep not too badly overall, the final flash to my eyeball serving as a seven o’clock alarm for me which I resolved, for a while, by cunningly smothering it with my luxuriously soft, well-puffed pillow. COVID restrictions meant no breakfast was being served in the hotel and after a leisurely long awakening, we eventually started our more detailed exploration of the town with a stop at another of the more highly recommended coffee shops, Mortensen’s Danish Bakery, where we sat out on the patio breaking our fast with an apple Danish, a custard puff and a couple of lattes as we observed the town’s clientele, not just a few of whom wore clothes of sufficient size to remind us to go easy on the pastries.

Suitably fortified by our morgenmad, we opted to check out the local galleries, the first of which, Stix’n’Stones, was filled with so many wonderful pieces of art as to seriously threaten our annual budget. But we were on a birthday treat and we were both equally enjoying browsing around this amazing collection of artisan craftsmanship, so when our visit ended it was no surprise that we needed to ask the young sales lady to look after our well-filled bag of goodies until our return to the hotel later in the day. And that was just the start. Two doors further along Copenhagen Drive, the Pavlov Art Gallery had some fascinating thought-provoking paintings by the eponymous young Macedonian artist, inspired by his studies of philosophy, as well as a series of beautiful landscape photographs printed on canvas, by his wife Iris. Still heading East, our attention was drawn to three wooden carvings of the Solvang Founding Fathers in the window of a building that started out life a century ago as the Santa Ynez Valley Bank. Renamed The Copenhagen House, this edifice is now home to The House of Amber, a large store that encompasses an impressive display of modern Danish design including everything from an enormous collection of Hoptimists, funny little spring-necked creatures of all colours, shapes and sizes that nod at you mesmerisingly, through to very smart Bering watches and the elegantly sculptured silverware of Georg Jensen; but the most interesting corner of the store is the little Museum of Amber, wherein one can discover the provenance of these beautiful natural gems that started out life millions of years ago as simple blobs of tree resin.

No old town or village is really complete without a good bookstore and the Hans Christian Anderson Museum performs that function admirably. Its main attraction may indeed be the well-informed life and history of that clog maker’s son who became such a renowned author of fairy tales and other stories; but it also houses its alter ego, The Book Loft, a veritable cornucopia of new, used and rare old books, in at least four different languages; I could have happily spent the rest of that day just browsing through the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of shelves on two or three different levels and breathing in the musty aroma of well-thumbed pages.

It had been our intention to maintain some sort of gustatory deprivation for most of the day, as a celebratory dinner was on the early evening timetable; alas, hunger defeated those noble aims as we looked into the window of Solvang Restaurant and realized we had not yet tried the delights of aebleskiver. Variously described as odd-shaped pancakes, waffles and donut holes these oft-mentioned Danish snacks are in fact balls of dough mixture, slightly crispy on the outside and light and fluffy within after being cooked in a cast-iron skillet that resembles an egg-poacher, and traditionally served hot with raspberry, strawberry, black current or blackberry jam; what is more they are actually very, very tasty. But gourmands as we are when out on the loose, we realized our hunger was still lurking and decided to reinforce our midday snack with a slice of tasty, if perhaps a little too salty, fried medisterpølse, accompanied by a Hoppy Poppy IPA from Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co.

Weary from our happy meanderings we had one more necessary stop at the well-stocked Solvang Shoe Store, to buy me a pair of much needed sneakers and seek out some sandals for Celine; my needs were fairly quickly satisfied, but the ever-helpful manageress must have pulled out a couple of dozen boxes of shoes from her store in the back of the shop before we concluded the second objective simply wasn’t going to be achieved that day. Whilst having a good shoe shop is not exactly high on the tourist bucket list, its presence shows that Solvang is much more than just a tourist attraction, for there must be nothing worse than living in a town lacking the basic essentials

No birthday outing is properly fulfilled if it fails to include a special dinner and we were well pleased with our decision to place the responsibility for that exercise in the hands of the chef and staff of Mad & Vin, inside the Grandsby Hotel on Mission Drive. A ten-minute stroll from the Hotel Cirque in the cooling evening air, the Mad & Vin (which means “food and wine” in Danish) is a smart little dining establishment where the service is suitably discreet without being unfriendly, the atmosphere subdued without being depressing and where the food, if our choices were anything to go by, is tasty and well presented. Celine had a Flat Iron Steak which although slightly too pink upon its first arrival at the table, was seared to perfection a couple of minutes later, and my Cioppino was everything one could ask of the dish, a generous selection of fresh tasting local fish and shellfish swimming in a lightly spiced tomato and white wine sauce accompanied by fresh baked sourdough bread; lubricated by a couple of glasses of Stag’s Leap chardonnay, and topped up with generous portions of banana bread pudding and a flourless chocolate cake, this happy couple wended their contented way slowly back along the now quiet streets, contemplating the pleasant idea of perhaps one day living in such a welcoming community.

Next morning, after a night only “slightly” disturbed by the noise of a circulating “copper chopper” – only our second sighting of the “fuzz” in our 36 hours in the village – we awoke to another beautiful day, clean clear air, a coolish breeze and delightful views of green hills in all directions. Once checked out we went for a short drive around some of the nearby residential neighbourhoods before making a second stop at Olsen’s Bakery for our morning coffee and Danish, and not forgetting to collect the loaves of limpa bread and the strudel we had ordered so soon after our arrival in town. Then a bit more residential research out towards some of the rolling countryside surrounding Solvang and then, before hitting the road home, a final sortie into New Frontiers Natural Market Place to stock up our home larder with some of the freshest organic fruit and vegetables we have seen in California.

Friday afternoon is not the best part of the week to have to pass through downtown Los Angeles, and my mood had changed quite radically by the time we arrived back in Belmont Shore. However, we brought home some very good memories from our truly delightful birthday break in the almost European village of Solvang, with every intention of making a return visit before too long. Whether or not it will prove to be the end of the rainbow in our search for the future remains to be seen but it is certainly worth placing on the “distinctly possible” list. We just have to wait for today’s crazy seller’s housing market to settle down again to offer a more equable relationship between buyer and vendor.

Italia e Portogallo 2018 Pt 2 – Lisboa no rio Tejo

Taranstales
October 7, 2018

Sitting on a luxury bus with thirty five or more potential American expats is a novel experience for this Brit, an inveterate loner, a traveller who takes masochistic enjoyment in spending hours organising his own trips abroad, scathingly pooh-poohing the concept of organised group travel. Yet there we were, our immediate future in the capable hands of the experts from International Living, heading south towards the Portuguese varsity town of Evora.
About two weeks ago we rose early and followed the sun west from Rome to land in Lisbon – Lisboa to the locals – the capital city of that great seafaring nation, Portugal, and the only European capital to directly face the New World far away across the Atlantic Ocean. Rather belittlingly sometimes referred to as “The Pond” that great expanse of sea presented a daunting vision to seafarers in the Middle Ages and taming it took tremendous courage on the part of seafarers such as Vasco de Gama and Christopher Columbus, encouraged by such visionaries as Henry the Navigator; and to celebrate their exploits,the city of Lisbon commissioned the massive monument, Padrao dos Descobrimentos, on the north bank of the Tagus.

Having organised ourselves for a couple of months exploring Italy, Celine and I learned about this group tour which slotted nicely into our dates, and we promptly decided, somewhat illogically, to back-track to Lisbon and take the opportunity to get a taste of Portugal, the other country that we believed should also be on our list of prospective root re-planting locales.

Rome had proven itself a great place to unwind and recover from our jet-lag; thus Lisbon became the starting point for this trip’s exploring, as we had six days there before joining the tour. We used AirBnB once again, this time to find a sixth floor “apartment with ocean views” in Costa da Caparica, a seaside suburb of Lisbon on the south side of the river Tagus, the aforementioned rio Tejo. The absentee owner is a much travelled town-planning architect, so we were met by his father who showed us around, explained how the roller shutters worked, showed us how to switch power between washing machine and dishwasher, indicated the hatch for the garbage chute beside the lift shaft and then left us to our own devices.

Lisbon is a city built on a series of steep hills, seven in number like Rome supposedly, but there seemed to be many more; you couldn’t go anywhere, except along the river’s edge, without climbing at least one hill. The public transport system in the city comprises a mix of a metro, buses, trams, both ancient and modern, and ferries across the Tagus. So our best route into the city was a ten minute drive from our apartment to catch the ferry from Trafaria to Belem, a suburb a couple of miles west of the city centre, and thence by bus or tram to our destination. A ticket costing a mere €1.75 enabled one to travel on any combination of the modes of transport for, I believe, an hour and a half. However, tickets usually had to be obtained before boarding at the start of the journey and it wasn’t always easy to find the appropriate place to do so. Most people used rechargeable VIVA cards to register as they boarded the bus, tram or ferry at the start of their journey. As well as simply charging the card with a cash value, it was also possible to charge it with a 24hr, go-anywhere pass but the places to do this were even scarcer and we spent quite a lot of time looking, oftentimes unsuccessfully, for the appropriate newsstand or better still a Metro station.

The beautiful chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist In Igreja de Sao Roque

In spite of the occasional transport related frustration we managed to visit lots of churches, including Lisbon Cathedral, halfway up the hill behind Alfama, the oldest district of the city, and Igreja de Sao Roque wherein one finds the beautiful chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist, its walls and pillars covered in lapis lazuli, alabaster and malachite. As recommended by many travel sites, we decided to take a trip on the ancient #28 tram which rattles its way through many of the smaller streets of the Bairro Alta and Alfama districts. This line terminates near another large religious edifice, the Basilica da Estrela, so one morning we walked up the hill in that general direction. Near the summit we were accosted by a typically helpful Portuguese gentleman who asked if we needed any assistance. We chatted for a few minutes and learnt about one or two towns further north that he reckoned were the sort of places we would well appreciate, and were also told that the Algarve was probably not what we were looking for – a prophecy that would turn out to be very accurate!

The #28 tram squeezing it’s way through the narrow streets of old Lisbon

As well as the couple of days we enjoyed tramping the streets of old Lisbon, admiring the many wonderful tiled buildings, experiencing an evening of Fado music (www.clube-de-fado.com), and being somewhat dismayed by the local cuisine, we made good use of our rental car to drive out into the countryside. Our first foray took us 150 km north-east of Lisbon to the Knights Templar stronghold in the small city of Tomar, and the Convento de Christo which it subsequently became after the Jesuits took power in the region. As well as giving us a good insight into early Jesuit teaching, and the life of the two hundred or more Jesuit monks who lived there, the town itself, situated between the castle/monastery and a pretty river, was also a very likeable place from what we gleaned after our short walk around; but as we have learnt so often in the past, it is easy to be seduced by initial impressions, especially when those revolve round the touristic old town centres.

Qunita da Regaleira, otherwise known as “The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire”

Another day, after crossing the Ponte de 25 Abril, the splendid 1.5km long suspension bridge across the Tagus, we headed west towards Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais, where several palaces and pseudo-palaces that contribute to the area’s World Heritage status are to be found. I plugged Castelo dos Mouros into Google maps optimistically thinking that we might start the day by climbing the couple of hundred stairs to reach this 10th century Moorish stronghold. What we didn’t plan for was the long slow line of one-way traffic through the surrounding forest, the distinct lack of available parking and, indeed, any signpost indicating when we were in the right place to commence our hike. Eventually we found ourselves on the outskirts of the town of Sintra, and realising we were very close to Quinta da Regaleira, found a handy place to park, and walked back a couple of hundred yards to the entrance. This pseudo-palace has a long and varied history of ownership, but is now sometimes referred to as “The Palace of Monteiro the Millionaire” after the best known former owner, Antonio Augusto Carvalho Monteiro. Monteiro was a man of many interests and ideologies and he decided to build a bewildering palace and estate that would reflect and showcase much of this eclectic collection of beliefs. The four hectare estate is a lovely place to wander through and forget all the troubles of the world among caves, grottoes, waterfalls and a multitude of footpaths going hither and thither. The house also comprises some delightful architecture and together with the garden, the whole place is truly the work of an extraordinary visionary mind, that of Luigi Manini, the architect who so ably interpreted Monteiro’s ideas.
With plenty of energy still in our travel-hardened limbs we then walked the three kilometres, mostly uphill, to Monserrate Palace, another dreamlike building, this time in the Moorish style, that sits above a more conventional garden full of waterfalls, fishponds and beautiful plants and trees from all over the world. It was a horticultural delight that satisfied all one’s senses, smell, visual and tactile, and even aural as there was also plenty of birdlife in the trees. A very interesting video was being screened in one of the rooms, of an interview with an elderly gentleman who, as a child, lived in the palace during the late 30’s and early 40’s, his father having managed the property for Francis Cooke, who owned the palace between the wars. We finished that very worthwhile day by walking back into Sintra where we rewarded ourselves with Tapas and low-alcohol beers, before driving back to the rather more mundane architecture of Costa da Caparica, south of the river Tagus.
Then the day arrived for us to return our rental car and join the tour that prompted this little detour to the Iberian Peninsular. In some ways it felt like we were losing our freedom but we would very soon realise the advantages of handing over to someone else all responsibilities for our wellbeing!

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!

Lyon – part four – A smörgåsbord of museums

Our time in Lyon was much more than language learning, food and markets. Among the seemingly limitless attractions in Lyon, we spent many enjoyable hours visiting just a sample of its wonderful museums.

At the ultra-modern end of the scale, there is the excellent Musée des Confluences. Built on reclaimed land at the point where the rivers Rhône and Saône come together, this highly futuristic, stainless steel and glass edifice houses a permanent four part exhibit on the Ascent of Man – Origines, Espèces, Sociétés and Éternités – as well as temporary exhibits, all of which were well designed, and beautifully presented. We hadn’t expected to spend the whole afternoon there but the combination of La Dance Moderne – a well choreographed series of videos and music on screens throughout a large hall, and an Exploration of the Antarctic with some quite amazing underwater film footage of penguins and seals, meant we had little time left for Les Chaussures de la Monde and Potieres d’Afrique, before grabbing a quick coffee and a snack in the unusual – unusual for France that is – self-service cafe, before the museum doors were locked behind us, and it was time to take the tram back to Place Bellecour.

The comprehensive and extensive system of trams and buses and underground trains operated by Metro de Lyon is another aspect of Lyon that makes the city so easy to explore. Although we walked most of our time there, we did take a tram and the underground a couple of times and found them comfortable and clean, and more importantly, on schedule. To get a better feel for the city as early as we could, on our first weekend we also made use of the hop-on/hop-off City Tour Bus. This really came into its own, for your scribe’s old knees at least, after a long, tiring, but fascinating walk around the amazingly ornate late nineteenth century La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière and the two beautifully preserved Roman theatres right next door.

The Fourvière hill was where the first Christian community was created in the country of Gaul. The hill’s dedication to the Virgin Mary supposedly saved the old city from the ravages of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, as well as the cholera epidemic in 1832 and the Prussian invasion in 1870; sceptics please remain silent! Certainly the marvellous view of the city from the top of the hill makes any pilgrimage to the Basilica very worthwhile.

One of three entertainment-oriented museums that we found really interesting was the Musée Lumière that we visited with our fellow students, as one of the cultural events arranged by Inflexyon, the language school we attended during our first couple of weeks in the city. Housed in the majestic Villa Lumière on the appropriately named rue du Premier-Film, in the Monplaisir district of the 8e arondissement, this fine collection pays homage to the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, and describes their invention and development of the ‘moving picture’. The exhibits include several of the first movies ever made, on subjects as diverse as the children at family gatherings, steam trains passing through Lyon station, young men doing physical jerks and some classic slap-stick comedy routines. There was also a fine selection of their very early camera equipment as well as some insights into their early experiments at colour photography and videography. This was particularly interesting to two people whose home is not very far from Hollywood, an address that may never have achieved its fame without the innovative thinking of the Lumière brothers!

To better understand the history and development of Lyon, we visited the Musée Gadagne in the St Jean quarter of Vieux Lyon. Located in the Hôtel Gadagne, the early sixteenth century home of the brothers Gadagne, the building houses two museums, La Musée de l’Histoire de Lyon and the aforementioned Musée des Marionettes du Monde. This latter whimsical exhibition celebrates the birth of the famous glove puppet, Guignol, and his comedic friends, Gnafron and Madelon, the predecessors of the Punch and Judy shows that many of us remember from our childhood. Guignol was the invention of Lyon resident Laurent Mourguet, an out-of-work silk weaver, turned peddler and tooth puller, who started ‘puppeteering’ to distract his tooth-aching customers from the early 19^th century terrors of primitive dentistry. Less entertaining, but of much greater historical interest, the story of Lyon is long and fascinating, going back to Roman times, and the history museum does it more than justice. Housed in the original Hotel Gadagne built by the Florentine family Gadagni in the early sixteenth century and, with a lot of stairs to climb between four floors of exhibits, it requires a fair degree of stamina and determination to see and read everything; however, the visit is well worth the effort. And, as a final reward, there is a very pleasant little cafe in a roof top garden, which in days gone by was a small urban vineyard.

Completing the portfolio of entertainment-oriented museums in this fascinating city, there is the unusual collection of exhibits that comprise le Musée Miniature et Cinéma, deux passions, deux collections, created by the American miniaturist Dan Ohlman. Housed in the celebrated seventeenth century Maison des Advocats, close to the St Jean Cathedral, this eclectic mix of bizarre, and fairly gruesome, cinematic props,

along with a collection of very impressive miniature models of house and shop interiors, both real and imagined, some of which have been used in major Hollywood movies, makes for an hour of fascination to satisfy all ages and interests.

If none of these museums strike a chord, art lovers can choose from the Musée des Beaux Arts, the Musée d’Art Contemporain and the Musée des Tissus et Musée des Arts Decoratifs, students of ancient history have the Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine adjacent to the two Roman theatres on Fourvière hill, booklovers might enjoy the Musée de l’Imprimerie, and budding anthropolgists should take in the Musée Africain de Lyon. A veritable smorgasbord for those who love displays of “all-things museum-related”, after all, in one way or another, there is a “museumist” in all of us – thank you www.museumist.com for that delightful confabulated word!

Lyon – part two – A fine park and a suspect mushroom!

Our first two weeks in Lyon passed by quickly and the time soon arrived for us to move to different accommodation and become full-time tourists. We had originally intended to stay the full month at Les Toits de Lyon but the threat of climbing 150 stairs up to our private eyrie twice a day or more for all that time, was more than your scribe’s knees liked to contemplate. So we had found another abode at 154 rue de Moncey in the newer Part-Dieu district of the 3e arrondissement. This 19th century bourgeois building is in the area of the city originally constructed in the epoch of grand architecture, in the style of Baron Haussman who designed much of elegant Paris we know today. Sadly many of those grand buildings have long since disappeared, allowing the construction of more modern buildings such as the magnificent 200m high Tour Incity overshadowing our second abode, the adjacent over-rated, Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, a more mundane Galeries Lafayette Lyon Part Dieu, and a selection of hotels such as Ibis, Mercure and Novotel, all of which, though useful to business and tourist traveller alike, detract from the innate attractiveness of the city of 100 years ago.

So we got to see a very different side of Lyon than the one we had so enthused about in the previous fortnight. The main redeeming feature of this new environment was that we found ourselves to be just a ten minute stroll from Le Parc de la Tête d’Or, 117 hectares of urban parkland, incorporating a large lake, a small but well stocked zoo for which there was no entry fee (one of the many advantages of living in a socially aware state), large greenhouses and botanical gardens, and large swathes of open grass and patches of woodland. Well frequented by locals of all ages and athletic capabilities, it was a lovely place to walk, jog or bike around and feel somewhat removed from the hustle and bustle of the city. As with large parks in other great cities, the park was surrounded by many elegant buildings housing embassies, consulates, upmarket consultants and the like, making it as pleasant a place to walk around, as to wander within.

Message to all students, “Go out and move the world!”

However, we still found ourselves continually drifting back to the old town, enjoying the atmosphere of the many outdoor cafes and the famous bouchons where in older and tougher times, the matrons of the town would serve hearty portions of simple, but tasty fare to their low-paid, artisan clientele. Those same tasty dishes still comprise the major portion of the goodies listed on today’s menu boards, but they aren’t all to everyone’s taste incorporating as they do all the tasty offal, tripe, fishy bits and fatty bits that modern western cuisine has come to avoid. Definitely food more suited to the ‘gourmand’ than the ‘gourmet’, but nonetheless appreciated by many as attested to by the full tables that we passed on our many peregrinations through the old streets.

Wise Mandarin saying: “This duck is not for eating!”

Beguiled by the tourist hype surrounding these famed Lyonnaise eating establishments, the main mass of which are to be found in Vieux Lyon along and around the old cobbled street rue Saint-Jean, we tried them a couple of times with varying degrees of satisfaction. Our first experience, to celebrate the end of the first week of our return to student life, was at Bouchon des Filles, a cosy little bistro, well off the main tourist trail, on rue du Sergent Blandan. We both love soufflé and, as well as the restaurant’s high rating on Trip Advisor, the mention of ‘Soufflé au Grand Marnier’ on the web-site menu grabbed our instant attention. Typically we found it was off the menu the Sunday evening of our visit, and we contented ourselves with entrées of terrine de joues de porc and main courses of roignons de veau avec du riz – not so well appreciated – and une quenelle de brochet avec sauce de crevettes, very typical Lyonnaise and quite delicious. Your cheese-loving raconteur also enjoyed his introduction to Brillat-Savarin, a soft, white cow’s milk cheese, somewhat like Camembert, and also from Normandy. A reasonable introduction to the much-lauded eating scene of Lyons but not really enough to make us want to pursue it too often at the expense of our intended ‘cooking-at-home-like-the-locals’ regime. However, as we had Celine’s friend Danusia staying with us towards the end of our stay, we decided to give it one more try. One day, after a visit to the fascinating Musée des Marionettes in Saint-Jean, the oldest part of the city on the west bank of the Saône, we happened to pass a very nice looking bouchon on rue Mercière called eponymously Le Mercière which, coincidentally, had its interior decorated with models of Guignol, the marionette that we had just learnt made Lyon’s puppetry famous. So without further ado, and omitting our usual cautious ‘let’s read the reviews first’ approach, we decided to eat there and then, found a table outside where we could enjoy the passing crowd, and, while sitting next to a chatty group of local businessmen, had another unremarkable meal including quenelles de coquilles, tablier de sapeur lyonnais (a load of tripe!), volaille de challans and some desserts. What we hadn’t bargained for was the interesting cèpe, part of the sauce served with the hard plank of tripe, that found its way into this writer’s stomach and provided an unforgettable psychedelic trip during the ensuing night, a very weird, unexpected experience indeed!