Back in France

This was taken New Years Eve in San Francisco



I’ve been back in France for one month (exactly today) – but this time as part of a couple.  John was one of my neighbors, when I traded houses, the last two summers.  Towards the end of last summer we became a couple.  So now I’m back in our little village of Abeilhan where I’ll be staying for the six months.

I expected spring would be here when I arrived in early April but it was more like winter.  The South of France had record cold temperatures this winter and it has been slow to warm up.  Although I would have been more comfortable with warmer clothes it was actually nice to experience a different kind of season here since before I’ve been here for summer and autumn, but never winter or spring.  It has been nice sitting in front of a cozy fire at night but will spring/summer never come?

John told me the weather was quite warm here as I was preparing to leave San Francisco.  However, the night I arrived it was a cold and we drove home in a heavy rainstorm.  In the month I’ve been here we have had exactly 3 warm days.  Yesterday it was absolutely lovely and we enjoyed sitting out in the garden – but today it is overcast and cold again. 

With the cool weather we did do some local sightseeing.  We went to Beziers (mainly for lots of shopping) and also to Narbonne.

John hanging out in old Beziers

This is the Beziers cathedral where the Catholic crusaders slaughtered thousands in an early example of genocide where they saught to eliminate all Cathars (a Christian religious group that disagreed with papist chrisianity and were living peacefully in what is now Southwestern France.

Of course we went to Bouziques - the place that farms the most delicious oysters.  These oysters were probably under water just a few hours earlier.  The little restaurant (if you can call it that) where we ate is really just a big old stone building with no cooking facilities.  They just shuck shellfish and also provide wine and bread.






Update May 7th
I've been having trouble getting my pictures to load onto the blog - very slow and very frustrating.  Probably due to the Internet provider here in the rural parts.  As a result I will probably post every week or two.

Weather is much improved now.  Bright sun and pleasant temperatures.  We've been having a very good and very busy time.  I think our social life here is busier than in San Francisco.  Here is how our past week has been.

Friday - dinner here in the village with a wonderful British couple who have lived here for 15 years.  They are very, very close friends of John's and now mine too.

Saturday - went to dinner at friends who live in Lespignan - about a 30 minute drive to the west of here.  A lovely evening with wonderful people.  Great conversation (in English) and delicious food.  I feel very at home and think they are going to be very good friends!!  All British expats and one other American who lives here part time.

Sunday - Appertifs with our good friends and neighbors - Roger and Suzette and with their daughter and her two beautiful children who are visiting from Paris.

Tuesday - stopped in to say hello to our neighbor Ricco and his wife, Helena.  They live just a few houses away - people who visited me when I was here the last two summers will probably remember this house as it has a huge garden with lots of vegetables and flowers and then the fence is covered with many unusal obje cts e.g., toys, a bizarre statute, etc.  It was 11 am.  Ricco insisted we come in and sit down in the dining room.  Helena joined us and Ricco brought out his bottle of Pastis and insisted we join him for a drink of it.  Pastis is a licorice tasing liquor popular in the countryside in southern France.  It is clear when you pour it in your glass, then you add water and it turns white.  Not our favorite beverage, or time of day for imbibing but we needed to be polite.  Then Ricco brought out munchies - homecured anchovies, popcorn, nuts, whole raw garlic cloves, and then homemade (and locally shot) wild boar sausages.  Ricco and Helena speak no English and our French is very bad but we had a great time with them and were able to communicate quite well.  It was like a scene out of "A Year in Provence".  When we left Ricco insisted we take two of the sausages home with us.  Such warm and nice people.

Friday - Casual dinner here with a very nice British man who is "on his own" here in the village.

Saturday - A very big party in the village as it was the  60th birthday of a woman whose family is one of the oldest here.  It was quite the event.  As I looked around I was amazed to realize how many local people I now know.  There were several "celebrities" in attendance as well although I have no idea who they were but was told, for instance, that one middleaged man dressed entirely in black is "a famous singer who is on TV".  We left the party early and went to have a lovely paella dinner with Roger (who can't stand loud music).  We later heard the party went on till the wee hours with lots of loud music and dancing.

Sunday - We were invited to a wonderful party at the home of the American woman we met last Saturday.  It was her farewell to friends as she is going back to America for a few months.  It was a wonderful evening with many very interested people, great conversation (French and English) and wonderful food.  The crowd was about 1/2 French and 1/2 English/American.  Her home is a show place - from the street it looks like just a high wall - inside it is simply beautiful architecture (the main living room used to be a stable).  There is a large swimming pool in the center.  The house is available to rent and sleeps 12 - anybody interested???

So that about covers our social life.  We leave on Friday for 5 nights in Paris.  I think we need to go there to get some rest!!

Here we are in the garden, enjoying the sunshine.

We've been really busy planting flowers, herbs, and vegetables as well as  trimming trees, and putting up bamboo on the back fence.  Here are some of the vegetables - aubergines, courgettes, peppers, haricorts, cabbage, tomatoes, and brussell sprouts.

John feeds the local doves peanuts and stale bread.  This pair are so tame they have even walked through the open back door into the kitchen.

A very buxom Venus in the garden.

Sybil & Barbara's Excellent Adventure - Part 3

We left for Paris early Saturday morning on the TGV. It was hard to leave even though I know I’ll be coming back probably sooner than later. Won’t into all of the reasons why right now. So off we went leaving the sunny south for the cooler north, and a tiny hamlet for bustling crowded tourist filled city. The train ride was smooth and uneventful. We brought our lunch of bread, cheese, and an apple which sure beat eating train food.

We arrived around 1 pm and got to our hotel the Grand Hotel Dechampaigne which is actually a small, very attractive place very centrally located on the right bank quite near Pompidou Center with a very friendly and helpful staff. Over the years I’ve stayed in many Paris hotels and this one, for the money, is absolutely the best.

Paris was as beautiful as ever.  The weather was cool but sunny - we were both glad we'd packed some warmer clothes.  There were lots of tourists and what I really noticed was that there were so many Americans.  In Languedoc American tourists are pretty rare.

In the afternoon we actually did the only real "culture" of our Paris visit and went to L'Orangerie - my favorite art museum in Paris.  I love it because it is all Impressionists and it is small enough that you aren't overloaded and fatigued when you leave.  The top floor has two huge rooms that are Monet Giverny Gardens huge canvases on all the walls.  The other floor contains the private collection of a major art dealer of Impressionist work while it was being painted.  He was the dealer who supplied all the art in the Barnes collection in Philadelphia.  After seeing what is in L'Orangerie I think he kept the best things for himself.

A Renoir nude

After getting a little culture we strolled along the Seine like all the other tourists.  Such a pretty place you'd never guess what is going on underground.



The Sewer Tour



Here is what lies below the beautiful city and under the Seine in particular - We are in Deep Shit!!!!   Literally.  We took the famous Paris Sewer tour.  It was not as smelly as you'd think but it wasn't fragrant in a good way.  Believe it or not it was actually very interesting.

Apparently Paris had a BIG TIME sewage problem in the 1700s as the population was booming and the sewage just went right into the Seine.  There were a lot of health problems related to this, as well as being pretty unattractive as you can imagine.  Over the next hundred years they created a very effective and futuristic sewer system that remains largely as it was today.   The system also is effective for preventing sewage spills during floods which are pretty frequent in Paris. All the engineering is explained in great detail but I didn't take notes and can't explain how it all works.  But at the time we were definitely impressed.

The signage also explained that Victor Hugo, who wrote Les Miserable, was a good friend of the man who designed the final sewer system - hence the focus on the Jean Baljean's travels through the sewer system carrying the wounded Marius.

Despite how interesting it was I was very happy to leave after spending an hour down there. 

Impressive street entertainers in the place at Pompidou

We went to Montmartre, one of my favorite Paris areas.  Here is the new church Sacre Coer.  Normally this is a great place to take a picture of all of Paris from on high.  Not this day though, it was very hazy.

Montmartre Street Scene

Although pretty touristy these days I do love it.  Makes me think of all those eccentric painters and writers being so intellectual and creative while high on absynthe!
Sybil is definitely a great travel buddy for me.  She loves to do really wierd stuff - like go see a million dead people.  I've always wanted to go to the catacombs!  Just as wierd and creepy as I thought.  Great fun.

And then best of all, one day we went to Pere Lachaise Cemetery - my all time favorite wierd thing to do in Paris.  Other people like to go walk down the Champs Ellysee.  Not me - you can't beat seeing the graves of so many famous (and not famous) Parisians.  I couldn't include pics of all of them here is just a sample.

There are usually maps available at the entrance, as the place is HUGE, and the map lists the various popular ones.  However, this day there weren't any maps provided just a fixed one at the entrance.  I was studying it and getting really overwhelmed when a older very charming man, missing a lot of his teeth, appeared and offered to guide us through the place for 5 Euros each - what a deal!!  He was very charming but spoke little English so between his enthusiasm and our limited French but good sign language we were managing to get the main points as we walked up and down the cobbled streets and through the grave sites.

Chopin

Edith Piaf

I love this one.  It is a married couple who are now holding hands for eternity.  Very romantic.

This is Oscar Wilde.  He is very, very popular apparently primarily with American gays.  They write all over the grave stone, lovely sentiments but not appreciated by the cemetery administration.  They wash it off regularly and were just arriving to do so while we were there.

Part way through our tour, a couple of men from Quebac Canada, Mark and Guy, joined us.  They were a lot of fun and were able to help greatly with translation of George's fabulous descriptions. 

Mark was particularly enthusiastic as you can see.  He really liked Sybil and I.  He kept saying how much fun he was having.

I'd taken Angel along in her carrier as she'd spent the entire day before in the hotel room.  I'd forgotten how rough the cobbled streets were in the cemetary and I'm surprised she didn't get cerebral edema from the bumpy ride.  George even carried her part of the time - above and beyond the call of guide-duty.  He did get a big tip.

Jim Morrison - Rest in Peace

Jim Morrison's grave is probably the most popular one in the entire place.  Devotees make pilgrimages to it.  When we were there one fellow was doing a video and playing "Light My Fire".  There is a lot of graffiti (nice graffiti).

"SHOW ME THE WAY TO THE NEXT WHISKEY BAR"



Now for my absolutely favorite grave.  This is a 22-year old journalist who was shot in the chest.  Last year I heard one story from a guide and this year a different one from George.  I don't know which is the correct one and I like them both.

Last year's:  The handsome journalist was very popular with the public in general as he was critical of the government and with the ladies because he was oh so handsome.  I must admit if his statute is accurate he is very handsome indeed.  The government was very tired of his criticism so they had him assasinated.  Due to the public outcry after his death they tried to make amends by paying for his grave and statute.

This year's:  He was a popular journalist and very, very handsome.  He was shot by a man who was angry because the journalist was screwing his wife.

It is a little hard to tell in this picture but the bronze is discolored in three places because of physical contact by living humans on these three places - his mouth, his chest just over the closing of his jacket where the bullet entered his chest, and (you guessed it) his rather pronounced male member.

So we decided to contribute to the discoloration.  Above Sybil gives him a big kiss.

And I - you figure it out.

And then all of us got into the act.  Mark was thrilled and kept saying "I've never had so much fun"

George was willing to continue the tour, but after 2 1/2 hours Sybil and I decided we'd seen the highlights, we gave him a big tip and headed on.

A lovely patisserie in Montmartre

Two evenings there were big demonstrations at the Hotel De Ville right by out hotel.  It sounded like the crowd at a soccer match.  The police were there in force in riot attire with many vehicles.  Not sure what the protests were about - something related to immigration.  Quite exciting.

One evening we visited Mariele and her two beautiful children, Charlotte and Paul.  Marielle is Roger & Suzette's daughter who lives in Paris.  Roger & Suzette are my across the street neighbors in Abeilhan and have been such welcoming friends both summers I've spent there.  Mariele lives right in the heart of the Latin Quarter on the left bank.  She is a delightful person and Sybil and I had a great time with her discussing art, music, life in Paris, and life in general.  I didn't take my camera so I don't have pictures from that evening but I do have pictures of them when they were in Abeilhan earlier in the summer.

Roger and Paul

In back Mariele and Suzette, In front Charlotte on the right (next to her is Suzette's other grandaughter)

We spent quite a bit of time in the Marai.  Close to our hotel and a great area.  Wonderful place for food and shopping - we did both.  If I lived in Paris this is where I'd want to be.

Fabulous Jewish latka (potato pancake)



We didn't go to a single fancy restuarant while we were there.  One night we did go to Hotel Crillon on the Concord Place and had the best, and most expensive, cocktail I've had in my entire life.  What we did do for food was nice, inexpensive, bistros which were great.  I got my fill of wonderful French onion soup.  Oh lala.

Paris is such a romantic and beatiful city.  I was feeling pretty romantic anyway (back to Abeilhan) so I loved the love locks on the bridges.

Goodbye Paris - I'll be back before you know it!

Sybil and Barbara's Excellent Adventure - Part 2

Then on to Cassis. The wind was still very, very strong. I had planned to drive over the mountain on the water between Casss and Ciotat but the scenic road was closed due to the high winds.


We stayed the night in Ciotat and working port with fishing boats and a few very large yachts. The hotel was very stark and impersonal with sort of compartment type rooms. The reception desk wasn’t staffed and we had to retrieve our room keys from a locked box. We ate dinner at a little café which had the special of zarzuela a seafood stew popular in Catalonia. I can remember tasting several years ago in Cadaquez and thinking it might be the best thing I had ever tasted. Unfortunately the version at this café couldn’t come close – it had quite a bit of what seemed like “trash fish” with little bones and it was barely warm. We did have a nice conversation with four young German fellows who explained that they were wood workers for yachts and they travel the world doing this. Hmmm – nice job if you can get it.

The hotel definitely had bad “juju”. There were strange noises during the night. How bad was it? Well Angel is definitely not a guard dog, in fact, I’ve only heard her bark a couple of times in all the time I’ve had her and then it has always been at animals on TV. However, this night she suddenly jumped from a lying positions facing the door and barked like an actual real dog!!

Monday morning when we ventured outside miraculously the wind was gone and it was a bright blue day without a cloud in the sky. We drove to Cassis and took the 1 ½ boat ride to the “Calanques”. It was even more beautiful than the other times I’ve done this as the sea was really calm and with bright sunshine. We also saw quite a few climbers on the faces of some of the steepest cliffs – awesome.

Boat ride along the Calanques

Ciotat Harbor

Cliff face while on the boatride.  There are several climbers on it.

Sailboat lesson

Amazing clear blue water.

 Next stop - Nice.  Nice is definitely very nice!
Then on to Nice. We ended up taking the freeway most of the way. Arrived at our hotel – the Negresco – a 5-star that was not very expensive this time of year. It is a beautiful old fashioned luxury hote.l, owned by an elderly lady now in a wheelchair who lives at the hotel. It was recently renovated for $100,000,000. The beach was right across the street. We went walk along the water and also to a camera store for a new camera . We had a nice dinner of gourmet paella on the pedestrian street not far from the hotel.


Tuesday the weather was perfect. I wanted to make sure Sybil had an opportunity to swim in the Mediterranean (my favorite thing to do here)but I was afraid that in mid-October the water would be too cold. We rented comfortable chaises lounges and an umbrella. The beach in nice is all stone, no sand, and after taking about 5 steps in the water you are over your head. Although painful on your feet the stone bottom makes the water look a sort of grey-blue and with great clarity. The water temp was slightly on the cool side but once in – paradise. All Sybil could say was Ooooo LaLa, Ooooo LaLa. We stayed at the beach and went back to swim repeatedly and had a nice lunch right there on the beach. It was DELIGHTFUL.

Tuesday night we went to a tiny restaurant in the “old town” that is recommended by Mark Bittman of the New York Times. It was wonderful and quite inexpensive. I’d never been in the old town before and wish we had gone there in the daytime. Very narrow pedestrian streets, tiny shops, shadows. I want to go back.

Le Negresco - Our Hotel in Nice

Me on the beach

Sybil - A very happy lady on the beach

Oooh lala

No better place to have Salad Nicoise than right on the beach at Nice

Angel in her chair at Le Negresco

Sculpture in the Hotel - how very Nice-like!

Chestnuts for sale outside the Matisse Museum

After 3 nights away we returned to our village of Abeilhan.  We were only there from from Wednesday night through Saturday morning when we caught the train for Paris.  I'm not going to provide details here but you can jump to your own conclusions.  All I will say is that they were very, very happy days.

Sybil with a pastry at the deserted beach at Cap d'Agde

At our friend John Straker's house.  We went there mid-day - for lovely snacks including delicious homemad guacamole.



These two pictures show you why I am very, very happy!