France 2004: January 2025

This is a slightly edited version of the journal I kept while we were in France in 2004. There is probably a lot of boring stuff here, but you can just scroll past the text and look at the pictures. Because I somehow lost the metadata for these pictures - the date and time they were taken - I'm not in some cases 100% sure what they are. If you spot mistakes in my attributions of the places in the captions, let me know.

May 5-6

The Air Transat flight was not good – the seats the narrowest and with the least leg room we’ve ever experienced. I thought it was going to break my back, but found if I put one of the little pillows behind me, I was reasonably comfortable. Since I was really enjoying my book, the new one by the guy who wrote The Hours, and there were two (just barely) watchable movies – Dating Tad Hamilton and Love Actually – the time went by fairly quickly. The flight was less than seven hours.

(Not sure what I was talking about here. The next novel from Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, didn't come out until 2005. There was a movie out in 2004 based on his 1990 release, A Home at the End of the World, for which he'd written the screenplay. So maybe I was reading that book. Also, absolutely zero memory of Dating Tad Hamilton, which is actually titled Win A Date With Tad Hamilton. It stars actors I've barely heard of and sounds like a real stinker.)

The dinner was gluten, gluten and gluten – roll, pasta, cakey dessert. Luckily I had the remains of a bag of trail mix. (I was in my I-have-Celiac-disease phase and also maybe doing the Suzie Sommers diet?) No free drinks. You even pay for the pop now. But that’s good, it meant we didn’t drink alcohol. I didn’t sleep at all on the plane, didn’t really try – unusual for me.

Gatwick was much busier than we’ve ever seen it. We found the courtesy coach stop easily enough, though, and called the Ibis hotel. The woman said a bus would be along in 20 minutes. It was. We were at the hotel by 8:30. They didn’t have a room quite ready, so we had breakfast in the lobby – a buffet with mostly gluten again but I had fruit and cheese. We only spent a little while in the room. We were back downstairs by 10 to catch the bus back to Gatwick and the train station. The Gatwick Express with Underground pass (which we really didn’t need in the end) cost a little over ₤30 – $75. Yikes!

I dozed on the train. By now we were having difficulty keeping our eyes open or moving one foot in front of the other. Our plan was to do the Tate Britain. It’s only one stop away from Victoria Station on the tube; we could easily have walked. We weren’t in the greatest shape to be trying to look at pictures but did the best we could. The Pre-Raphs, Turner, Constable.

We were struck again by how modernist and radical the Turners seem – given that he was painting a good 30 years before the Impressionists. Although the commentary with the pictures points out that some of the most abstract are actually “unfinished” canvasses, or were assumed to be by curators who took over the collection Turner had left behind. I like the Pre-Raphs, they’re very stylish, but somehow inert and opaque – or maybe it was just my eyes this morning.

Karen across the street from Tate Britain

We spent over two hours there and I couldn’t tell you the name of one painting that stuck out, or at least I can’t now, three days later. We came out of the museum and walked along the river on Millbank as far as the Parliament buildings where we had to go out and around. It was a week day, so of course the place was all business, bristling with security and that sense of expectancy that hangs around centres of power. There were protesters with signs across the street from the main entrance: “You lie, children die,” and that old favourite, “Bliar.”

We walked out on Westminster Bridge, but it’s really not that picturesque with the stupid Ferris wheel on one side and the Parliament buildings obscured behind hoardings on the other. We decided we’d head for the Thai restaurant near Victoria station that we’d taken Caitlin to in 2001 when we were here. That meant walking up Victoria St., past Westminster Abbey. It was all blocked off with barriers and police guards, including some carrying automatic rifles. We asked one woman copper and she told us the Polish prime minister (president?) was coming.

(It was the president, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who was there for a commemoration of the Warsaw Uprising.)

We ducked down a little side street with market stalls and shopped for breakfast things for the next day: rolls for Karen, trail mix for me. We had a little trouble finding our restaurant because the buildings on that side of the street were under construction and it was hidden by hoardings. It was only about 3:30 at this point, but it was open and still serving. We could choose from lunch or dinner menu. So we had low-priced lunch dishes – I say low-priced, but they were ₤5.95 each ($15) plus beer and wine. It was very good and lots of it – or lots of rice anyway.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was not even 5:30. We sat downstairs in the lobby and had a drink and read the newspaper – Guardian for me, Times for Karen. How veddy British! Our idea was to hit the sack at about 7 as we had to be up at about five (for our flight to Marseilles). I filled the time by trying to get the Blackberry working. Finally called Diane Gay and ended up speaking to Suzie McMeans. (I assume these are PR people who had sent me the Blackberry to review.) They had to call back so I waited until almost seven, Karen was already drifting off. It took a while to figure out, but in the end we got it working. It was after 8 by the time I turned the light out.

May 7

Up at ten to five! And still only just made the 5:30 bus, they had to call up to ask where we were. Got to the airport in plenty of time, though. Had to line up for the EasyJet flight longer than we have for any cheapo flight before, and again, the place was busier than we’ve experienced it in the past. Flight boarded on time and we got good aisle seats across from each other at the front of the plane. The seats we couldn’t help noticing were roomier than on the 7-hour Air Transat flight. Dozed again on the flight, but it wasn’t very refreshing.

Arrived feeling tired and vaguely migraine-y. Found the Europe Car office as soon as we came out into the airport. A very sloppily dressed middle-aged guy whose breath stank of decayed teeth was there with his fat wife. She spoke a little English, he none, but we had no difficulty understanding. They had everything ready. It took about 10 minutes, if that, to finish the paperwork. We walked out the door into the Provencal sunshine and there was our gleaming new car waiting for us at the curb. Getting out of the airport and onto the autoroute was a breeze.

(We and the McCanns had 'bought' a car, which we would sell back to the company under pre-arranged terms. It was slightly cheaper than renting – and we got a brand-new vehicle.)

We were in Cairanne by 11:30. It took us a while to find the house because the information from the owners described it as a stone house with tile roof; in fact it’s a stucco house with a tile roof. The folks weren’t there when we got there, but arrived a few minutes later while I was breaking into the courtyard to try and figure out whether this was in fact the house. I heard their voices in the street at about the same moment I saw the note they’d left.

We had the tour and it’s a lovely place with multiple-level terrace, beautifully furnished with new leather couches in the TV room, ceramic tile floors, open fire (not working apparently). We were put in a large front bedroom with a queen-size bed.

We had lunch on the terrace with copious amounts of wine, then more wine on the terrace. Then we walked down into the new village to the local wine co-operative where they were having a wine tasting, with wines from all different regions. We spent almost two hours there, came away quite sozzled, with several bottles of wine, plus two boxes of cheap local wine, which is actually quite good.

We bought a big hunk of beef from the little local butcher, a wide-eyed Provencal man who was obviously overwhelmed by having six Anglos in his shop speaking very bad French. His French was heavily accented and very difficult to understand. He pronounced Ste. Cecille almost like Santa Cecille. Cairanne, which we’ve been pronouncing Kay-ran, he says something like Ky-rah-nah.

Dennis and Brian cooked beef and potatoes, local asparagus, salad. The beef was very tasty. After dinner, much more wine was consumed. I woke about 2 in the morning with an excruciating migraine. I didn’t know where the Tylenol was – right on the bedside table as it turned out. By 4:30 I was in considerable trouble. Finally Karen got up and found the Tylenol and I took the last two plus a Gravol and finally slept.

May 8

A slow start to the day. It was the day we were to pick up the Shell(e)ys from the train station at Orange and do some marketing. The McCanns and Blackwells left a bit earlier as Dennis and Gail were still doing their morning ablutions. We headed first to Ste. Cecille, about a 15-minute drive away.

It’s a very pretty little town with plain tree-lined streets. The market spread out along two or three streets, including two irradiating from the main square. There were vegetable stalls, cheese sellers, many offering chevre, a local specialty. There were also charcuterie stands selling cooked chickens and butchers and fish mongers. Then there were specialty food places that were selling things like beer nuts. Besides the food, there were clothing places – at one of which Brian ended up buying a jacket, which is now referred to as his parka.

We looked around for almost an hour but didn’t see any sign of Dennis and Gail so we started shopping. Half the stuff we needed – or I thought I needed – we couldn’t find. No peanut butter or rice crackers. We did buy fruit and veg and two kinds of cheese. One beautiful cheese from Haute Savoie cost us €18 – about $25. It was a big hunk, though, and as I write this (on the tenth), we’re still eating it. We found Gail and Dennis also shopping. They had already bought pepper corns, which we had also bought.

Not sure if this is Ste. Cecille or Orange - I suspect the latter

We drove to Orange about noon – another 15 or 20 minutes away. We saw a supermarket on the way into town but foolishly didn’t go into it. We first scouted out the train station – very easy to find as it’s well sign posted – then went into the centre and found a place to eat lunch down by the Theatre Antique. We chose the place because it was sunny and protected from the cool wind. Food was okay. I had a salad and I can’t remember what else.

Driving back to the train station, we almost got into an accident. I was proceeding down the street to the station when a car pulled out of a street on the right. I thought she would stop when she saw me but she didn’t and I was just able to stop in time. She rolled the window down and yelled at me. So did the car that followed her. Apparently they had the right of way because they were coming from the right. This seems like madness to me, but the others insisted I was in the wrong. Anyway, no harm done and a lesson learned.

The girls were there on the sidewalk when we got to the station – the train must have come in bang on time. Much kissy-kissy. Then we split up and D, G, S and S went off to the house while we and the McCanns went back to the supermarket to finish the shopping. But it was closed by this time – if it had been open earlier – and everything else was closed too. This was Saturday afternoon. Very strange, the French. So we went back to the house too.

We sat around drinking wine until after 4 when we all went back to the Cairanne co-op for wine tasting. My impression was, been there done that, but the others got into it again and bought oodles more wine. Gail made a scratch meal, a kind of cassoulet over rice. More wine drinking and finally bed.

Karen and Gail outside the Cairanne Wine Co-op

May 9

We had planned to leave at 9:30 this morning and almost did. Shelley, who had slept badly, was moving slowly, though, and it was almost ten by the time we got away. The agenda was Brian’s tour of the wine villages around the Dentelles de Miraille. The day wasn’t terribly promising – cool and a bit cloudy – but had improved quite a bit by the time we got going. It was still cool but at least sunny.

We started in Seguret, a pretty little hill village with a fountain dating from medieval times and crooked steep streets with quaint houses. There is also a ruined tower on the peak above it. For some reason we all decided to hike up to the top, which took almost 30 minutes and got us all sweaty, despite the cool wind. There is very little to see at the top and you’re not supposed to go into the ruin itself because it’s not maintained. We did find a little gate into what must have been a keep. It was very rocky and dangerous footing.

Exploring Seguret

The photographers

Tourists

Resident

Welcome to my humble abode

They went thataway

Another photographer

When we got down, Gail says that Dennis said to her, “Well, that was a fucking waste of time.” Gail’s response was, “No shit, Sherlock. We should have bought the postcard and gone and drunk wine.” I suspect Shelley felt the same way, but it felt good to exercise and I think the McCanns welcomed a little jaunt too.

We got in the cars and drove on through Vaison la Romaine – which we’re saving for Tuesday when there’s a big market – to the next little place, Malaucene. We parked in the church lot – a big looming fortress of a place. We found a café restaurant in the sun and sat down to have a drink and a snack. The original plan was to go to a fancy restaurant recommended by Karl in Gigondas, but by now it was after noon and Shelley was suggesting a snack. It turned out to be lunch – pizzas shared by the others, a salade with chevre pour moi.

Malaucene - escaping gangsters

Malaucene - taking a breather

Malaucene - children with minder

While the others were finishing up, I walked up the street to a place where flower sellers had brought flats of annuals to sell. There was a carousel and a brass band from Avignon was playing, not very well. There were food sellers too. Earlier we had seen a parade of antique tractors. It was all part of some local festival. I walked up narrow streets and took pictures before looping around back to the restaurant.

Some of us went back up the same street a slightly different route and found the studio-gallery of a very interesting artist: representational, muted colours, local subjects, a strange feel to some of them – like the one of an artist (the artist?) at his easel with a woman posing lasciviously on the bed behind him. Another nice one of a middle aged man sitting in a chair in the middle of a room. All this we saw looking in the window. A sign in the door said the gallery was open, you just had to ring the bell. We rang, but nobody came.

Andrea went into a pottery shop across the street, which was open. Some others went in there too. Somebody bought a piece of jewelry, can’t remember who. Brian and Karen and I kept walking up the narrow streets – very pretty. We met Gail and Dennis coming back from climbing up to a look-out spot, laughing at their stupidity at having gone for another climb, and apparently a very difficult one, after disliking the climb at the last place. Wended our way back down to the church and headed out to the next place.

Le Barroux has a chateau. We parked and walked up to it – very pretty views over the tile roofed houses. We chose not to pay to go in – it didn’t look all that interesting. Then we walked down narrow streets, some with fabulous displays of roses, lovely little courtyards in some of the houses. We didn’t stay long.

Le Barroux - the chateau

The next place, Beaume de Venise, is where they make Muscat, the wine Karen needed for her chicken recipe that everybody liked so much. It was a pleasant enough little town with a leafy central crossroads where we found a café to sit outside in the by now quite warm sun. This was after tracking down a public washroom. It was no good for the ladies, though – hole in the ground with foot rests – so Karen and Andrea went off in search of more civilized facilities, while the rest of us sat down. It was a good place for people watching – like the late middle-aged fellow at a nearby table sleeping in the sun in his beret.

I think these three are all Beaume de Venise

Brian and I walked up into the old village along twisty streets to an open air theatre built right into a rock face. Although most of it looked modern, if in disrepair, there were weathered holes in the rock face that looked like they had held up beams – perhaps to hold up an awning as at the ancient theatre in Orange.

By now it was fairly late in the day. We continued on to – or rather through – the next place, Vacqueyras. Instead of going in to Gigondas, the last stop on the tour, we took a road off the highway to the restaurant at which we originally planned to lunch, Les Florets. It’s a lovely spot with a leafy terrace and pretty stucco building. The menu was all rabbit and other unusual fare and very expensive – €38 for a four course meal, wine not included!

We went home from there via a winery where nobody bought anything for a change – or maybe Shelley bought some bottles of red wine.

May 10

Today was our day for Avignon, which turned out to be a mistake. It’s a good long drive, about 50 minutes and I was feeling worse than the morning before for some reason. Driving into the city along narrow streets to find the public parking at the market was particularly trying. This is the town with the Palace of the Popes and the Place d’Horloge with the beautiful carousel that six-year-old Caitlin had enjoyed when we were here 13 years ago.

Busking lutenist in front of Pope's Palace

Karen on porch of Pope's Palace

Andrea and Gail were in our car. The plan was to meet the others who were coming a little later at the Pope’s Palace. We found them and walked away from the square, where Shelley warned us that the food would be bad and expensive and found a little corner café where we sat outside and ate salads and croque monsieurs. After lunch, we were to split up, with the McCanns, Dennis and Shelly doing the Pope’s Palace, while the rest of us wandered the town.

Karen and I split from Gail and Shelley at the Pope’s Palace. She and I went into the Cathedral, which wasn’t terribly exciting, then wandered fairly aimlessly for a couple of hours. We did see another church which wasn’t open but had marvelous carved wooden doors – L’Eglise de St. Pierre, I think. And we went in and looked briefly at an art exhibit – big abstract mixed media works – in an olde stone building. Those were about the only highlights of a pretty boring day.

L’Eglise de St. Pierre doors

We met the others at a café at 5 and sat over drinks for an hour by the carousel, watching the clown harass passersby and exchanging quips with a very sardonic waiter. When he referred to us to another customer as les Americains, I said, no, not Americans, Canadians, very different. And he replied something about the fact that we didn’t join the war. I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, but Shelley explained it. (Did he not listen to what I said, was just ignorant about Canada's role in the war, or just teasing?)

Caitlin called and Karen and I took turns walking across the square (to get away from the noise) and talk to her.

Overseas call

We left Avignon about six, drank the usual copious quantities of wine back at the house and had dinner all together – was this the night that Brian and I made goop (left over everything)? I think it was.

Cairanne

May 11

Tuesday. Market day in Vaison la Romaine, a town of a few thousand about 25 minutes away by car. Karen and Gail and Andrea and I set out early and arrived by about 9:30. The whole town practically is an outdoor market – blocks and blocks of stalls selling everything under the sun. Lots of clothes, including second hand, and farm produce, butchers, cheese sellers, olive sellers, spiciers and on an on. We saw one stall selling ornate grandfather clocks and another air conditioners, lots of garden supplies and bedding plants, jewelry, soap, hammocks, etc., etc.

This is a market held every Tuesday. Evidently the merchants move from market to market around the region. Gail said she recognized some of the same people we had seen at the market at Ste. Cecille les Vignes.

We bought copious quantities of vegetables and fruits, some sausage, chicken, cheese, bread and made two trips back to the car to unload the shopping baskets into the trunk or into the cooler with freezer packs that we had brought for the purpose.

After the shopping, we went in search of the restaurant Shelley and her crew had selected for lunch from the Michelin Guide. It looked very nice but was almost as expensive as Les Florets. However, it did look possible to order something not terribly expensive from the a la carte menu – a chicken dish, though the meat was referred to as volaille, not poulet, so we weren’t sure. It was €15 – about $25. This was for lunch, with wine extra, and that was about the cheapest thing on the menu. Others would order more expensive things, of course.

Vaison la Romaine - the bridge

Vaison la Romaine

Vaison la Romaine - the bridge, again

The restaurant was very close to the town’s main attraction, a bridge dating from late Roman times over the shallow, deep-cut river, Uvez (I think), and the medieval Haute Ville, the old town, built up the steep hill across the river from the new town where the market was held. We crossed the bridge – picturesquely hump backed, but not looking all that ancient – and walked up into the old town after checking into a watercolour gallery with touristy Provencal scenes by the bridge.

It’s gorgeous, with stone-built houses and churches and steep cobbled streets, mostly pedestrian only. We only went part way up and then turned around and went back down to meet the others for lunch. They were supposed to be behind us by about an hour and had come much later, it turns out, and were tasked with shopping for appetizers. When we met up with them, we briefly entertained going to another place we had seen with a lovely terrace overlooking the river – Les Terrasses de Mimou – but opted in the end for the other.

Vaison la Romaine

The restaurant we went to was lovely, a series of cozy little light-filled rooms. The service from the Gallicly handsome waiter was excellent. The food, starting with an amuse-guele, a tomato and something capuccino, was mostly excellent. I and most of the others opted for the Menu something de pouce. Pouce is thumb, but nobody was able to give an entirely satisfactory explanation of what this meant. In any case, it included three courses – an aubergine and tomato and other stuff composed salad kind of thing, two little brochets de voille – which turned out to be chicken breast – served with a little risotto of barley and fennel. A superb crème caramel – thin and crisp on top and light and fluffy underneath – finished it off. All this for €23.

Gail and Shelley had the €38 three course meal, and Shelley was left to order the wine. She chose a Vigneron, a fruity, crisp white wine.

After lunch, the McCanns and Shelly, Gail, Karen and I headed back to the old village and explored it properly, poking into some little shops in a square and walking up to the top. Somebody spoke to somebody on the street who recommended a restaurant there. We came down from the village on the other side from the bridge and walked into town via the Cathedral – which Karen and I, but not the others, poked our heads into. It wasn’t terribly interesting. Either that or we were just too tired and not in the mood.

Vaison la Romaine

We headed back to the house with the groceries. When we got into the hot car, it smelled heavily of food. Gail gagged and almost threw up in the car but got herself out on the sidewalk in time. Back at the ranch, somebody made dinner – maybe this was the night of the goop, can’t remember.

May 12

Wednesday. The McCanns and the Blackwells headed out this day for Orange, to see the Roman theatre, followed by Isle sur la Sorgue and a tour of Luberon villages, including Rousillon and Fontaine de Vaucluse.

The weather held fine for Orange, hot in fact, and the Roman Theatre was excellent. It must have been a fantastic place 2000 years ago. It was sacked in about the third or fourth century by Visigoths, soon after the Empire turned Christian. What’s left is the back wall, stripped of its marble facings and most of its decorative columns and statues. But what’s left, the sandy red stone wall with all its curves and alcoves, including one with a statue of the emperor – a reminder to the colonials of the might of Rome and the inadvisability of stepping out of line – was impressive enough.

At least some of the outside superstructure also remains, including stonework built into the rock face of the Colline de Ste. Eutrope. But the huge arc of bleachers – several layers: orchestra, terraces and so on, which held something like 9,000 people – is mostly reconstruction, though built to the pattern of the original. Some of the decorative columns and other stone work, including the statue of the emperor, were found in excavations and put back in their original places.

The theatre served as a fort and later a prison during the Revolution, then as a whole town with houses built along streets. It was cleared starting in the middle of the 19th century. All this and much more we learned from the very excellent audio guide. There was also quite a bit about the theatre in the late Empire. Most of it was mime and proto-Commedia del Arte – stuff to amuse the masses – though they continued to produce the classic Roman comedies as well. There were over 100 days a year of all-day theatre, which makes one wonder how they had time to make a living and keep the empire going. Of course, it was probably just this kind of decadence that brought the empire down.

Orange - Roman theatre

After the Theatre, we checked into the museum – very nicely done, but not just about the theatre, also about Orange and some local artists, including a Welshman who lived here in the mid-19th century. We had perhaps had enough of learning to be able to take in what the museum had to offer. The others bought sandwiches from a café to make a picnic with. I went looking for something but found nothing I could eat.

Orange

On the drive south to Isle sur la Sorgue it started to cloud over. We passed a field of lavender starting to purple up, with a riot of red poppies and yellow flowers in a field in front of it. A little after two we found an open grocery store and did the grocery shopping and bought me apple, orange and cheese for the planned picnic. By the time we got to Isle sur la Sorgue, though, it was spitting rain.

We sat under a tree by one arm of the river near a moss-covered water wheel and ate our lunch in the damp, then walked into town. The rain let up for a bit and the town is quite pretty with a leafy square dominated by an impressive Baroque cathedral church. The interior was gorgeous with Rococco carvings and all manner of Popish gaudery.

By the time we came out of the church, it was raining fairly steadily and we needed toilets. The tourist office directed us to a public toilet which we eventually found but was unusably filthy. We did find some of the other water wheels that were used to power the now defunct silk industry, but it was raining too much and had somehow gotten to be 4 o’clock, so we decided to call it a day and drive home. On the way back, we had torrential rain and black skies.

The others had made dinner – lamb and sausages – and we consumed large quantities of food and wine as usual and went to bed at a reasonable hour, but far too soon after eating.

May 13

Thursday. A Mistral started in the middle of the night, rattling the metal shutters on the windows in our bedroom, moaning in the chimney, creating a great racket in general. Everybody had a restless night of sleep. One can see why this wind drives people batty. Sometimes it lasts a month and it was disturbing us after only one day. It’s so relentless. But it was clearing some of the cloud away.

All but Shelley and Gail decided they wanted to see Aix-en-Provence, so we drove, three to a car, down south again. It took over two hours on the small roads, in part because we got stuck behind a huge tow truck towing a crippled tractor trailer going about 50 kph. Then there were deviations in the road due to road work once we got into town.

The two cars left at different times. Ours, with Karen and I and Andrea, managed more by luck than anything to park in a parking garage within walking distance of the Rotonde, the main square with a big fountain. Then we took a walk in the exact wrong direction thanks to a sign that must have been for cars. After three or four blocks we realized we must be wrong and asked for directions.

The old centre of the city is quite lovely, lovelier this day because the Mistral had abated or didn’t reach this far, the sky had cleared and the sun was brilliant. From the Rotonde, which has cafes and shops (and the Tourist Information office) around it, the Cours Mirabeau, a broad avenue, dotted with fountains in the median, runs about six blocks.

Aix - the university

Aix - Japanese tourists

Aix - Cours Mirabeau?

On the left side as you walk away from the Rotonde, the Cours is lined with cafes and shops. Behind them, narrow streets run into the old medieval town centre. On the other side of the Cours, there are government buildings and beyond them is the Quartier Mazarin, a section of the town built later under the direction of Cardinal Mazarin in, I think, the 17th century.

We had arranged to meet at the TI at 11:30 and arrived at about the same time – but it was after noon by now. We walked up the Cours and into the old town, looking for a restaurant recommended in one of the books. We found the street and the street numbers, but no restaurant. Finally I went into a shop and asked for it and they told me, “Il est fini.” So we found an outdoor café on a leafy street beside the Hotel de Ville. Lunch was disappointing. Many of us ordered steak frites, expecting the thin lightly crisp frites we had all enjoyed before in France. They were McCain-style crinkle cut frozen fries.

After lunch, we split up into pairs, arranging to meet at the TI at 5. Karen and I went into a little gallery near the church and looked at some very nice, mostly impressionistic paintings by a group of four women artists. There was another little gallery with works by a guy obsessed with boats and water. We climbed the tatty stairs to the Tapestry Museum, but looking in the door, it didn’t look terribly appealing, so we turned around and went out. We looked into the church, but I can’t remember a thing about it.

Karen and I poked around in the old town, taking pictures and looking in shop windows, then worked our way back to the Cours near the Rotonde and walked up the Cours to its far end. It’s shorter than it looks on the map. It has a kind of Parisian feeling with its broad sidewalks lined with cafes, but the over-arching plane trees make it more southern.

Aix - but not sure where

We went over into the Quartier Mazarin, intending to look into the church, but the streets leading to it were blocked off and we never could find a way to get through – though there must have been a way. We did find the fountain of the four dolphins, but then just wandered somewhat aimlessly, stopping in a health food store to buy some rice crackers, then at a sidewalk café for a wine and water (and a pee). The Quartier Mazarin is mostly residential and not terribly interesting, but quiet after the narrow, shop-lined streets of the other side, which were thronged with tourists. And students – Aix is a big university town.

By a little after 4 we decided we’d seen enough and walked back to the TI. Brian had said if we were finished early to look for them there and if they were finished early too, we could just take off. The others were going back separately anyway. But they weren’t there, so we walked all around the Rotonde, very pretty in the late afternoon sun with its pruned plane trees, and back up into the old town for a little. When we came back the next time, they were there and we left, taking the toll road back and making it in about half the time it had taken in the morning.

It was still windy and now cloudy – very like it had been when we left in the morning. Gail and Shelley said it had been windy all day, but sunny most of it. They had walked down into the village several times and chatted with locals in the bars and gone into the butcher again. Maybe this was the night they cooked lamb and sausages. Must get this journal caught up so I’m not always two or three days behind.

May 14

Friday. Up at a reasonable hour. Karen and I and the McCanns, separately, decided to hike around the village. Shelley and Gail were going to Carpentras for the market. Shelly and Dennis were sticking around home.

Karen went down early and picked up a map from the Cairanne TI. We set out at I think about 10 and followed a route that took us up to a chapel and cemetery east and north of the village. After that it mostly followed paths and farm tracks by vineyards or through oak woods, with occasional sweeping views across the plain, at first with the village visible, later without it.

For over an hour we saw hardly anyone – an occasional farm vehicle or car, a farmer off in the distance checking his vines. The sun was shining but the air was still a little cool, the mistral still blowing, but more gently. The birds sang, it was good to exercise. We got that happy feeling we always get when walking outdoors in the country. All was well with the world.

Cairanne - hiking around the village

We were trying to follow the map, a series of linked circular routes that were supposed to take us about two and a half hours to walk in all – out from the new village and back to the old. I think we got it confused at some point because about an hour and 40 minutes in we came to a paved road that turned out to be the D51, the road that goes by the old village. Thinking we were still following the walking route, we turned left and walked about a kilometer before realizing we must be going the wrong way, away from the village.

It took us about 30 or 40 minutes to walk back to where we went wrong and then down to Cairanne past some good views of the old village – and past a photographer setting up with a tripod and large-format camera to shoot it – and past some pretty little farms and gites.

We arrived back at the house a little after one, shortly after Brian and Andrea who had left later but taken a shorter walk. We decided on the spur of the moment to drive up to Gigondas for lunch along the pretty street we had seen the day we did the circuit of villages around the Dentelles – the craggy rocks that dominate the plain hereabouts. Dennis took some persuading, but in the end, he and Shelly piled into the car with the McCanns and Karen and I.

We had been concerned about getting there before everything closed down. We were right to be. The nicest places were finished, even though there was a bike tour in town. There was one cute little bar restaurant open and we went in there to eat – rather than outside on the terrace, as the sun was now quite strong.

The service was less than stellar. Our waiter, a James Dean type, forgot our wine order for ten minutes, picked his nose (according to Karen), stuck his hand in a dogs mouth, had a tete a tete with a girl friend at the bar and started his own lunch before we were finished ours. The food was only okay. Most of us had salads, Brian a pan fried fish with inferior frites.

After lunch, we walked up into the small village along the by now familiar cobbled hilly streets.

Gigondas

Cairanne - back at the ranch

Cairanne - the villa

In the evening, we went into Ste. Cecille and had dinner at the cute little Pizzeria, the McCanns, Gail and Dennis had found one of the first nights they were here. Can’t remember what I had, but it was reasonably good, and the wine flowed. Andrea drove home. Andrea is always the designated driver, which is not fair.

May 15

Saturday. This was market day in Ste. Cecille les Vignes, the nearby town we went to a week ago on our first full day in France. Everybody wanted to go and buy table linen from the fellow who has his stall near the little fountain by the parking lot. We also had marketing to do. Since car one had been responsible for the lion’s share of the shopping in Vaison earlier in the week, car two had to do it this time. Except that Gail and Brian switched around so Gail had to do the shopping again, about which she wasn’t thrilled.

Ste. Cecille les Vignes

We came with the McCanns a little later and wandered around looking for cheese and other appetizer material. Brian went off at one point and reappeared with a bouquet of flowers for Andrea. It was their anniversary today.

We all ended up after awhile at the table cloth place, where Gail and Shelley had struck up quite an acquaintance with the tall, brushcut owner. Gail and Shelly had gone with Dennis and had bought him the table cloth he wanted for his birthday. I can’t remember who else bought stuff – I think pretty much everybody. Karen bought one of the reversible cotton cloths – mostly yellow with blue in the border – and some napkins. After the shopping, we all shored up at the same café for cokes and coffees – and pees.

The McCanns and Karen and I took our car and headed out for some sightseeing, while the others went back to the house with the groceries. We were headed first for Bollène, to the Cité Barry or Troglodyte village, an ancient site where people lived in caves and houses built into a mountain rock face. We stopped first in a little place called Rochegude, just because it looked pretty.

The village is dominated by an old chateau that has been turned into a posh Chateaux and Relais hotel, complete with its own private deer park. We wandered around the high stone wall bounding the park, peering, where we could, over or through the iron gates at the deer grazing inside. Then we climbed up to where the hotel buildings were. Looking in, Brian noticed that the hotel had a small exhibit of art works by Lichtner-Aix, the local artist Shelley and Gail had gotten interested in who has an atelier in Serignan du Comtat, where we were headed later.

We went in and started looking at the pictures, but a young fellow came along after a few moments and told us, “C’est privé, monsieur. Desolé.” As we were walking out we passed one of the sourest-faced women I’ve ever seen. She was dressed in chi-chi French clothes – neat, tailored, obviously very expensive – had a tight hairdo, thin bony face and a seriously downturned mouth. I smiled at her as we passed, but she looked right through me. Karen said later that she had noticed the woman watching us as we came in. She had obviously sent the young man over to boot us out. Brian said he regretted not pinching her butt as he walked by.

Rochegude - not the chateau

We headed from Rochegude for Bollène and found the Troglodyte village up a narrow hill road. There may have been a tourist centre here at one time, but today it’s virtually abandoned. There is one big board with information, mostly in French. It said the place was inhabited from prehistoric to modern times. Karen said she read somewhere that there is some question about whether people have actually been living there quite that long. Certainly since at least medieval times, though.

Troglodyte village

Troglodyte village - cicada

Troglodyte village - cave houses

Troglodyte village - pensive tourist

Troglodyte village

It would have been much better to have some kind of interpretive text so we’d know what we were looking at. But it’s an impressively wild and somewhat weird spot – just these abandoned stone dwellings built into the rock face, sometimes incorporating caves, some overgrown with vegetation. Signs of campers squatting in some of the buildings. Some are self-standing, including a tiny stone built chapel – Notre Dame d’Esperance – which was dated some time in the 17th century.

We climbed one of several rocky walking trails over shale and eventually up to a look-out spot where you can see for miles across to a nuclear plant with the characteristic massive chimneys puffing steam or smoke or whatever it is and down a broad canal to the Mediterranean.

Troglodyte village

By the time we got down from the mountain, the nice lunch places were all closed. We ended up at a mall with an Intermarché in Bollène, looking for a place to pee and buy picnic makings. When we couldn’t figure out how to get into the public washrooms, we decided to eat in a little restaurant right in the mall. It turned out to be not too bad at all. I think we all had steak frites, which were at least properly cooked. The salads, especially the tomato, were quite good.

The road out of Bollène we wanted was barré so it took us a while to get out. We got on to a little narrow road that went across country towards Serignan – by design. It wound past vineyards and through tiny villages that probably don’t appear on many maps. Just outside Serignan, we came to a place where two little girls were selling cherries by the side of the road. We pulled over and the owner, a gregarious old ex-Gendarme, came out and flagged us to park in the driveway instead of on the road.

On the way to Serignan

He talked with a thick country accent, but understood that we weren’t very good at French and spoke slowly. He insisted on showing us his little farm, with its cherry trees, newly in fruit, including a white cherry tree, the fruit of which he told us was for making liquor. There were also big hissing ducks. Both cherries and duck are specialties of the region. As we passed one area with the typical farm pile of old machinery and other junk, he waved at it and said, “Catastrophe!” He was quite a comical old fellow.

He took a shine to Karen who was doing most of the responding to his difficult French. As we were leaving – and it took a little doing to break free – he cut her a beautiful creamy yellow and red tinted rose.

We drove on into Serignan, which is a very pretty town, and easily found the Lichtner-Aix museum in behind the Mairie. The art is great, three or four distinct styles: murky watercolour tinted lithographs which are fairly representational, which I liked best, bright dauby Provencal scenes, and two different types of abstracts, including the very beautiful oils in the brochure Shelley had, which she said were intended to be pictures of the Mistral – moody, serene and upsetting at the same time.

Werner Lichtner-Aix

It’s the Lichtner-Aix museum because the man is dead, we learned. It’s all set up as a working studio, with his printing press still loaded with a plate. Upstairs, there are still paints out and a painting on the easel. When I asked the elderly woman who was caretaking the place – and had to unlock the doors and turn the lights on when we came along – if the artist lived upstairs, she said, no, he was dead since 1997 (actually, 1987), but his wife lived upstairs. He was born in Berlin. We speculated that his wife was French and they came back here to live.

We both bought calendars with the idea of gutting them to frame the pictures. Karen and I bought an old one – 1994, I think – with some of the prints. The McCanns bought the much bigger 2005 version with more of the big dauby Provencale scenes and the Mistral abstracts.

Serignan

When we got back to the house, we found that the others had spent most of the day by the pool, where we joined them and drank way too much wine.

In the evening, we ate the pre-cooked chicken and potatoes purchased at the market. I don’t remember much of it because I was pissed. Gail was even more pissed and staggered off to bed half way through the dinner and never returned. So to bed.

March 16

Sunday. There was talk in the morning of going down south again to some of the Luberon towns. In the end, only Shelley and Karen and I went. The others were going to do a shorter-distance tour around Chateauneuf de Pape. It was going on for 11 by the time we set out. We drove straight through Carpentras instead of going the route we and the McCanns had taken earlier in the week. Naturally we took a wrong turn and went around in circles for a bit.

It took us a little over an hour to get to Gordes, our first stop. This is a very popular place, a medieval town perched on a rocky hill. Going along the winding mountain road, we came on a stunning view across a ravine to the village with its church spire and tile roofs, houses spilling down the hillside. The town itself is very pretty, but touristified.

By now it was lunchtime for Karen and I, breakfast for Shelley. We went into a little patisserie and bought Quiche Lorraines and drinks, which we ate up a quiet little street – a rare thing in this village – in somebody’s garden just off the public footpath, sitting on stones. Then we just wandered around the town, up and down the steep little streets, looking out at precipitous views from various spots, and into the church – a dim, cool and remarkably restrained Gothic pile.

Gordes

When we walked back to the car, I went on ahead to the look-out point we had seen coming in, to take some pictures, while Karen and Shelley stayed at the car. It was a good deal further off than I thought and it was by now quite hot. I didn’t get quite as far as the spot I’d seen but did take some pictures before walking back to the car.

Gordes

The next stop was the Abbey of Senanque. We drove up a narrow switch-back road from Gordes, past French people picnicking at the side of the road, through woods and along cliff-hanging stretches with great views. The road is so narrow that you have to back up to a lay-by if someone comes the other way – and tour buses come up here!

The Abbey is down in a cleft in the mountains, a small valley where they grow lavender right in the Abbey grounds. It wasn’t quite in flower when we were there. It’s an impressive site in this remote spot, the dark mass of the ancient church and buildings contrasted with the modern (we think) yellow stone building that houses the bookstore, library, toilets, etc.

Senanque Abbey

This was to be the first of the Abbeys visited on this trip that we were destined not to see inside. The only way to go in was on a tour and the tours were only in French and took over an hour. We decided to take a pass this time and settled for just walking around the buildings, down into a leafy glade behind the main buildings. This is an abbey that takes in people who want to join the community for a short stay as a retreat. We saw one woman in a courtyard smoking and assume she was one of the visitors.

When we drove back to Gordes, there was a large group of cyclists ahead of us – and behind. They tend to spread out and slow you down. Then you get people coming the other direction on the road and have to wait for them to get by and the cyclists pull ahead again. Karen was getting quite upset, squeaking and gulping.

Back on the Gordes road, we came to the photo op I had noticed when we were first coming up and pulled down a side road and piled out to take pictures. Then we proceeded back mostly along the same route to Fontaine du Vaucluse, the site of the mysterious source of the Sorgue river, which runs through Ile sur la Sorgue.

The village is obviously very popular with locals as a beauty spot and this was a Sunday. On our first approach, we couldn’t get into it because the road was barré, seemingly simply as a way to control the flow of people into the village. We went a long way around along beside the Sorgue, which looks here much as it does in Ile-sur-la-Sorgue – brilliantly clear, shallow, fast-running over a mossy green bottom. We saw kayakers and places where they did kayak trips.

Fontaine du Vaucluse

We crossed the Sorgue about 2 kilometers up river from the village and came back to a parking lot on the edge of town that left us with a ten minute walk into the centre of the village. It’s very pretty, but was crawling with tourists this day, mostly locals, and crammed with kitschy tourist shops and stalls. The village centre with an old bridge over the river and a leafy area of cafes is very pretty but reminded us of a fair midway.

The idea is to walk back along the river to the source, which some days is bubbling with new water. The route is mostly lined with trashy tourist stalls selling all manner of junk. We walked along through the crowds and worked our way up to the source. People were sitting and standing on the rocks overlooking a half-covered grotto with a stagnant pool. There really wasn’t much to see, though without the throngs of people it might have been a pleasant spot with the rocky beginnings of the river and the hills climbing sharply away above.

Fontaine du Vaucluse - the source

The source of the Sorgue has been something of a mystery. Where does the river actually start underground. Jacques Cousteau has taken a crack at it, and somebody else (I think – or maybe it was Jacques) went down to an unbelievable depth (800 feet possibly) looking for the actual starting point. All this of course was invisible to us. All we could see was a big tourist trap. We walked back out and bought homemade-looking ice cream that wasn’t particularly good.

Fontaine du Vaucluse

Then we unparked the car and drove back to the house via Ile-sur-la-Sorgue and our lavendar field, which was showing much more purple today. We stopped and I took more pictures, as did Shelley. Back at the house, the others hung around the pool and Karen and I puttered around the house. I can’t remember what we did for dinner – a kind of clean out the fridge night, I think.

May 17

Monday. This was Dennis’s birthday eve and the day we had agreed to take him to Les Florets, the absurdly expensive restaurant with the lovely terrace in Gigondas that we had checked out earlier in the week. Five of us, Karen and I, the McCanns and Shelly Rowe, decided to drive up to Mount Ventoux before lunch. You can drive right up to the peak which is 1900 meters and by far the highest elevation in the Rhone Valley. Only the Alps are higher.

We set out fairly early, retracing much of the route we had followed earlier in the week through Vaison la Romaine, Le Barrou, Beaume de Venise, etc. The road up starts in Vacqueryas. Actually, I need to check this on a map. In any case, we drove up a splendid switch-back road – very wide with a good surface – through mostly coniferous forests (once an important source of timber for shipbuilding). We passed more than a few cyclists struggling up the road. Brian says he remembers that the Tour de France has at least once included a leg up Ventoux and back down.

The views out over the Rhone Valley are spectacular going up, and even more spectacular at the top. There are a few tourist facilities, plus an impressively massive building that houses scientific and communications equipment apparently. We walked from one look-out spot to another. The temperature had dropped about 10 degrees from the foot of the mountain. It was sunny and the sky was blue, but there was a fair amount of haze that reduced visibility a little. I particularly liked the views across to other hills or mountains, with the hazy outlines of the hills merging into the sky.

Mont Ventoux - view from the top

Mont Ventoux

Mont Ventoux - view from the top

At the top, there are no trees, just shale, and a very little dirty snow. From down below, the shale looks like snow sometimes. Other times when there is no sun, it doesn’t. The cloud shadows playing on the rock face at the summit were very impressive.

While we were up there, a tandem bike ridden by a 30-something couple reached the top and the TV camera crews we had noticed setting up rushed out to film and interview them. They were British, wearing jerseys promoting some appeal for which they were apparently raising money by doing this ride up Ventoux. We loitered around listening to the interviews, trying to figure out what was going on. The woman was an ageing gamin with short blond hair. When interviewed on camera, she appeared very confident and well-spoken. She had obviously done interviews before. I wondered if she was some kind of celebrity.

(I couldn't find the information about her again, but after we came home, I did a search and found her. She was a British TV presenter who had overcome cancer and was raising funds for cancer research. I think.)

Mont Ventoux - British cyclists interviewed after ride up mountain

A little after 11:30, we started back down – the same route, though there is another longer route down the other side that we didn’t have time for – and made it to Les Florets a little after the appointed time of 12:30. Dennis, Gail and Shelley had just arrived. The setting is lovely – a leafy terrace, flowers, the salmon stucco walls of the restaurant-hotel – and the service was very attentive.

Most of us ordered a 23€, three-course menu. Mine included a very lovely vegetable terrine with I can’t remember what – much too subtle for my crude tastes. The main was chicken fermier in a bouillabaisse with veg and potatoes, which I thought was mediocre in the extreme. The parts of the chicken were mostly devoid of meat and some were not readily recognizable. I suspect the restaurant gave us the worst bits, realizing we were the poseurs we in fact were.

Les Florets

The dessert was a delicious strawberry cream cake for Dennis’s birthday. He seemed quite happy with the celebration and cheerful. The wine, all good, but doubtless way over-priced, flowed freely – Shelley insisted on buying two bottles of a lovely champagne to start. Andrea and Shelly – natch – were the DDs.

Les Florets

Les Florets - some alcohol having been consumed

After lunch, which lasted until well past 3:30, we headed back to the house for packing, pooling and, much later, a scratch meal of appetizers. Karen and I went to bed at about 11. The others stayed up drinking until well after 12 – to toast Dennis’s birthday.

May 18

Tuesday. Everybody, even the late-night revellers, was up in good time, showered, breakfasted and packed in plenty of time to get away at 10. The Shelley, Shelly, Gail and Dennis car headed out about twenty to – they had a six hour drive to Paris. We and the McCanns waited until almost ten when the cleaner came. We left the keys with her and took off.

The plan was to drive to Pont du Gard – just off the A9, about 30 minutes south of Orange – and then on to Carcassonne via the toll roads. We got to Pont du Gard in good time but were repulsed when we tried the Rive Gauche side. The way was blocked by a big new parking lot and tourism complex. We went around the other side and, alas, found much the same thing.

Fifteen years ago we just drove up, parked the car, got out and picnicked on the river bank, then clambered all over the pont, including over the top where the water used to flow, which is now inaccessible. Caitlin waded into the shallows of the river. There were topless German fräuleins down the beach and French soldier boys ogling them. Today there are signs forbidding “naturism,” modernist pavilions with tourist information, concrete ramps up to the bridge part of the pont – over which you used to be able to drive – and pay parking.

We remember it as a somewhat wild and remote spot, with the steep rocky banks of the Gardon and the countryside around about. Though it was probably never as wild as we remember – the nearest town is only a few kilometers away – it was certainly much more bucolic than the touristified place it is now.

For all that, it is still an impressive sight. It’s just so massive and so old, and the engineering required to bring water so far – from somewhere north of Nimes – is mind boggling. The viaduct gets very gradually lower as it snakes south so the water flows downhill.

Pont du Garde

We paid 5€ for parking and walked up to it. We went down by the water first, but it seemed to be much lower than it was last time – though since then the banks apparently flooded badly. We climbed up to near where I went out on the top level 15 years ago, then went down and walked across the bridge part and looked at the initials and legends carved in the rock – some dating from the 1700s. While we stood watching the river, a couple in a two-seater kayak came drifting down the river far below us.

After spending a little over an hour at the Pont, we drove into the nearby town and found a grocery store just in time to buy some picnic makings before everything closed up for lunch. Then we got back on the autoroute and stopped at the first aire to eat. The rest of the drive was easy. We phoned Toni Gren from the aire and left a message, then had a call from her as we were driving near Narbonne. It turned out she was some distance from Carcassonne and wouldn’t be able to meet us until after 4:30. We arranged to meet at a bar on Place Carnot – the main square on which our apartment looks.

We had to park on the inner ring road around the Bastide St. Louis (the second oldest part of the town, where our apartment is located) because the route our landlady described was barricaded to make a pedestrian shopping area in the centre. We walked down to the square and sat out at the Bar Felix for over an hour before Toni showed up.

I predicted, based on her voice on the phone, that she would be a robust, competent woman, and that’s exactly what she was – about 40, short, a bit plump, very friendly, but also businesslike. She'd had a long day. She showed us the apartment, handed us keys and was gone inside 20 minutes. That was perfectly okay, though.

The apartment is up a dingy, not very promising, flight of stairs off a small street just behind the Place Carnot. Brian was already suggesting that we could go somewhere else if we didn’t like the place. But the apartment is great once you’re inside.

Place Carnot and Bar Felix from apartment window

The living room which is bigger than ours and has two blue fake suede sofa beds and a couple of ornate French chairs, a coffee table, nesting set of marble tables and bookshelf, and the recently renovated kitchen-eating area give on the square, with big shuttered windows. The toilet and two bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms are up a few stairs. The bedrooms are small but manageable. The kitchen is not as well set-up as the one at Bello Vista, but has everything we need.

We got settled in, went out and bought some groceries and wine and then headed out to dinner on the street near the train station, an area that was recommended in one of the books Karen had consulted.

It didn’t look very promising at first, but we ended up having a very decent meal at a brasserie on the corner - 12€ I think it was, for three courses: a serve-yourself salad bar that was quite varied and fresh, a choice of three mains and serve-yourself dessert bar, which was also surprisingly good. I had an excellent cassoulet with duck leg, sausage and very tasty white beans and a crème brulé, which of course paled in comparison to the one we had in Vaison. Can’t remember what the others had.

And so home to bed. The next day’s plan was easy – explore The Cité, the old fortified medieval town that appears, Disney-like, on the town's southern skyline.

May 19

Wednesday. We took our time this morning. There was only one thing on the agenda: La Cité. Oh, and grocery shopping. And maybe sitting in the square drinking a beer.

Brian and Andrea went off to the Internet café to get their pictures put on a CD, while Karen and I, leaving a little later, walked up to where the car was parked on the inner ring road and moved it over to the free Salle du Dome lot. We were to meet at the Cité end of the Pont Vieux at 11. Karen and I got there early and walked up into the shopping area just below the Cité where there are supposed to be some nice galleries, but almost everything, and certainly anything of interest, was closed – as it has been in that area ever since.

We walked around the streets, by the St. Grimer church and then down to a little park by the river, but by then it was almost time to meet the McCanns so we didn’t stop long. They actually didn’t turn up until about 11:15. Brian was in a bad way with his eye. A bug had flown into it the day before, can’t remember where. He thinks it may have bitten him on the eyelid while it was in there. He’s also been thinking he’s having allergic reactions, even before the bug incident. His eyes were streaming and stinging so badly on the walk over to the Cité that Andrea had to lead him. We went into a pharmacy near the bridge and bought him some eye drops and antihistamine.

We walked half way around the outer walls to the main gate of the Cité, to where all the bus tours arrive. Critics have said the place is too Disneyfied, and it’s easy to see what they mean. It’s mostly the conical roofs on the towers – they look fake, which some historians say they are. Then the street in from the main gate is jam-packed with tourist shops, restaurants and snack bars, as is most of the site come to that.

La Cité Médiévale

It’s still impressive, though. We tried to walk down narrow streets not lined with shops, but always came back to the shops, ending up near the old Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus. We thought to go in, but it was closed. We had an ice cream nearby and then walked around part of the outer wall.

The Count’s Castle – the Chateau du Comte – which we had been saving, became the next item on our itinerary. We got very confused about the tickets required. The signs talked about an entrée libre, which we assumed meant it was free, but it turned out it was really only free of a guide, and cost €6 apiece. For that we got entry into the Barbican, the semi-circular walled area in front of the main gate, the main courtyard and a museum. We were again confused because the map they gave us showed access from the courtyard to the ramparts, when in fact it was a you-can’t-get-there-from-here situation.

Some of the exhibits in the first part of the museum, especially a room with partly restored wall paintings from the 12th century and others with statuary from around the Cité and the city, were quite good, some were kind of boring. Beyond the bookstore, which we thought marked the end of the tour, there was an excellent exhibit explaining how the much criticized restoration work was done under the supervision of the architect Armand Viollet-le-duc. Included were many of his fabulous water colours of the Cité in various stages of restorations. I went back to bookstore to see if they had any poster reproductions of these paintings, or even a book with reproductions, but they didn’t.

At this point – it was almost 2 – we started thinking about lunch. We hunted around for a nice, cheap place to eat in La Cité, but in the end gave up and walked back to the apartment to eat. After lunch we went shopping at a nearby Monoprix and sat out in the Place for a drink.

Drinks at Bar Felix - what are they looking at?

Place Carnot

Karen and Andrea went off and found a butcher and that evening made a lovely meal of pork chops using the convection oven function in the microwave. (It also, we discovered, has a grill function – a neat little package.) We also did some planning for the next day – a tour south of Carcassonne into the Corbières mountains. And so to bed.

May 20

Thursday. This was our day for a driving tour. Another sunny warm day.

We drove out of the city south toward Limoux and turned off into the hills and worked our way to St-Hilaire, a little village with an old abbey. It wasn’t open because of a special mass but we walked around the cloister and up into the village before getting back into the car.

Ste. Hilaire Abbey

The town was all dug up and there was a deviation that forced us off our planned route and down through St. Polycarpe – which we were supposed to hit later in the trip – and so up to Limoux.

Limoux is a river town, also known for its central square with two arcaded sides. We sat out in a café for a drink so we could use the toilets and watched the people, families out for the holiday after church – it was a half-day holiday for Ascension Day. We wandered around the old centre – which isn’t terribly interesting, aside from the square – and then went back to the car and got our picnic lunch.

We took it down by the river, which earlier had been crowded with people coming out of church and getting into their cars after what appeared to be a first communion – little girls in pretty dresses – and sat on park benches in the shade. Cheese, ham, bread for those as eat it, peanuts, rice crisps for me and an apple, coke.

The next part of the drive took us through quite mountainous territory on the way from Polycarpe to Lagrasse, our ultimate destination. Lovely scenery, twisty-turny roads through mostly coniferous forests, great view points. Karen was okay with it despite her usual penchant for motion sickness on switch-backs in the sun.

The so-called Chateau de Termes, actually a ruined castle, was not on the original agenda, but something that sounded really interesting and was not far off the route, so we decided to give it a try. This was the castle of the Termes family, medieval lords of the Termenes area of the Corbières to which they gave their name. They tolerated the Cathars – had Cathars among their number in fact – and resisted the first Albigensian crusade like other Occitan lords.

It’s an incredible place on an impossibly high prominence above a more recent village. We think we saw it early on in our climb up the mountains, but way off in the distance. It was besieged by Simon de Montfort in the early 1200s and pummeled with rocks from catapults down below. It eventually fell, many Cathar perfects were burnt and Raymond de Termes was imprisoned in Carcassonne where he eventually died. The castle survived into the 1600s then was destroyed by royal order to prevent brigands from using it as a base of operations.

Chateau du Termes - the village where we got stuck

We turned off the main route to get to it, though there was a sign saying the road was barré. However, another hand-written sign said the Chateau was open and accessible. When we got to the village, the only passage – because the main route was barré – was down incredibly narrow medieval streets. At one point Brian drove the car with inches to spare on either side between the corners of two adjacent buildings, only to be confronted with another pair of buildings ahead that we would have to squeeze through to continue.

Andrea and I were outside the car giving the poor guy conflicting instructions, Karen was inside with her hands over her face. With the car half way through the first set of houses, the neighbours came piling out of their houses, laughing and gabbling directions in French on where to go.

It turned out there was a turning before the passage we were now stuck in that would take us back to the main route and to a place where we could park. Brian had to back out of the tight spot we’d directed him into and make a very tight right turn. Once we got out of that street, though, everything was easy.

Chateau du Termes

The Chateau cost a few Euros to get into and the bathroom didn’t work, which disappointed Andrea in particular. The price included an English language backgrounder and guide and a small museum with French-only labels. The walk up, with the ruins looming above, was steep and hot in the mid-day sun, fierce despite – or perhaps because of – being high up in the mountains. There were donkeys and a horse in pastures at the base of the final ascent to the ruins.

Chateau du Termes

We marveled at how they could have built the thing in this place, and why – well, obviously because it was, or was thought to be, impregnable, and because in those days (the 1100s or earlier), you always had to be thinking about defending yourself from neighbours, foreigners, brigands. We clambered around the ruins, trying to identify the various remnants – the thing was actually blown up on royal orders in the 1600s – and looked out over the views of distant peaks, nearer slopes with vineyards and the village of Termes below.

Then we went down again and continued on our way to Lagrasse.

Lagrasse has been designated by some bureaucratic arbiter as “one of the most beautiful villages in France.” The first thing you see coming in on the highway is the Abbey, hunkered down, like Senanque, in low country, with farm land around it and a steep hill behind. A small river runs past it, and the well-preserved medieval village, out of sight, when you first enter the town, is across the river from the abbey.

Karen and Brian and Andrea stopped right on the main entry road at a café to have a drink and use the toilets. I walked ahead to take pictures, thinking the abbey must be just around the first corner. It wasn’t. It was a five or ten minute walk through the old village with its narrow streets of shops, homes, restaurants and ateliers and through the covered market in the main square. Out the other side I came upon the Abbey, with the river burbling past it. I took some pictures, though the vantage point and light were not great and then went back and joined the others.

After finishing the not very good local white table wine back at the café, we were driven out by a child at the next table blowing on a very shrill and nasty sounding whistle. What were the parents thinking? We walked into the local vignoble information place and store and bought some delicious nut nougat, a local specialty. Then we went back the route I had taken. Some of the ateliers and side streets looked interesting, but it was late and we wanted, if possible, to see inside the abbey.

The only way over to it this day was a foot bridge across some rapids. The 800-year-old hump-backed stone bridge from a village street across to the abbey was covered with scaffolding and blocked. We walked around to the entrance and arrived exactly 15 minutes after the last entry. This was our day of not being able to get into abbeys.

We walked all around it and peered in through gates and over walls, but there isn’t a lot to see. Some of it looked as if it was out of use. The main tower of the church also looked to be in ruins, but the place was clearly still in use. In fact, while we were loitering around the back of the abbey in the late afternoon sun, a group of monks, presumably Benedictine, in white habits came strolling along the dirt road. One was wearing a beret, another a skullcap. When we came on them later in our walk, I noticed that their habits were very grimy around the bottom and the younger men were wearing hiking boots.

Lagrasse Abbey

We went back through the village, but didn’t stop at any of the shops or galleries. We drove directly back to Carcassonne and ate at the little restaurant behind our apartment on Rue D’Aigle D’Or. The young waiter spoke very good English and was very patient. It was a lovely mild night and we enjoyed the setting. We all had cassoulet. I didn’t think it was as good as the one I’d had at the cheaper and much less pretentious Brasserie of our first night, but it was certainly more filling with two small pieces of roast pork added to the sausage and duck leg.

Also, we ended up spending more than we intended. We wanted the three-course €15 menu. The way our waiter explained it, it sounded as if we could have cassoulet, which was actually from the €23 menu, with a starter from the €15, and pay €15. We should have known that wasn’t on. When the bill came, we had been charged for the €23 menu. Live and learn. And so to bed.

May 21

Friday. Karen and I got up early and were out of the apartment before 8:30. This was our day for driving to Montpellier to meet Ralph and Gerrie. The drive down was an easy hour and a half. We listened to the first of the two-CD set I bought of the CBC Ideas programs on the Cathars. The main quoted source, predictably, was Stephen O’Shea, the Canadian guy who wrote The Perfect Heresy, etc., which I found unreadable because of his garbled chronology, purple prose and constant attempts to over-sensationalize an already sensational enough story. There were many other voices, though, and O’Shea wasn’t anywhere near as irritating speaking as he is writing.

We were to meet at 10 at the main Tourist Information Centre. We drove in to the city and followed the signs, but the first TIC we came on was obviously a satellite. The woman there told us where to find the main one, which is near the Place de la Comedie, the main square, which they call L’Oeuf, the egg. It was only a 15-minute walk away, she said, which it may have been, but it took all of that to drive because of holiday shopping-day traffic and a line-up to get into the parking garage of the garishly modern Polygone shopping centre – a perfect reproduction of a North American Mall with even some of the same chain stores, including the Gap – at one end of L’Oeuf.

We arrived at our meeting point at 10:20 and found Ralph out front of the TIC watching for us. Gerrie was off shopping of course, but appeared a few minutes later. Ralph is well, but Gerrie had bronchitis and had spent the previous day in their apartment, though she claimed to be better today and was certainly in good spirits. She looked pale, though, and occasionally coughed scarily. She says she had a similar illness on another recent trip. Travel is stressful.

The square is marvelous. Huge and possibly vaguely egg-shaped (though more rectangular I would have said), with gorgeous white marble 18th century buildings all around, the ground floors mostly restaurants and shops now. At one end is the Polygone monstrosity, at the other is a lovely mossy fountain and the graceful and imposing Opera building. Along one side, there are tram tracks that bring shoppers in from the burbs to the square and to Polygone in bright blue, very modern-looking street cars. Off the other side of the square is the Champs du Mars park – typically French, Paris-like with tree-lined walks, and on this day, a craft fair.

All the streets irradiating from the Opera end of the square are pedestrianized, making a shopper’s paradise. This is the oldest part of the town, so you get some fairly broad walks with medieval and later-era mansions – gorgeous buildings – and then narrower streets and alleys lined with little boutiques on the ground floors. Gerrie was in heaven.

The first order of business, though, was a drink at a café on L’Oeuf. We heard about the Lutes’s apartment in Uzes, which is very nice apparently but in a building undergoing extensive renovations. They had been offered another property at a higher price but were inclined to stick with what they had, suffer the noise and try and get a break on the price. I don’t think they’ll ever get any money back.

Montpellier - unidentified church

Montpellier - main shopping street

Montpellier - dog watching shoppers pass by

Montpellier - Gerrie in shop-till-I-drop mode

Montpellier - L'Oeuf and Opera House

Next on the agenda was to find an English bookstore Gerrie had heard about, to buy a guide book about the Languedoc region – they are staying in Uzes, which is not, as we had thought, in Provence, but in Languedoc. This would also give us information about stuff to do in Montpellier. The walk to the bookstore took us fairly deep into the old medieval quarter, thronged with shoppers this holiday weekend.

Gerrie was insisting that Ralph and I should buy peddle-pushers like the ones a lot of the men are wearing over here and only the very young are wearing at home. She would march into skater shops and take pairs out and hold them up to see if they would fit Ralph. He just stood back smiling amiably or wincing. I don’t think he thought she was serious. I actually quite like them and might even wear them. Maybe. He never would. After awhile, when that became clear, she started saying, “Well, I guess I’ll just buy two pair for myself.” I don’t think that psychology works with Ralph.

We found a place to eat outdoors. Karen and I ordered tomato and mozzarella salad and entrecote. Gerrie ordered some carpaccio of fish. When she tasted it she said, with a smile, “You know what, Ger. This is awful.” We thought she was kidding, because she was smiling, but she said it was one of the worst menu decisions she’d ever made. Funny thing, though, she ate every scrap. Our salads were okay – the tomato in mine was woody, but the basil dressing was nice. The entrecotes, as always – or almost always – were properly cooked but not terribly good meat.

After lunch, by which time it had become overcast and was quite chilly, I went and got jackets for Karen and I from our car. Then we headed for the Musée Fabri which is off the Champs du Mars. The tourist map we got from the TIC said it was closed for renovations, but we hoped the information was out of date. It wasn’t. The museum, which sounds fabulous, with lots of early 20th century masters, is actually closed until 2006. This is our trip for not being able to get in to see things.

Montpellier - Champs du Mars park

We wandered over to the little museum Pavilion on the other side of the park, which is used for special exhibits. The one on this day was a contemporary German artist who, based on the posters, wasn’t that appealing.

We went next door to another little building, however, and there was a fabulous exhibit of colour photographs by a photographer I had vaguely heard of but can’t now remember - shameful. Both names start with A, I think. German. They were all taken in Morocco and included scenes of religious ceremonies, people in their homes and even a wedding. We couldn’t understand how he got into these places and was allowed to shoot. The colours are rich and vibrant, the detail incredible – something painterly about them.

With the museum, the city’s main attraction, not available, there wasn’t really much else to do except walk around and look at a few churches, and the mansions in the shopping district, which of course also house the shops. It’s a beautiful city, but we just didn’t seem to have the will to sight see today, especially with Gerrie constantly pulling us into shops or up to shop windows.

We frittered the rest of the afternoon in this manner and then sat down for a drink a little before 4 in a square on the Avenue de Loge, the main shopping street. There was a statue in it of Jean Jaures, who has streets and squares named after him all across southern France it seems. I had been thinking for days that I really ought to know who the fellow was. The book Gerrie and Ralph bought, The Rough Guide to Languedoc, had a page on him. He was a 19th century socialist politician and labour leader – mystery solved.

As we sat there, a rough-looking, tattooed fellow came along with a torch and a water bottle full of kerosene or something and after bowing to the tables, lit the torch and began drinking the liquid and blowing fire out of his mouth. It was impressively stupid, but not particularly interesting. After he was finished, he walked around to collect money. I can’t imagine he got much. He didn’t even try our table.

By now it was after four and we decided to get back on the road as we had told the McCanns we'd be back by 6:30 or so. When we got back, we found they had been shopping and had dinner all but prepared – roast chicken, green beans, salad and little potatoes. We didn’t have to do anything but eat and, of course, drink.

March 22

Saturday. We got away after 10 and drove the car from D’Aigle D’Or down by the train station and walked over to the bike rental place. This was the place that Brian and Andrea had checked out the day we were in Montpellier. The fellow who was there that day was apparently very unfriendly and a little shifty. Brian was inclined to forget the whole thing. But we figured out that this was pretty much the only game in town – if we wanted to rent bikes, this was the place to rent them.

As it turned out, there was a different guy there. Brian says he looked similar enough to the other guy to be his brother. He was no great friend to the Anglo tourist, though he did speak a little English. At first, he said there were no girl’s bikes. We said that was okay, the girls could use men’s bikes. In the end, he went away and found one girl’s bike for Karen – I think he was thinking that she was too short to use a man’s bike.

The bikes were not great, but they were adequate. The brakes worked, the gears, for the most part, worked. The tires were full of air, they had fenders. The price was €8 apiece, but I had to sign a contract and give my credit card as a security deposit.

The bike rental guy suggested riding to Trèbes, about 13 km away along the canal. We could eat there or have a drink, he said. Although we had pretty much decided against that route the night before, when we got the bikes out to the canal, we decided that’s the way we’d go after all. Brian complained mildly of his seat being set at the wrong angle, tilted back, but we didn’t think much of it then.

We set out and rode down the canal trail, past the odd fisherman – they had big long poles, sometimes more than one, propped up on the bank – and the odd moored houseboat. The occasional boat came towards us along the canal. The scenery, once we got going, was fairly boring as we couldn’t see much beyond the canal. From time to time, we came to locks or bridges with side roads into the countryside, but it was mostly a level ride along fine gravel paths with the canal on the left and trees of one kind or another on the right.

After about an hour and a half, we came to a pretty stone bridge and could see Trèbes off to the right. At this point, Brian tried to adjust his seat and the whole seat assembly came apart. We had a little difficulty getting it back together and could only tighten the nut by hand. We followed a narrow little country road from the bridge through vineyards into the village, up narrow quiet streets and into the centre of town.

Brian and I left Karen and Andrea at a little café and went back around to a boat and bicycle rental place we could see across the river – it was the river here – to see if they could fix his bike seat. When we rode into the garage/boat house, I told the guy, “Nous avons une probleme avec – je ne sais pas le mot en francais – mais la chaise du velo.” Brian, ever the pragmatist, wiggled the seat and pointed up under the seat where the loose bolt was. The guy smiled and said, “Ce n’est pas une probleme.” He had it fixed and even tighted another bolt within about 30 seconds.

When we went back around to the café, Karen and Andrea weren’t there. They’d gone into a degustation next door because the restaurant, it turned out, was closed. We walked our bikes up into the High Street and found a little bar with a few tables on the sidewalk. It was a rugby bar that also appeared to be a booky. Brian saw people going inside and apparently placing bets with a young woman sitting at the end of the bar. We wondered if it was illegal betting, but later decided that it couldn’t be. We sat in the sun for 30 minutes with our cokes and coffees and then started back for Carcassonne.

Canal du Midi

Before we left the village, we got separated form Brian and Andrea. They went back the way we had come. Karen and I ended up going out another route and picking up the canal trail further along than we had left it when we came into Trèbes. So she and I rode down to the stone bridge. While Karen waited, I rode back into town. I found Andrea waiting at a corner. Brian had ridden back into the village to find us. I went looking for him but ended up back where Andrea was a few minutes later, where he had returned.

At the bridge, Brian and I switched bikes. Although the guy at the boat house had made it slightly better, it was still awful. I felt badly that Brian had ridden it all that way. It was hard riding back, mostly on my back and neck, because I had to sit far back to avoid crushing my privates but then lean forward to reach the handlebars. Karen was getting pretty uncomfortable as well, but we made it back by about 1:30 – a half hour before the bikes were due back.

The guy was closed for lunch of course, so we went up the street to a café and drank a beer then took the bikes back. I complained mildly about the seat on the one bike, but he didn’t seem in the least concerned about it.

We had a late lunch back at the apartment and then split up for the afternoon. Andrea and Brian went to the art gallery. Karen and I walked around to St. Michel’s Cathedral, where we inadvertently crashed a wedding. We saw them gathering outside, but assumed they were just finished. After we had been inside a few minutes, the organ started up and in came the bridal procession.

It was a very casual affair with an overweight bride in a white dress that she was falling out of. She was being processed up the aisle by a guy who may have been her father – grizzled beard, long greasy hair in a pony tail, open necked shirt and no jacket. We didn’t notice the groom, but most of the guests were also casually dressed. Three young boys preceded the bride up the aisle strewing fake flower petals. The priest, an elderly Benedictine (white robes?), seemed utterly bored with the whole thing.

We walked on to the little Notre Dame chapel at the foot of the Pont Vieux and then went across to La Cité to the Cathedral of Ss. Nazaire and Celes(?). It is a beautiful church. As Brian and Andrea had said, the stained glass is stunning. I took pictures using the tripod. We walked back to Quai Belvue and picked up the car from where we had left it before the bike ride and drove it back to the apartment – or tried to: it was blocked. After 25 minutes of fruitless searching for a route into D’Aigle D’Or, we beached it on a street near the ring road and walked in.

That evening, we had a second meal of pork chops, this time pan fried in a wine sauce – very nice. Brian and I walked up and moved the car back down to D’Aigle D’Or. And so to bed early.

Not sure exactly when I took these shots of the Cité at night

Cité at night

May 23

Sunday. After a long confabulation the previous night, we had decided on a drive through the Black Mountains of the Minervois area to Minerve – weather permitting. When we got up, the sky was blue and the sun was hot before 9. After a quick shop and coffee on the square for the McCanns, we walked over to Quai Belvue where we’d left the car and set out, with me driving.

The route took us first through Minervois wine country across the plain between the Corbières and Black Mountains, to the first stop, Caunes-Minervois. We piled out of the car and poked around in its Medieval streets and saw the Abbey – from the outside only of course, that being our way. Then it was back on the road and up into the Black Mountains.

Caunes-Minervois

The road was good, a little wider perhaps than the ones through the Corbières. The scenery was different – not as many dramatic vistas, at least at first. This is fruit growing country, with tiny orchards squeezed into the clefts between hills. As we climbed, there were lots of deciduous tree-lined stretches with dappled shade. We stopped above Lespinassiere to take pictures down at the village. Then stopped again a little further on to walk down to a little memorial to two French resistance fighters “assassiné” by the Germans in 1944. Brian’s father had fought through France, but he realized that it couldn’t have been anywhere near here.

Lespinassiere - I think

The Roc Souzadou is a rocky prominence that gives views out over the coniferous forests and some highland pastures. We were at 720 meters now, higher than the high spots in the Corbières and we would go higher yet. The air was very cool and fresh – we had to put sweaters on – but the sky was still perfectly blue.

Roc Souzadou

Not much further on, we started down and came into a high valley, surprisingly flat, with a few farms and horses, but not much sign of obvious economic activity. We’ve been constantly amazed at how good the roads are in these remote spots given the sparse population and marginal economic activity. We stopped in one little village to buy cherries and in another to buy a baguette.

We kept going down and came eventually into the garrigue (heath) area around the canyon of the Cesse river which flows into Minerve. It’s wild country, with low shrubs and wild flowers, thistles. When we stopped to view the canyon, Karen immediately found wild Thyme which smelled lovely. The canyon is a deep rocky cleft with no visible river at the bottom – or not at this point, where it goes underground except in winter storms. A huge hydro line passing overhead was buzzing eerily.

Minerve - the gorge

Minerve - village from the other side

We continued on the last short way to Minerve, which is a beauty, clinging to the side of the canyon across two natural rock bridges (where the river goes underground briefly). You have to park outside the village and walk across a deep stone-built bridge. This was another of the Cathar strongholds, taken again by brute force. Perched on the opposite side of the canyon is a reproduction of the Mal Voisine (Bad Neighbour) catapult used to hurl rocks at the village’s defenses.

We walked into the village with our picnic stuff and after a brief stop at a café (to pee), we went right down to the canyon floor below the village – it’s a long way down – where the river burbles over rocks. We sat in the shade of the canyon wall by the water on stones and ate our lunch, then explored the bottom of the gorge a little before climbing back up into the village.

Minerve

There is not much to see – to get into the church, you need to pre-arrange a guided tour – but it’s a pretty place to walk around, with views over the gorge on three sides and a dramatic remnant of the defenses on the fourth side. It certainly would have been an easy place to defend – unless you came up against someone as determined and ruthless as Simon de Montfort, of course.

Minerve - coming back up from the gorge

We stopped into the village branch of a small caveau, where a very charming old fellow invited us to taste his Minervois wine from a domaine a few kilometers outside the village – Les Trois Blasons (the three crests). It was not terribly distinguished wine, I don’t suppose, but one or more of us liked all three of the vin de pays – red, white, rose. He was quite anxious for us to try the Muscat, which I did. It’s very sweet and almost sticky, but not unpleasant. Nobody liked it well enough to buy, however.

The drive back to Carcassonne took us down out of the mountains very quickly and along good roads through wine growing country, along the canal and through Trèbes, which turned out to be a much larger town than it had looked when we were there on bikes. It took less than an hour to get home, where it had taken over two with stops to get up.

We puttered and spent some time on the square, drank wine, ate peanuts and then went out late to eat at Vietnamese place Brian and Andrea had noticed on one of their walks. It didn’t look very appetizing, so we walked on and stumbled on a Thai restaurant just on the other side of the ring road near the Dome. It was a cute little place with an 11.50 prix fix menu. It smelled strongly of camphor or something, but it served very nicely. We had egg rolls and vermicelli soup for starters and three different meat, including my caramel pork – very sweet. Then “nougat” for desert, which was hard not soft and encrusted with sesame seeds – more like peanut brittle.

Carcassonne - Place Carnot

May 24

Monday. Brian and Andrea wanted a down day. I thought of driving somewhere with Karen, perhaps Albi or Toulouse, but in the end decided a down day wouldn’t be such a bad thing. We took our time getting going, then went for a long walk along the river Aude. We drove to Quai Belvue and started from there. Brian initially thought it was a 2.5 km walk, but it turned out to be a 7 km walk, which was probably a better length. It took us about two hours.

The route followed the river out of town to the west, mostly right beside the river. We came to a bridge just outside of the city where earlier in the week we had seen a traffic jam and large crowds on the holiday. We speculated whether it might be a bull fight. It turned out to be a soccer pitch and recreation complex. The route back was more interesting. It went by the vineyards where the Carcassonne city wine we’ve been drinking is grown.

At one point we inadvertently went off the path and found ourselves at a field where they were planting new vines. They had the dirt piled up in long piles and covered with what looked like green garbage bag plastic. The workers were sticking red shoots – they just looked like sticks – through the plastic into the dirt. It was a very bucolic setting, except for the supervisor standing at the end of the row talking on his mobile phone.

Walk near Carcassonne - dealing with Andrea's allergies

Walk near Carcassonne

We also went past a very nice looking campground with camping spots that were grassy and shaded with little hedges to mark off the boundaries – a far cry from the Pinery. The route brought us back to the Cité side of the Pont Vieux. We were fairly tired and hungry by this time so we walked up to the pedestrian street with the gate and the carousel and walked down into the Bastide to a little sidewalk restaurant there. There was a fellow sitting at one table with his head back in the sun apparently asleep. He stayed that way for over a half hour.

Karen and I and I think Andrea all had cassoulet – quite a good one, more like the one I had the first night – and Brian had daube, a beef stew in tomato and olive sauce with great big chunks of beef. He said later it was the meal he’d enjoyed most while we’ve been here. They initially brought the wrong dish and Brian had to wait ten minutes for his. It didn’t matter. It was all so relaxed. We sat and watched people, including soldiers in camouflage fatigues swaggering up the street from the barracks on the other side of the ring road. “That guy was so well camouflaged I almost didn’t see him,” Brian said at one point.

Back at the apartment we puttered and relaxed and went shopping, then sat at the Felix over beer and cigars. I went into the bar and grabbed one of the newspapers on a bamboo stick. The one I picked – more or less at random – was Paris Soir, an incredibly bad paper that was mostly devoted this day to sensationalistic accounts of the collapse of Terminal 2 at the Roissy airport near Paris. I also read accounts of a murder investigation that read more like fiction than reportage.

I traded in Paris Soir for a news magazine and started reading a feature about D-Day – 60th anniversary coming up in June. The difference in the quality and style of the writing was night and day. This was beautifully written and intelligent.

But too much trying to read French makes my brain hurt. The others were reading their novels. I had only brought Jean Markale, Montsegur and the Mystery of the Cathars. (I was evidently obsessed with the Cathars on this trip. The book, as I remember was tough sledding, written in an overblown style that made it sound not very reliable - or maybe it was just badly translated from the French.) So I left them to it and went off exploring and photographing, and ended up buying Karen’s birthday present (a gold chain) – from a bijouterie on Rue Clemenceau.

Brian and I went out at about 6:30 to get the car from Quai Belvue and bring it back to D’Aigle D’Or. I had the phone with me and while we were parking the car, with me out on the street directing Brian, it rang. It was Caitlin. I spoke to her while directing Brian. Then we walked up the street to check out Au Bon Pasteur, a possible dinner restaurant around the corner, all the time talking to Caitlin.

At one point, we were standing looking at the menu and Caitlin was talking about what she’d had to eat the night before – chicken schwarma. I said, “Oh, chicken schwarma.” According to Brian, the two American women who had just walked up to look at the menu turned to each other and one said, “Oh, they have chicken schwarma here!”

There was more drinking of wine at the apartment. We finally went out to dinner at about 8 to Au Bon Pasteur. Everybody was a little giddy with wine. When we walked in the door, there were the chicken schwarma ladies, along with a table of tough-looking, German men with brush cutsd and, next to our table, two late middle-aged couples, apparently lawyers from somewhere in the American south. The rest I think were French.

The restaurant only has about 10 tables, all crammed in. There appeared to be one chef, a harried and sad-faced middle-aged man we could see through the hutch in the kitchen, and one young and very thin waitress who was run off her feet. At one point, after we’d been there for 20 minutes and she hadn’t been near us, she came rushing by and said she’d be back in four minutes. And I think she was, though time was not exactly of the essence this night, so we probably wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been ten minutes.

The food was excellent, though I can’t remember exactly what everybody had. Karen and I had a pork cutlet with cheese and prosciutto on top and delicious ice cream for dessert. We walked around the block a bit but basically went home to bed after the meal.

May 25

Tuesday. Travel day. We were packed and ready to go by 10, but couldn’t reach Toni on her mobile to arrange about the keys, and I couldn’t figure out how to dial her land line from my Blackberry – kept getting a ‘this number is no longer in use’ message. In the end, we left one set of keys on the dining table and took the others with us to lock up. I left her a message saying we’d mail the keys back to her.

When we got out to the highway, with Brian driving, there were signs up about a closure, which we didn’t really read properly. It turned out the ramp to the southbound A61 was closed and after we’d gone through the péage ticket gate, we had no option but to go north, which we did, to the next exchange about seven kilometers up, where we paid, turned around at the first round-about and came back on the highway going the right way. The traffic was diverted on to the other side because they were repaving on the southbound side, but we were able to get through.

It didn’t seem to take very long to get to Perpignan, though I was dozing in the back seat most of the time. I called Louise Roberts (our landlady in Argeles sur Mer where we were going next) from the car at Perpignan and got Franck (her partner), who doesn’t speak much English. The conversation was difficult, but it was clear he had no problem with us coming early to check in. He gave directions, most of which I missed, but the main thing was that he would be watching for us from his place next to what he called Restaurant Les Florets – and only right at the end of the conversation identified by its actual name, The Flowers, in English.

It was enough. We probably came off the motorway at the wrong place but found our way to Argeles easily enough and drove down the very congested main street and spotted The Flowers restaurant, which is at the corner of Rue Victor Hugo, the address of our place, and the main drag. When we pulled in to Victor Hugo, a very narrow street, Franck hailed us from the second floor window of the house he’s renovating to rent out – the one Louise originally wanted us to take.

He came down and opened the garage so we could pull off the street and unload, then showed us around the house, two apartments, one up one down. He’s an amusing guy. Even in French, he was making his jokes clear – picking up the box of wine and scotch and saying, “Ah, c’est pour moi, oui?” Then when I asked about access to the pool, which we could see from the second floor, which he showed us before the first, he made a joke about “plonger directe” from there.

We made lunch and Louise came by while we were eating. She looks younger than she must be – 30 at least, we figure, since at one point she said she’d been here for ten years. She said she’d come back later when we’d finished. It’s clear she and Franck are a couple. She said they were staying in the house Franck is renovating two doors down.

I went and found them there after lunch while the others were cleaning up and getting ready to go to Ceret. They have a huge Rotweiller that they were anxious not to let near me. Louise said it was because he’s very playful and some people are intimidated by him, but I wonder – she also said he was a great guard dog, implying they needed one. They have a house on the beach she had told us earlier.

The new house is lovely, with very high ceilings and old Catalan tile on the floor, which Louise told us later they had uncovered when they went to replace the ugly modern stuff that was on there when they bought the house. We’re intrigued by where they get their money and speculate she comes from money and that she was a rebellious teenager and came here after university to escape England. She talks middle class and is very vivacious and charming.

We paid her the money we still owed her, handed over Karen’s license as a damage deposit and chatted for a while. After she left, we did a little shopping and then headed out for Ceret. This is a city that Picasso and many other early 20th century artists discovered and lived in for varying periods. It’s lovely with steep narrow streets, elegant 18th century houses and a very good Museum of Modern Art which, alas, was mostly closed due to a new traveling show being set up.

What there was there – a Chaim Soutine and some lovely Andre Massons of the village – looked very impressive. There was a huge tractor trailer maneuvering into position to unload at the museum as we left. Later we noticed it was packed with painting-shaped wooden crates – clearly the new exhibit, which we would not see. This really is the trip of not being able to get in to see things.

We followed a self-guided walking tour we’d picked up at the Office de Tourisme. It included historical landmarks, plus sites associated with the painters, including a house Picasso lived in for several years. The Bar Pablo on the main square – where we stopped early for a drink – has some interesting modernist art, though none by the famous past residents. We spent a fair amount of time wandering in and out of squares with Brian and Karen vying with each other as tour guides – neither of them very good or very sure of where we were.

Ceret - at Bar Pablo

Ceret - following the walking tour

We finally headed back to Argeles and barbecued sausage and veg in a foil pouch and had it with salad, along with the usual copious quantities of wine.

May 26

Wednesday. Karen’s birthday. She and I were up at about 7. We had tea and worked on our journals and then went out to buy bread. We found a nice baguette at a boulangerie up in the village where they were setting up for the market. It didn’t look like much of a market – mostly clothing and other flea market-y stuff.

Back at the house, Brian and I made a breakfast of big egg, left-over sausage from the night before and other stuff. We had to cook the egg in two kitchens – on the stove top downstairs, then under the broiler upstairs because there is no broiler down.

The plan today was to have a look at the lay of the land around Argeles and head over to Collioure. Karen had read that we could walk to Collioure from Argeles, but we weren’t certain about this and Brian and Andrea didn’t seem very keen on a long walk. So we all piled into the car and ended up in Collioure about 11. We drove through the centre, which was very touristy and also had a market on, making it even more crowded. We drove up a hill out of town to a parking lot and walked from it on to the cliffs above the sea with an old castle still in use as a military facility on one side and ruins on the other. The path and slopes along it were riotous with wild flowers.

Walk near Collioure

After our cliffside walk we decided to head into town. We ended up down by the Royal Castle near the sea on a street with many cafes. The market was over, so it wasn’t quite so crowded. The place began to feel quite charming. A very good, 1930s-style gypsy jazz band had set up on the street, so we found chairs at a café in the sun nearby and listened to them for 40 minutes.

There were two guitarists, a guy playing a washboard and two very good horn players – a tenor saxophonist and trumpeter, both very stylish and soft sounding, in keeping with the acoustic guitars. It was possibly the best busking band I’ve ever heard, good enough to record I would have thought.

Collioure - buskers

Sitting next to us was a young soldier with his wife or girl friend and their baby in a carriage. While we were sitting there, another impossibly young-looking soldier walked up and greeted him. Together they leaned over the baby and discussed the rash – or possibly birthmark – over her left eye. I just can’t imagine two Canadian soldiers having that kind of encounter or conversation.

There were soldiers – we think possibly reservists – all over the place. They were taking part in some kind of exercise, learning to dive and use kayaks. They were doing it right from an opening at the bottom of the castle across from where we and lots of other tourists were sitting. Still other tourists were lining the bank of the little channel.

By now it was time for lunch so we wandered around to the sea front and found a rather over-priced restaurant. The jazz band had moved around there, so we heard them again for another hour. They were received a little better here – an older, better heeled clientele. Lunch was okay, but way too expensive. I had a huge chevre chaud salad for 10€ or something. The others had similar. Brian had a salad with a medley of seafood, which I don’t think he enjoyed very much.

Collioure - buskers redux

Collioure - buskers getting paid

I wandered over to the sea wall at one point while we were waiting for the frantically busy waiter and watched the military exercises. Other tourists were standing watching as well. The men in the boats were listening to their officer give instructions but also occasionally darting glances over at the audience.

Collioure - sea front

After lunch we got a little brochure from the Office de Tourisme with a tour that followed the steps of the Fauvists, Andre Derain and Henri Matisse, who had settled here in the early years of the last century. The city has posted plasticized posters of several works of art by the two around the town at exactly the spots where they had sat to make the pictures. It was kind of an interesting idea, except the reproductions weren’t very good and the brochure was all in French. Worse, it was mostly quotes from the artists in tortuously poetic art-speak.

At some point we stopped following the prescribed route and just wandered the back streets of the town looking for ateliers. We found more than a few, but saw no art that interested us in the least. It was all hacks, some obviously catering to tourists, others that took themselves more seriously but simply did not have much talent. I suspect the real artists, disgusted with the tourist scene, have long departed for towns like Ceret and St. Andre.

Collioure - the old town

We ended up back at the bar where we had first sat down to hear the jazz band. Brian and Andrea showed up shortly after and we sat for a while longer over drinks, then Brian and I went up and got the car and drove down and picked up the ladies in the village. We drove back along the short “corniche.” It had made Andrea queasy on the way in, so she got the front seat this time. We stopped in the middle at a Côtes du Catalanes caveau. The wine was poor, though, and we didn’t buy anything.

Back at the ranch, we sat around the pool for a bit, puttered and eventually dressed for dinner – Karen’s birthday dinner, which we had decided to have at The Flowers, two doors down. First we opened the bottle of Crémante de Limoux, a superior version of the sparkling Blanquette de Limoux that Karen had been drinking in Carcassonne. It was very nice and made us a little giddy. I gave Karen her card and gift, the gold chain I’d bought in Carcassonne.

Pool at our place in Argeles

We went down the street for dinner at about 8. It turned out to be the best meal we’ve had – and we all had the 15€ fixed price menu. Better in my opinion than either Les Florets or the expensive one we went to in Vaison la Romaine, where we paid 23€.

The entrée was a decent salad bar that included pate for those who like it, and a salad with cold crab meat in it. I had filet mignon de porc – beautifully cooked thick slices of pork tenderloin served on a sauce of vegetable puree – with fabulous dauphinoise and mixed grilled vegies. Dessert was tart tatin with great vanilla ice cream. Presentation was very elegant without being poncy or pretentious. The others all had steak, which they said they liked, but it was clearly not as good as my pork.

We were seated in a glassed in area looking out on a patio. We amused ourselves by talking about and speculating on the other diners. There was an English woman who had been ahead of us in the salad bar queue and kept pushing back past us to get things she had forgotten or decided to get more of – she was “the oinker.” She was sitting with two middle-aged fellows that Karen was convinced were brothers because they looked vaguely alike.

Another couple ordered an odd apertif that we had to ask about – it turned out to be a mix of different sweet wines. Our favourite was towel guy, a bald-headed bearded chap of about our age, sitting on his own, eating dinner and reading.

Brian’s dessert was a crepe flambéd with grand marnier. While it burned, he quickly sang happy birthday to Karen. Andrea had fondant chocolate, which turned out to be two slabs of very chocolate-y stuff something the consistency of cake icing.

My journal ends there. We left, I think, two days later. The last day in Argeles was hot and sunny, so we went to the beach. Brian and Andrea and Karen all went down to the water and dipped in. I sat in the shade and read.

On the last day, we drove to Toulouse to catch our flights to London (maybe to Paris for the McCanns) and then on to Toronto. Brian and Andrea had a different flight itinerary. I think we dropped them at the airport and then had a couple of hours to kill in Toulouse before we had to go back for our own flight. I took a few last-gasp pictures of beautiful France.

Toulouse - Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse

Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse

Toulouse - Garonne River

Toulouse - Garonne River

Toulouse - beer-guzzling co-eds at an outdoor bar

We all ended up back in Toronto about the same time. Karen and I had parked our car at the Park 'n' Fly, so drove Brian and Andrea home to Stratford on our way to London. The end.

Not sure where or when this was taken but a good place to end

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

Basilique Saint-Sernin de Toulouse

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