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And now, Provence

September 20, 2008 in France 2008 by Chris R | 1 comment

Sorry about the long gap; we’ve been busy getting from there to here, as tends to happen when your main mode of transportation is on a schedule. “There” in this case was the lovely oceanside town of Calvi, and “Here” is, well, you can see:

Something I took away from the Mediterranean Sea is a sense that, amazingly, the tourism advertisements and stories I’ve read about the place really do not do the sea justice. I’m accustomed to an ocean that is dark, cold, and remote; a beauty that can really only be appreciated in the sense that a predator’s grace is admirable. The Mediterranean is different. It’s blue in a thousand shades, all of them gem-like. Each isolated cove brings something new.

We saw three firefighting seaplanes, doing water drills. That was special. We were treated to a flyby by some kind of French military fighter jet, which blew past overhead as we picked our way up to a lighthouse on a rocky promontory. We ate haute cuisine at a dockside bar, and dangled our feet over the edge of the pier, watching hundreds of black fish in the deep, clear blue waters just beside a massive ferry.

And now, Avignon.

There is a palace here, one of the finest examples of a Gothic citadel in Europe, still largely intact, and it is huge. Only pictures can do it justice, but the computer at our hotel — from which I post this — cannot recognize our camera, and therefore I cannot show you these pictures. I’ll probably come back and attach them to this post later, so keep an eye on it.

The food is amazing, the hotel is the nicest we’ve had so far, and the people all seem very friendly. Interestingly, I’ve heard more english in Avignon in one day than in the rest of our trip put together. It seems that this place is a very popular tourist destination, and once I have the pictures up, you’ll see why.

I can’t really add a lot more without those, so I’ll leave off here.

Calvi, in a few steps

September 15, 2008 in France 2008 by Chris R | 2 comments

Calvi is a beautiful town, no question. I can’t provide pictorial evidence of that right now because it’s raining to beat the band and I didn’t bring the camera with me, but take my word for it, it’s spectacular. A 20-km bay with white sand and blue sea, capped on each tip by rocks and on our end a citadel, backed by mountains, and 50% of the time a clear blue sky.

Note the percentage :)

It’s been sporadically nice here; yesterday was alternately 3 hours of rain and 3 hours of sun, today was 6 sun, and rain since, and if the pattern holds I expect clear sky by sundown. Char and I took yesterday to walk to the top of the second hill in from the sea, where there is a small 19th-century fort (the dates on the wall indicate 1849-1852 for construction) that is completely derelict now. We simply walked in through the front gate, and poked into all of the rooms. More pictures will come from that, but suffice to say that there were bits of it that were genuinely creepy. There was a room, third and last in a series of high-ceilinged subterranean chambers, with a window high in the west wall admitting indirect sunlight, with red paint handprints covering the whole wall, around the room, as high as a child could reach. Char has pictures of it, so you can see it later, but I won’t lie: I felt a chill seeing that, and even I know it was just some kids spooking it up.

Today was snorkeling. Both Char and I were fine on the boat, but it turns out we’re both prone to mild seasickness when IN the water. Who knew?