Some friends we made along the way.
St. Vallier de Thiey:
Castellane:
Gordes:
Orange:
Forcalquier:
Annot:
Entrevaux:
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
And the rest (Part Three)
...and the view from the top of the hill:
Annot, for our last night:
(But just because you live in an idyllic mountain town apparently doesn't mean you have to get on with your neighbours).
Entrevaux, a place that was mostly closed that day. We walked to the top of the fortress, but the reward wasn't great enough for the energy expended. It's in a state of advanced disintegration, in spite of apparent heroic restoration attempts.
This was our last day. We drove back to Nice with an accidental diversion by a tiny, horrific, and apparently endless mountain road (my fault); then struggled with getting petrol to fill the car up at the airport; then offloaded the car with some relief, and came home.
And the rest... (Part Two)
St. Michel l'Observatoire, with a beautiful old and empty church at the very top of the village:
Tasteful dustcatcher on the wall in our hotel in Oraison, the Grande Bastide, where we had another terrible mosquito encounter. This time the walls were textured, and no matter how much you hit them the mosquitoes just floated off to lurk elsewhere. We also had a strange fish incident with dinner - pricey "fresh" fish turned out to have paper slips still stuck on their underside, one with what seemed to be date of freezing on it. They took the price of the fish off the bill, but once we'd been charged separately for the cheese and dessert courses it turned out to be an expensive meal anyway. Still, I suppose at least it was a memorable one.
Forcalquier, where we should have stayed, and which was perhaps the nicest place that we saw on our trip (helped along by the fact that people still seemed to live normal lives there):
And the rest... (Part One)
The Roman theatre at Orange in the pouring rain:
The Pont du Garde:
L'Isle sur la Sorgue - watery and colourful:
Monday, December 30, 2013
Avignon and Orange
Day 5 - To Orange by way of Avignon
We left Goult and drove the short distance to Avignon. On the way out, we paused to photograph the local toilets just outside the hotel gates and next to the bus stop, which I'd noticed the night before. It brought back memories - I came to appreciate squat toilets from living in Japan, but when I was a child travelling with my parents, the French and Italian ones I encountered caused me substantial angst. They're hard to deal with when you're small and uncertain of your footing. I liked that they still had them here in Goult, though. It seems civilized to me to have free and accessible public toilets that can easily be kept clean-ish. Frankfurt is short on such things, rather like London.
The approach to Avignon is off-putting, with American style highway and sprawl, and gangs of people descending at the lights to wash your windscreen whether you want it done or not. Once we'd struggled to the historical centre and managed to park it turned out the be a pleasant place, though.
We parked close to the famous bridge, which for all its fame and song I hadn't realized would be missing a big chunk. How's that a bridge? It should clearly be called the Pier of Avignon. I was almost as disappointed as when I first went to Covent Garden and there was no garden, or Crystal Palace... or the beautiful winding silvery Serpentine that turned out to be nothing more than a muddy duckpond (it appears that London has produced a disproportionate share of disappointments for me).
We saw the papal palace from the outside, having been advised by my parents that it wasn't the most exciting thing to visit. We went to the Musée Lapidaire with its interesting collection of Roman, Egyptian and Romano-Gallic artefacts, and also visited a couple of bookshops.
And we crossed some roads...
In the afternoon we drove off (and then drove off again when we accidentally ended up back in the middle) to go to Orange, where we'd booked two nights at the Hotel Kyriad Orange Centre. This was an odd hotel - the room was probably the nicest we stayed in of our trip, modern, spacious and clean - but the hotel itself seemed to be disintegrating a little (or perhaps it was only the roof). Our room was also full of more mosquitoes than I've had to spend the night with since Taiwan, for some reason. We spent a good long time both evenings and in the middle of the night hunting them down - and all of them already full of (presumably) our blood.
We left Goult and drove the short distance to Avignon. On the way out, we paused to photograph the local toilets just outside the hotel gates and next to the bus stop, which I'd noticed the night before. It brought back memories - I came to appreciate squat toilets from living in Japan, but when I was a child travelling with my parents, the French and Italian ones I encountered caused me substantial angst. They're hard to deal with when you're small and uncertain of your footing. I liked that they still had them here in Goult, though. It seems civilized to me to have free and accessible public toilets that can easily be kept clean-ish. Frankfurt is short on such things, rather like London.
The approach to Avignon is off-putting, with American style highway and sprawl, and gangs of people descending at the lights to wash your windscreen whether you want it done or not. Once we'd struggled to the historical centre and managed to park it turned out the be a pleasant place, though.
We parked close to the famous bridge, which for all its fame and song I hadn't realized would be missing a big chunk. How's that a bridge? It should clearly be called the Pier of Avignon. I was almost as disappointed as when I first went to Covent Garden and there was no garden, or Crystal Palace... or the beautiful winding silvery Serpentine that turned out to be nothing more than a muddy duckpond (it appears that London has produced a disproportionate share of disappointments for me).
We saw the papal palace from the outside, having been advised by my parents that it wasn't the most exciting thing to visit. We went to the Musée Lapidaire with its interesting collection of Roman, Egyptian and Romano-Gallic artefacts, and also visited a couple of bookshops.
And we crossed some roads...
In the afternoon we drove off (and then drove off again when we accidentally ended up back in the middle) to go to Orange, where we'd booked two nights at the Hotel Kyriad Orange Centre. This was an odd hotel - the room was probably the nicest we stayed in of our trip, modern, spacious and clean - but the hotel itself seemed to be disintegrating a little (or perhaps it was only the roof). Our room was also full of more mosquitoes than I've had to spend the night with since Taiwan, for some reason. We spent a good long time both evenings and in the middle of the night hunting them down - and all of them already full of (presumably) our blood.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Gordes
Day 4 - Gordes
(Already two months later - I'm making this holiday last a long time.)
We visited Gordes from Goult. It was beautiful, but also not quite what I expected. There was little sense there of a living town - and it appears that much of it was in ruins until artists began to move in in the 1950s and rebuild. Now it seems to be largely a tourist town - busloads of them (us) each day, and all the businesses in the town dedicated to feeding them and selling them lavender-coloured teddy bears and soap. Or art - we did visit a small exhibition of sculptures by an artist called Alice Morlon: flattened crowds of horses and riders made of wire and mesh, looking like Celtic hunters, and strange parchment-winged angels like giant insects.
As we viewed the town from the edge - at the scenic point from which everyone stops to view it - my attention was caught by a French guide talking to her elderly American charges as if they were recalcitrant children. "Could you... just listen, because I'm not going to repeat this." Then as she told them things about the town - for instance, how expensive the houses were now - a particular lady would immediately ask the obvious questions - "So how much would a house like that be now?" The guide would respond in a voice of barely concealed irritation, "I'm just going to tell you that." What a painful trip that must have been for all involved. It seemed an odd failure of communication, too. I suspect the American lady was doing her best in her very American way to show that she was listening and to show her interest to a guide she knew was easily ruffled; while for the French guide it simply came across as impatience and ignorance. She was clearly in the wrong career.
Apart from the exhibition, the most interesting thing we did in Gordes was to visit the Caves du Palais Saint Firmin - in essence an exhibition about life and industry underground in this town. It's comprised of only a couple of vaulted rooms and their side chambers, but it was informative - lots about olive oil processing that I knew nothing about, and before that a short film that gives the history of the town. Also, there was no-one else there, and it felt special to be underground while all those busloads of people tramped around over our heads.
When we left Gordes, we went back to Goult, drove up to the windmill at the top and then picked up some supplies in a shop in the village for dinner.
Then we went back to the hotel where I had a quick swim and an evening walk.
(Already two months later - I'm making this holiday last a long time.)
We visited Gordes from Goult. It was beautiful, but also not quite what I expected. There was little sense there of a living town - and it appears that much of it was in ruins until artists began to move in in the 1950s and rebuild. Now it seems to be largely a tourist town - busloads of them (us) each day, and all the businesses in the town dedicated to feeding them and selling them lavender-coloured teddy bears and soap. Or art - we did visit a small exhibition of sculptures by an artist called Alice Morlon: flattened crowds of horses and riders made of wire and mesh, looking like Celtic hunters, and strange parchment-winged angels like giant insects.
As we viewed the town from the edge - at the scenic point from which everyone stops to view it - my attention was caught by a French guide talking to her elderly American charges as if they were recalcitrant children. "Could you... just listen, because I'm not going to repeat this." Then as she told them things about the town - for instance, how expensive the houses were now - a particular lady would immediately ask the obvious questions - "So how much would a house like that be now?" The guide would respond in a voice of barely concealed irritation, "I'm just going to tell you that." What a painful trip that must have been for all involved. It seemed an odd failure of communication, too. I suspect the American lady was doing her best in her very American way to show that she was listening and to show her interest to a guide she knew was easily ruffled; while for the French guide it simply came across as impatience and ignorance. She was clearly in the wrong career.
Apart from the exhibition, the most interesting thing we did in Gordes was to visit the Caves du Palais Saint Firmin - in essence an exhibition about life and industry underground in this town. It's comprised of only a couple of vaulted rooms and their side chambers, but it was informative - lots about olive oil processing that I knew nothing about, and before that a short film that gives the history of the town. Also, there was no-one else there, and it felt special to be underground while all those busloads of people tramped around over our heads.
When we left Gordes, we went back to Goult, drove up to the windmill at the top and then picked up some supplies in a shop in the village for dinner.
Then we went back to the hotel where I had a quick swim and an evening walk.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Castellane, Gorges de Verdon, Goult
Day 3. We left Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey with a destination already set - we'd booked a hotel online the previous night, in Goult. We got there in the end, but it was really too far for one day - or rather, there was too much in the way of winding mountain road in the first half of the journey.
We set out intending to see the Gorges du Verdon on the way; and the man in the Préjoly advised us to drive north as far as Castellane and take the road across from there so that we'd be following the gorges along. It was good advice - without it, we'd have missed Castellane, one of the nicest stops on the whole trip.
The road from Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey took us quickly into dramatic chalky-looking cliffs, with low cloud just beginning to lift. This first part was quite dramatic, but the hills became more rolling as we went on. It got particularly dramatic again when we got our first glimpse of Castellane from a hillside overlooking the valley - we could see the distinctive outcropping that towers over the town, and the tiny toy chapel perched on top of it.
I was instantly seized with the desire to climb up to the top and the anxiety that we might not do it and that my life would thus be forever incomplete. Happily I was saved from that fate. The path up (like other chapel-topped hills in the area, as I discovered later in the journey) was marked at intervals with the Stations of the Cross. The chapel at the top was full of placards thanking Our Lady of the Rock for everything imaginable - bringing back lost people, saving the town of Castellane from cholera and influenza, and so on. This is one of the strangest things about religion for me. The next town loses dozens of residents through sickness, and yours doesn't - so, it's because they didn't pray as hard, or don't have their own special protector? It seems somewhat hubristic. Anyway, if your protector is so reliable and effective, shouldn't you have prayed to them to save all of the people in the next town too... and even further afield? Did those people die because you didn't care enough to mention them? And if you invoke protection by your town goes down with cholera anyway, should you consider yourselves to be in deep disfavor, or abandoned, or... wrong? No, you presumably pray harder because your mind is only open to things that seem to support the view you've already fixed upon. It's an odd system. But it helps maintain some nice chapels, I suppose.
Here's the view of the town from above:
And the outcropping cropping out...
And the bridge bridging, with a view back to where we'd come from:
We didn't stay in the town for long - just a quick walk through and a visit to the boulangerie and minimarket to get some lunch materials, which we ate by the side of the road after we'd driven on for a while. It was a nice town, though - and it seemed to have some balance between normal town and tourist destination.
From Castellane we turned westward and started along the Gorges du Verdon. Many beautiful views, indeed, but this is where we started to make such slow progress on the map that we began to doubt making it to Goult before nightfall. This was the most dramatic view, at the Point Sublime:
We set out intending to see the Gorges du Verdon on the way; and the man in the Préjoly advised us to drive north as far as Castellane and take the road across from there so that we'd be following the gorges along. It was good advice - without it, we'd have missed Castellane, one of the nicest stops on the whole trip.
The road from Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey took us quickly into dramatic chalky-looking cliffs, with low cloud just beginning to lift. This first part was quite dramatic, but the hills became more rolling as we went on. It got particularly dramatic again when we got our first glimpse of Castellane from a hillside overlooking the valley - we could see the distinctive outcropping that towers over the town, and the tiny toy chapel perched on top of it.
I was instantly seized with the desire to climb up to the top and the anxiety that we might not do it and that my life would thus be forever incomplete. Happily I was saved from that fate. The path up (like other chapel-topped hills in the area, as I discovered later in the journey) was marked at intervals with the Stations of the Cross. The chapel at the top was full of placards thanking Our Lady of the Rock for everything imaginable - bringing back lost people, saving the town of Castellane from cholera and influenza, and so on. This is one of the strangest things about religion for me. The next town loses dozens of residents through sickness, and yours doesn't - so, it's because they didn't pray as hard, or don't have their own special protector? It seems somewhat hubristic. Anyway, if your protector is so reliable and effective, shouldn't you have prayed to them to save all of the people in the next town too... and even further afield? Did those people die because you didn't care enough to mention them? And if you invoke protection by your town goes down with cholera anyway, should you consider yourselves to be in deep disfavor, or abandoned, or... wrong? No, you presumably pray harder because your mind is only open to things that seem to support the view you've already fixed upon. It's an odd system. But it helps maintain some nice chapels, I suppose.
Here's the view of the town from above:
And the outcropping cropping out...
And the bridge bridging, with a view back to where we'd come from:
We didn't stay in the town for long - just a quick walk through and a visit to the boulangerie and minimarket to get some lunch materials, which we ate by the side of the road after we'd driven on for a while. It was a nice town, though - and it seemed to have some balance between normal town and tourist destination.
From Castellane we turned westward and started along the Gorges du Verdon. Many beautiful views, indeed, but this is where we started to make such slow progress on the map that we began to doubt making it to Goult before nightfall. This was the most dramatic view, at the Point Sublime:
We stopped briefly at Moustiers Ste. Marie, famous for its pottery, and a town clearly worth spending a little time in (at the same time, clearly a town with no tourism/normality balance at all). Unfortunately we were too tired and anxious by this time, so we merely glanced at it, grabbed a couple of highly expensive drinks and went on our way.
The rest of the drive was easier, however, and we made it to Goult before dinner. After searching in vain for our hotel for some time, we discovered that it was actually in Lumières, a hamlet attached to the village. It was the Hôtellerie Notre Dame de Lumières, which is on the grounds of a former convent, and still attached to a "sanctuary" that now belongs to some missionary sect. The hotel was great - the room (in an annex) was quite small but very clean and modern; the grounds were extensive, with an outdoor pool and a tiny chapel up a hill (complete with Stations, of course) where I communed with bats on the second evening. It had more of an air of a resort than a standard hotel, and it had the best breakfast of the trip, a sumptuous buffet with multiple mini pastries, brioche, bowls of yoghurt and conserves, and even moon cheese (well, a mysterious kind of cheese with a yellow-green flaky rind. I have no idea what it was really called).
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