Au Revoir Paris and France

Out the door, into the little Peugeot, down the lane after a wave au revoir to Canto Cigalo. This is a travel day. The rain is back and the day is dark, the sun on its own vacation somewhere. We have given ourselves some time to get to destinations without having to rush. This is a good thing because when we arrive at le gare TGV (TGV train station) we cannot figure out where to return our rental car. We don't know what the phrase is or the international symbol associated with it.

Up one dead end, around a roundabout out of the station grounds, back again, reverse, pause, crane necks, search info on rental car packet. No luck. Then, one sign with 10 different signs and symbols on it has a tiny one in English. Delight! We zoom over and then have to figure out where to put the car. "Park it here? in the Hertz area? Don't they need to clean it?"

The rental car office, the one we used seven days ago, is a dream to use. Up the stairs to the long futuristic station to find our train departure time. These buggers are on time, so we have to be in place and ready. A delicatessan has prepared sandwiches and snacks; we purchase water and two baguette sandwiches. Then we join the clump of waiting passengers who need info from the departure schedule. The train number and time is known; we don't know which gate.

Once we know what platform to use, we ascend the escalator and wait in what we believe is the right area. We watch the French travelers give each other bises on the cheeks when they greet. Left, right left, with little kiss sounds. A customary ritual that ensures you are definitely fond of this person.

The time arrives for the train to come. There it is! We go the car that the train diagram tells us is ours. Wrong. The conductor is blowing her whistle and rain is falling. How do you say shit in French? merde. One way or another we trot like mad to get to the right car and make it just in time. They don't wait for you if you're late. The train is on time, the sleek, smooth bastard. It's admirable but intimidating.

I crash into my seat and heave a sigh. Then, the train is moving like I'm only imagining it - hardly any change in my sensation of it - and we are bound for Paris. While munching our baguettes and water, Provence is out there beyond the windows. As we travel due north, we see the rolling terrain, distant mountains and old medieval villages on cliff tops and promontories. Most if not all villages are not sprawling urban areas. Instead they are clumps of stone buildings gathered together, surrounded by agriculture. Only Avignon and Paris have looked familiarly sprawling compared to American towns and habitations.

We are in Paris again at the Gare du Lyon. The train does not rush us this time and we trundle out to the taxi stand where a hustler directs people to this waiting taxi or that, loudly demanding, "Coins, give me coins! Obama! Hollywood, America! Give me coins! Come here, I put your bag inside and you give me coins."

We hand the tall young black taxi driver our address and he has to look it up. We have to cross town and find the Montmartre area. He is silent but calm and a good driver. That is, he makes his own lanes and turns when he wants to, nosing his little car in front of other vehicles to create space for us. I watch the city's thousands of varied people out on their Saturday business. The part of Paris we traverse including the Bastille is more homogenized, more like New York, less elegant and used hard. I wish I could record the city sounds including the music from other cars when we are stopped next to them. The ride is a series of vignettes of city life, and I am as anonymous as they are, those people I will never see again that I know of.

We ascend into the Montmartre area, the hill of martyrs so named because during the French Revolution a few people died for the cause, leaders with great spirit and a cause they had decided to fight for. This is where the moulins are, the picturesque windmills as you might have seen in Moulin Rouge, because this used to be the hilly countryside outside the city.

After we check in, rest and relax for a little while - it's about 5 PM - we walk up to Sacre Coeur cathedral and encounter masses of tourists, a county fair atmosphere and join it. This is the place we became engaged four years ago, so we are returning for old time's sake, sort of.

Inside the cathedral, Mass is in progress even as throngs of tourists are pouring in and skirting the central area so they can see the interior. We sit and listen to the priest and a nun who sings part of the Mass. Then, back out to the moving, shifting crowd, which we watch for a little while. We shop for gifts at a few of the junk shops that line the main cobbled street in the village area. Probably all from China by the looks of it. Then, we decide to eat at the same cafe where we were engaged. The food is mediocre just like it was four years ago, but we watch the crowd and talk. I hear lots of Italian and American English, some other languages. This is not an elegant crowd at all but more of what you'd see at any large event, kind of disheveled, uncertain, strolling in zig-zag directions.

We walk after dinner down to the north side of the hill into the cool, jazzy Montmartre neighborhood where no tourists think to go unless they've read their guide books and want a less touristed experience. It's hilly but shaded with large chestnut trees and the evening sun is getting exciting for photography.

We go back up the hill and over to the steps of Sacre Coeur and see Paris in a broad panorama, an encrustation of stone buildings with clay chimney tubes sticking up like spines all across the city. The setting sun has brought the buildings into sharp relief and it is immense. There is Notre Dame and over there the Pantheon. The Eiffel Tower is hidden behind a group of trees to the right.

It's a long wait before the lights begin to glow in the city, well after 10 PM, but it is a transition unique in the world. To see the City of Lights like this is fun. The crowd continues to shift and move, party and enjoy the balmy evening. This is the world as Europe knows it now, multicultural and changing fast with the influx of African nations' emigres. Languages of all types and people who are obviously tourists like us gazing at the scene, all mixing in a peaceful mob.

That's enough. We are tired. It's nearly 11 PM. Paris is not going to quiet down for several hours, but we must. Good-bye old city. Tomorrow we travel home to California and begin to dream of new travels in the year to come.  It has been a rich experience and valuable to us both in quiet, inner ways. This will take time to process and return from, like all journeys. We have been fortunate, truly so. In truth, the journey is continuous and has certain demarcation points, one day after another. What will today bring?

The Heart of Provence

This is the last day we have in Provence, so we set out to lose ourselves in the heart of it. We map a route that will take us to three little villages, three of 150 designated most beautiful villages in France, according to our little map. (We are using a map supplied by the Tourist Information Office, a Michelin map of France, the Michelin Guide for Provence and sometimes the Lonely Planet Provence guide book.)

We are pretty fond of roundabouts as we drive here and there. They are very forgiving of mistakes; you can zoom around and around until you figure out which exit to take. I wish life were like that. Make a bad job choice? Just go in a big circle until you find a good exit. No dead ends. Just flow without stopping.

The day is soggy. Provence is not as cold as yesterday, but it is draped in mist. There is not much traffic.  We are looking for Menerbes, and the roads gradually become narrower and prettier until we are essentially in another world of leafy aromatic forests that shade the road and reveal pretty scenes at every turn. I have a feeling of being enveloped by time itself as if drawn to the center of it, unable to resist.  

Menerbes is the area in the Petite Luberon area east of Cavaillon and St. Remy where Peter Mayle, the author of “A Year In Provence” lived. It has been home to significant artists and writers  and seems blessed with every aspect of attractive life that human beings are capable of imagining. 

As is true with nearly every old village dating back to medieval times and beyond, there is a vertical cliff topped by a church with a bell tower and steeple. The streets curve up and down, around corners and divide into narrow cobbled alleys. Stores are fitted into the old buildings. We find a nearly hidden stone stairway that winds up and around to the top of the hill where a 15th century church stands ready to take in all sinners and heal them.

We can see the Luberon valleys on both sides of the hill, spread like a quilt  made of vineyards, olive groves and  windbreaks made up of tall closely planted chestnut trees and mulberries. Mist hangs like soft veils at the flanks of the hills in the distance. The air is still. I can smell rosemary, roses, jasmine and other herbs on the cool morning air. I am smitten with this place. It is perfect.  

We keep heaving sighs and our pace is slow; photography and a deep need to absorb the essence of where we are require that we not rush. Eventually, we do leave, but it is with a lot of reluctance. 

The next village is Lourmarin, a distance from Menerbes of about 15 k. The drive is winding, crazy and beautiful. The side of the road has a low stone wall to guard it, and it’s broken in some spots. Evidence of someone flying off the curves in speeding cars? 

There are a few indecipherable signs we've seen. For instance, one sign is simply an exclamation point with no words on it.  When you arrive in a village or town, you see the town name, as you would expect. When you leave, you see the town name again, but it has a red hash mark through it, as if it has been deleted. Speed bumps meant to slow traffic are sometimes nothing but a six-inch-high pad of hard rubber stretched across our lane.  Mysteries abound.  We must be detectives as we drive in this French-speaking country, relating our past experience to what is likely to be expected here. 

In Lourmarin, we notice an extensive repaving project is underway that uses attractive modern bricks of different colors being laid as street surface. A workman in a tall building right at the entrance area is blaring loud Euro pop, incongruous with the 800 year-old village structures and setting. 

It’s past midday, and our bellies are talking to us, so we look around in the main village streets for a place to eat. The restaurant we choose is trendy, busy and costs 14 euro for a delicious and unusually tender steak, warm potatoes creamed with cheese, butter and herbs and an arugula salad lightly dressed. Again, I nearly lick my plate. The ever-present baguette slices are given on the side. No butter. Who needs it after all that? 

The place is packed and abuzz with conversation, but, as usual, it is impossible to hear anyone’s words. We are flanked, bistro style, on both sides by tables of French people and cannot hear what they are saying. This is something I have noticed among the French in restaurants. They contain themselves and their words. They really have mastered the art of having “quiet indoor voices.” Of course, I am not able to understand fluent French very well, but still...

Lourmarin is a sterling little village in which streets are lined with artistic and creative boutiques of all sorts. There are three bell towers, and there is a 15th century chateau we tour. It has four floors with a winding stone staircase between each floor. It was found in ruins in 1920 by a wealthy businessman who restored it and then died five years later. His will stipulated that young people be educated in music and art there. We hear musicians practicing for a performance coming up in a week, a pleasing backdrop of sound as we look at furniture and fixtures in the building that date back about 200 years. 

More sighing, gazing at leafy loveliness, picturesque windows and doors, tall crooked walls, laughing that even waste containers seem charming. We are dazzled and silly with the charm of these places.

And yet, we must move on. More driving in leafy green countryside and then we arrive at Ansouis where we pass up another tour of the chateau there and simply walk around the town. “Around” means up and down, mostly up, until we find the church topping the village, built 800 years ago. Its stone paving inside is curving and worn, the interior silent but still echoing with the songs and prayers of humanity. I feel as though I am one little being in a long chain through time out of mind. It is a place thick with old spirits and unknown events and tragedies as well as joys.  

After a winding drive home along the Durance River through the Petite Luberon area, we return to our little hotel, Canto Cigalo. The rain abated a few hours ago. The world seems refreshed and lush. After 7 pm, we make the quick drive into town and find two seats at La Cantina, an Italian pizza bistro on the main street. It is jumping with business already. I have a very delectable and satisfying gnocchi dressed in a cream sauce with herbs. Panna cotta is light as air with its raspberry sauce drizzled on top. 

We walk into the old heart of San Remy after dinner and I find my favorite scene: A plaza that fronts the Musee des Alpilles. It is a marble-paved square with trees  planted to shade it, and there are lights from a cafe shining on its surface.  It is quiet and beautiful. I am standing on a street that is a mosaic of broken pieces of white stone and there is a narrow gutter that flows with water down its center, curving away around two or three corners until it disappears from view under archways and beyond doors leading to places I will never see.  It is mysterious, familiar and foreign and brings up an ache in my heart; I am in love with it.  It is so simple a place and yet says everything about Provence and France to me. I hate to leave it and look at it hard so I will never forget it. This is what I will bring home, what I will know about this little square:  It is simply itself, unpretentious but still touched with whimsy. It looks timeless, as if it will become sepia toned as I look at it. It only needs music to be perfect, but that is what I can add; music will play when I recall it years from now.  

St. Remy de Provence: Marche', Musee, Monastere

The sun has left Provence. The air is chilled by a chugging cold wind. We don't know what to think and ask the monsieur at the desk of our hotel what to expect. He shrugs, sends his lower lip out and raises his eyebrows - all this indicates, "Who knows," but in a way that also indicates we are all in the dark and will just have to wait and see.

After our petite dejeuner including delectable grapefruit and ginger preserves to spread on our bread, we regroup in our room, make a plan for the first part of the day and emerge into a blast of cold air from the front salon of the hotel. It sure looks like rain. But, I feel optimistic after my breakfast, and I want to see our little town, St. Remy. 

The plan is to enjoy market day in St. Remy. Similar to the market in Isle sur la Sorgue on Saturday, this market occupies many winding streets in the heart of old town. Scarves are selling well; it's really cold when the wind gusts hard. 

We buy cherries, apricots, bread, candied peanuts and some gifts. Vendors look chilled, and they are gritting their teeth, hoping for brisk business to take their minds off their discomfort. A few are ready to bolt for the warm interiors of bistros or wherever home is. We duck into a cafe and warm up with an espresso. Back to the market for one more look.

The stalls are a riot of color, hands reaching back and forth across piles of olives or heaps of fruit. In the market streets, the crowd is dense, alert for deals, restless in its quest for goods and good prices. The young man selling candied peanuts speaks with me in halting English, asking me where I am from. His mother smiles but looks embarrassed for not speaking much English herself. 

"Thirty years, New York. I was," she waves her hand over her shoulder. "Good," she also says. "He is pretty good English, very good English." She is trying, and I am trying to speak French. We agree that the weather is misbehaving badly, uncharacteristically, and we wish each other bonne journee. Then I am on my way. 

The rain has begun, but now we are in our car again driving to the Monastere St-Paul du Mausole, an ancient monastery where Vincent Van Gogh stayed for a year after cutting his ear off. While he was at the monastery, which was built in order to treat the mentally ill beginning in the 1500s, he was able to regain a sense of stability, optimism and even excitement about his work. Sadly, after living for a year at the asylum, he was discharged and committed suicide two months later.  

We drive down a pretty lane bordered by a stone wall alongside which stand reproductions of Van Gogh masterpieces. He was at his peak of skill and productivity while living at the asylum, influenced by its remarkable calm and serene setting. We look at the inner gardens from his window just as he would have seen them.  It's really remarkable.  The colors of his paintings are exactly what you see in San Remy and the surrounding area. He was always taken with what most people call ordinary objects, captivated by the detail of form and color, and he painted them in a way that has changed everyone's appreciation of them ever since then. 

The monastery still treats the mentally ill; the gift shop sells their art. The place is peaceful; we are both struck by. It is one of the most remarkable places I've ever been before. 

We return to our hotel, which is very close by, to eat our fruit and to make a new plan. This is San Remy Day for us, and we want to explore close to home. After our break, we go to the Musee des Alpilles (Alpilles is the name of the rocky short mountain range south of town), housed in a 16th century stone house in the center of the oldest part of San Remy.

The museum has a collection of farming tools, goods and images from the town's early days when the population was almost all agricultural. Displays tell us about bee keeping, wool gathering, seed production, cicadas (a favorite local bug that lives for years underground, coming out into the open long enough to make its buzzing song, mate and lay eggs before dying), and a photography exhibit of local town scenes from the late 1800s to early 1900s.

We walk around and window shop, finger a few cute things, debate buying or not, stroll on. We work up an appetite again, but it's too early.  In the States, we eat at 6 PM or so, usually earlier if we can.  In France, you get no attention whatsoever until after 7 PM. No such thing as Happy Hour here unless you are at a bar. Places open for service at 7 PM and most diners begin to show up at 8 PM and later.

We are ready to eat tonight at our usual hour and have to kill some time. What we really want is to go put our feet up, be slobs and eat pizza while watching TV. You know, be American. There is a magazine and curio shop across from the restaurant area. The racks are long and filled with maybe 500 kinds of magazines. I pick one up on bullfighting and look at it. Every bullfighter is striking the same pose: A graceful arch of the back, a lowered cape, and a bull rushing past with its horns lowered. Apparently bullfighting is popular in southern France, but we have not seen a ring anywhere. I wouldn't go watch, but since it's part of the local culture, I'm curious to know about it.  It's gruesome and cruel though, so I put the magazine away.

I choose some postcards, look at them for awhile, and then put them all back. Dinner is too close, and I'm too hungry to make any decent decisions.  I have found no post offices open, by the way. Even with posted hours on the doors, they are closed for some mysterious reason. Strike? Who knows.

We locate a darling pizza place on a dead end street (10 foot wide street) and finally get to eat.  It's good and we are happy at last.  Then, home and sleep.  Tomorrow will be our last day in Provence.

Glanum, Baux and Eagle Ears in Provence

It's Monday morning, and we are eating outside on the gravel-covered terrasse under the spreading mulberry trees. It is quiet, peaceful and larks are fluting in the trees.  Eventually, we brush off our croissant crumbs (creating a little snow storm of crust bits because the pastries are so crisp and flaky), and drive away to Glanum, which you've never heard of. I hadn't either.

The Romans, as they expanded outward from Rome sometime before Jesus worked his miracles, came to this area and appropriated small settlements of the Gauls and built temples, aqueducts, baths, public plazas and roadways. They were a busy lot and impressed everyone for many kilometers in every direction. Then eventually they "fell" and left behind a lot of interesting artifacts.

Here in the area of what is now Southern France, the Romans appropriated a lot of little villages and towns.  One such area was a settlement called Glanum. Archeologists discovered the area in 1927 (give or take a few years), well after Vincent Van Gogh strolled around here painting pictures. It is said he never knew the site existed.

These are things we learn by touring the archeological ruins. The interpretive signs in English and French show terrifically detailed views of what is there now and how it would have looked in various time periods for more than two millenia. What they have been able to discern by seeing vague scratches and indentations on large blocks of limestone is nearly miraculous.

Some restoration of part of a temple has been done and much study made of the underground water system including lead pipes and canals beneath the ground that not only transported fresh water to public places but to homes as well. There were latrines, warm, cold and hot baths, swimming pools, springs, wells, fountains and sewer lines.

The most revelatory items I see in the little museum on site is a display of very tiny utensils made of iron. A delicate perfume box only an inch long and tapered in the shape of a fish was exquisite in its fine detail, a great contrast to all the huge stone building blocks the site was made up of. Artifacts date back about 300 years BC.

Satisfied with our tour at Glanum, we head south over a range of stubby mountains called Les Alpilles. The road winds and twists through a forested area and then reveals an escarpment in the distance that sports the ruins of a castle.  Of course it does, it's France. Castles and craggy ruins crop up everywhere here. The one we are looking at is called Baux, another one of the 150 Most Beautiful French Towns.

This upswept ridge of limestone was a strategic place to integrate a castle right into the cliff face.  It was sacked eventually and fell into ruin for a while. It is now a showplace for medieval weaponry and lots of fun for giggling schoolkids who dress in costumes for their day at the castle with classmates.  As is true for these hilltop wonders, we are made to park down below (for 4 Euro) and walk up steep old stairways to the upper plateau where the town begins.  I imagine the original people who built the place strong and nimble as mountain goats, obviously capable of immense work.

As soon as we reach a cafe, we head in and have a salad and bread with a lot of chugging of water after having become intensely thirsty. I am getting very slowly better at asking for water, but the waiters usually look some version of exasperated, puzzled or fearful of being infected by me when I attempt to ask for a simple pitcher of water instead of bottled water. I am determined to improve my French as it is an important language, especially since I will die of thirst if I don't.

It's a hot day with clouds looming over the distant castle crags.  We manage to top off finally and then leave to tour the ramparts. No sooner are we out on the upper plain of the hilltop than I manage to slam my left foot into a jutting rock in the ground and basically say "ouch" and wonder if I still have my foot connected to my ankle bone.  Yeah, that was painful all right.  I need to scream, but I'm in France and I cannot scream in French yet, so I hold my comments for later.

I am distracted by a demonstration of a trebuchet anyway, so I get going to watch.  A trebuchet is the coolest mechanical weapon ever invented because it seems so much more like a big toy than a thing with which to whack enemies.  It is basically a huge windup slingshot with a counterweight that causes a long arm to fling a load of something way high up into the air and far away from the trebuchet itself.  The demonstration throws a massive water balloon something like 300 yards away where it explodes with a massive splat that sets the crowd of kids cheering wildly.

The kids get to learn how to play tether ball with a large leather hackey sack thing on a rope, duel with cardboard swords, see other large weapons set loose on the enemy and tour the lower parts of the old castle ruins.  We take a self-guided tour of the area and try to imagine the way it looked in its hey day.

A bit of shopping follows in the little town itself, but we buy nothing. The idea is that there is a market on Wednesday in San Remy that will offer better prices, so we hold off.  With plenty of daylight left, we pile back into our oven-like black Peugeot and take a different road down the hill. The radio plays Euro pop and French talk radio.  We zoom along a winding road through a pretty forest heading north and find ourselves lost again. But lost is good; you never know what will happen next and it's usually interesting. We get to see more of unscripted, open countryside blanketed with leafy trees, grassy meadows, wheat fields, vineyards, olive groves and tractors pulling out into onrushing traffic.

Not happy about being potentially too lost, we argue briefly about how to proceed, decide on a plan. We choose Eygalieres (I decide to corrupt the word horribly and call it Eagle Ears) as our next destination as it is listed in our guidebook as a town of "character." Character = rustic, charming and real.  Its oldest area was built probably 500 years ago or more and occupies the highest promontory, the most defensible space for miles. As towns have grown, they have spread out from their upper tips to the flanking plains below. It's a sweet place to wander and I love it. I want to take it home with me.

Satisfied with the day but with my toe turning purple, I vote for going back to our pleasant hotel, Canto Cigalo, for dinner. My toe's okay, just discolored and kind of puffed up a bit, but it still fits in my shoes, so I can dress for dinner, which I do. The dinner is a cold but delicious salad made of hard boiled egg, slices of cantaloupe, lettuce, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, crisps of toast with rounds of brie on them and the ever-present French bread. I've survived in fine style,  as evidenced by my vivid toe, and I am ready to think of tomorrow.

Tomorrow, two UNESCO world heritage sites are on the list.

Provence Eats Me Alive

Wait, where am I?

I wake up in the middle of the night after dreaming about accordions and rocky hillsides. Did I dream about being the middle of a huge outdoor marketplace in an ancient town in Provence called Isle sur la Sorgue? No, it was real, but it seems so long ago now. Traveling is bringing on a familiar disorientation to time. It's only a problem if you have to deal with reality in any significant way.

We awakened early this morning in the villa hotel, in the outskirts of an old weatherbeaten town in the south of France called San Remy de Provence. The hotel - more a B&B than anything - has about 20 rooms or so, each one tastefully if not fluffily decorated and outfitted with many of the comforts of home. It has two stories and two terrasses (the French word describes a combination of patio, courtyard and deck), the main one being out in the villa's front area where several tables are set with chairs and market umbrellas. Out on that terrasse, we eat our petite dejeuner. With no other Americans evident, we represent the USA in the eyes of the other guests who are from France, Germany, Portugal and England, judging from the accents I overhear. We behave ourselves and do the country proud.

Two cups of caffeine and maps helping quite a lot, we round up our rental car and set off for Isle sur la Sorgue (island on the Sorgue river). There are very long flat stretches of country two-lane highways that are bordered on both sides with tall old sycamore trees that form a green tunnel of dappled light. Did Napoleon plant them? Or some fanatic gardener turned regional government leader? I love them, as they feel a lot like I am traveling into a beautiful time tunnel out which I will emerge in the middle of another century.

We arrive in Isle s.l. Sorgue, park about a click away from town and walk in to see it. Lo and behold, there is an open-air market going on. What at first seems like a small plaza of space taken up with a few stalls, we wend our way further and further into the old part of town amidst hundreds and hundreds of people cramming the narrow spaces between buildings and the vendors stalls.

Here is Provence in all its color, flavor and vigor. It is upon me in an instant like a welcome tsunami of flavor, fragrance and energy. Provence is a region massively identified with a zillion types of olives, tapenades, olive oils, earthy colors, cicadas (like hummingbirds and dragonfiles are popular in California), bees and honey, chevre cheese, lavendar and herbs. All of those are displayed in heaps, baskets, bags and trays throughout the market. A man selling fruits has cherries on stems draped from his ears. A woman shouts to the crowd about her olives, oils, and garlic. I taste some and want to buy all of it (of course). Another booth is selling roasted chickens and has a huge tray of paella to sell. Flowers, pretty dresses, linens, jewelry, and some booths selling more ordinary junky stuff go on and on, winding street after crooked street. It is Monterey's farmers market times 1,000, without exaggeration.

As if spit from a chute, the market releases us at last. I managed to find a good bargain on a pretty scarf and a set of four bowls painted in Provencal colors. It takes some time to calm down, catch my breath, get a grip on reality. The market is addicting and intense. I want more. My husband drags me away. I thank him for it later.

Then, while we begin our long walk back to our parked car, we see a big waterwheel next to the road, slowly turning its moss-covered paddles in the stream. This is one of seven that remain from 200 years ago when they powered silk factories and paper mills. We snap pictures, admire them and the steady flow of the shallow streams and decide to take a shortcut back to our car. Ha ha ha. An hour and a half later, after getting totally lost (hoping our supposed shortcut will eventually pan out), we get to our car all sweaty, tired and very footsore. Ugh, food please, water please. I am thinking I have to suffer for my joy in this world and this proves it.

While baking to death in our black car parked in the blazing sun (no shade to park in), we see a nearby town on our map marked with a star and decide that's our destination. So, off we zoom with A/C on full blast. My feet are throbbing and I hate France for a split second until the interior of the car gets cooled off.  Then, I love it again.  Fickle, huh?

The town is called Gordes. It's on a steep hill overlooking a pastoral valley whose gently undulating slopes have settled in over the years just like a pretty coverlet laid over someone's knees. We climb up and around a winding narrow road that begins to show signs of arid ruggedness; rock walls are lining it on both sides, and they are dry white stone with jaggedly angled slabs of rocks along their tops. All of a sudden, the medieval town comes into view and I yell, "Oh my God, there's a castle on top!" See what an American I am? It's a densely clustered heap of crazy steep angles, stone walls sloping upward and all clinging together as if a regular town on the plains has been pushed upward by a big hand and smashed together there with plaster.  That sounds ugly, which it isn't. It's just so fairy-tail-ish that my words fail me.

We park our car, pay the lot attendant and begin the walk up to town with me taking pictures of every step, every pebble, every little thing. We get to the town center and see that the area is a big abbey cresting a steep hill surrounded on its lower flanks by the town, which now basically serves as pit stop for tourists. There are many fine restaurants, cafes, ice cream vendors and beauty everywhere. I find a "saladerie" and we enjoy the plat du jour consisting of a vegetable torte, leafy green salad provencal and plenty of water. This is just what we needed after our long trek back in the last town. Refreshed entirely we explore the nooks and slopes of this beautiful old city. The local stone is very pale limestone, the same color as the plaster. Iron fixtures are used in graceful ways to attach doors and shutters and small peepholes emerge in the oddest spots, all charming and a perplexing at times. It's amazing to think that people live in such a place and think of it as just a regular ol' place.

The tourist information center is in the citadel abbey at the tippy top of the rugged hill. There is a man at the counter who speaks good enough English to be able to answer my question about the status of the town as one of France's 150 most beautiful towns. He gets out a map for me, indicates others in the region and wishes me bonne journee.  I ask him about the most prominent and austere landmark in the entire region, Mont Ventoux. He shrugs that classic Gallic shrug with a chin gesture that says, "What can you say?" Mont Ventoux is one of the h'ors categorie (beyond category) climbs in the Tour de France that humbles every racer to a point of tears. I see it and think of nothing but the Tour and its legends. This mountain is one of the most legendary of all climbs, a killer. It's a white ghost-like hump some distance to the north, and it looks frightening in its massiveness, bare at the top and known to be windy as hell and unearthly to riders as well as ordinary humans who drive cars.  It's a beast.

We see that Roussillon is across the valley, ochre and green in the distance. It's our next destination and one of the 150 Most Beautiful Towns, a must see.

Oh, my dear lord, I love this place. It was recommended by my sister who is an artist and who knows me pretty well. "I think you're really going to like Roussillon." It seems like saying, looking back on it now, "I think you'll really like breathing."

It's off-the-charts beautiful, saturated in colors that range from a dark rust to orange-red to melon orange and then to paler shades of sand and brown. All colors are derived from the local sandstone cliffs and their mineral deposits that are so vivid that they have to be seen to be believed. When you see them, one's usual aversion to over-the-top intensity in bright colors flies right out the window.

I take more and more pictures. It seems nearly impossible to take a bad shot. Nothing is ugly in this town. Well, a few dog piles kind of miss out on beauty, but the rest is spectacular. Photoshop is unnecessary. As a matter of fact, when I see the images downloaded later, I think they are so satisfyingly rich in color that no one will believe that they are raw. They are unretouched, totally as the scene was recorded by my iPhone.  

The car is parked again at the bottom of a modest hill that we walk up slowly, taking photographs. It's exciting to see so many shots. I think about sunset and how a good sunset would be incredible here, but we are a little too early to be able to see that last best light of the day. It's getting better, but we can't stay until sunset.  A sorbet and a bottle of water renews our flagging energy, and we finally say good-bye to the colorful, rustic town perched on a sandstone cliff and promontory in this visually rich part of France.

On the drive back to the hotel, it seems that Impressionism had to evolve here because of the nature of light and the textures of grasses, the soil, the trees and shapes of the craggy limestone cliffs and promontories. I wonder if Van Gogh hadn't painted what he saw, would someone else have eventually produced similar images? Most see that his images are timeless in their freshness and ingenuity, and it is certain that when the artist found his muse in the region of Provence he was unable to resist the urge to depict scene after scene.

We wind up the day at a pretty ordinary pizza joint in San Remy, one of a handful. I am in a bit of a fog after so much looking around today, maybe not a new sensation to me really, but it's due to the visual overstimulation. I have to sleep, have to process, have to let it sink in. This place, a jumble of things at first, is just beginning to layer into my conscious mind. People who live here have deep roots that go back centuries. The buildings are mostly 300 years old, some 800 or 1,000 years old, and things are done in certain ways for a reason, usually generating from the very stone and dirt itself. Nothing is skin deep, no place is temporary. I have a lot to learn.

Into the Heart of Provence I Go

It's time to pack up and leave Paris. At last I'm going to Provence, something I've waited to do for years. It's the mediterranean allure that attracts so many, a sensual, historically rich region that is really calling me. I'm excited not only about the travel ahead but that I've gone through a week (only a week) of living in Paris and getting a glimmer of an idea of what this city life might be like for a longer time. There is something about Paris that feels innately feminine, sophisticated and patient. Yet it has energy and verve.  A lot of what appeals about Paris is simply that it's European. The time frame of the day is different, and because of that your spirit has more room to breathe.

But, I do have a couple of hours before the train leaves Gare du Lyon at 1:15 PM, so my husband, who has just returned from Chartres after completing his own retreat, and I walk over to a cafe where the snappy waiter in black and white formal and traditional attire, seats us, takes our order, trying to sell us the big breakfast. I decline him and off he sprints for my coffee and croissant. My husband tucks into an omelette and we drift away into conversation and watch Paris from our cafe window.

Afterwards, we have enough time for a walk and angle over to Notre Dame past the dashing and beautiful fountain depicting Saint Michael and past St. Severin church and some very classic cafes nearby. Then the Seine is flowing past us and we see Notre Dame and its hordes of tourists again. It is so tremendous a structure with its glaring gargoyles and grotesque buttresses, spiny peaks and steeples that I am both fascinated and revolted by it. It does not inspire my faith to be stronger, what faith I have at this point, but it does instill fear and awe, not emotions I believe relate to heaven or aspiration to goodness and piety. I think it might be closer to morbid curiosity actually, reinforcing the belief that wickedness thrives in the world.

One way or another, we find ourselves shopping along the main narrow street on Ile St. Louis, the smaller and most elegant of the two islands in the middle of the Seine. This is an old world place, where shops are very tiny and very specialized, every one of them fine purveyors of ultra gourmet foods. A fromagerie, a patisserie or two or three, a boulangerie, a marionette store, an olive oil store, a charcuterie where chickens are sold with their long legs and feet sticking up into the air like weird dancers. It is possible to go to a different store for every ingredient of your meal along this street.

Then, with time growing short, we walk rapidly back to the Boulevard St. Germain, take the metro a half mile to our hotel's neighborhood, grab our bags, hail a taxi at the taxi stand back on the boulevard and wave good-bye to the busy urbane place that feels so foreign and so familiar all at once.

At Gare du Lyon, which is a wonderful place to watch masses of travelers as they await their trains, we eat a salad and some bread and then board the TGV, the ultra-fast super train that will take us to Avignon, a distance of 450 miles in less than three hours. Other passengers settle in and then unwrap their baguette sandwiches and drinks while the train, whisper quiet and smooth, begins to move.

After a few kilometers while we clear the outer bounds of Paris, the train accelerates up to a speed that is deceptive in its silkiness. I cannot guess the speed, but the train is capable of going 200 mph, so it must reach 150 at times. Every once in a while a train from the opposite direction causes a sensation of compressed air as it goes by with a sound like phooomph! Very cool. To my knowledge, we have nothing like it in the USA.

We arrive at the Avignon station. We have a very easy time getting our reserved car from Hertz and settle into the economy-sized Peugeot. The French drive on the same side as we do, but they use roundabouts, which I enjoy quite a bit since they feel like a nice flow of direction instead of intersections with stopping and starting all the time.

It's obvious that Provence looks like California in its best and prettiest regions just inland from the coast. That's a disorienting feeling, not only because we've just been whisked from Paris but because we really aren't in California at all. Olives, wines, cheeses, citrus, fruits and terrain are very familiar, but while some would say we are copying the French in California, Provence has been what it is for two millenia, since the times of the Roman empire.  The croplands have been plowed a long time and buildings were not built to code, if you know what I mean.

We arrive at our our hotel, which is a villa on several acres, charming and very peaceful. The land is arid, like our western states. I think we are the only English-speaking people here. The desk clerk, one of the owners, helps me by trying his English while I hesitantly give it a go in French. It's weird, but sometimes I am fine and others I do very poorly. Not enough practice. Anyway, we are here.  We are tired, too.

After a nap, we dress for dinner and drive into town, San Remy de Provence, and begin a search for a dinner place.  There are winding streets and the town is on a gentle curving slope, so it's easy to get lost in the maze. I am fascinated, as usual, with architectural details, style, colors, light, texture, the air, the sun, everything. It's slowing me down badly, but I love it.

We find a bistro so cute it's ridiculous, the real deal, called Bistro de Marie, and I have to say I cannot describe it to you except that it's in an old building whose stone interior is worn, charming, decorated with many, many collections of old toys, kitchen items, furniture pieces, pictures, art, and curious lighting. Again, living up to a building code would be totally impossible. Building inspectors reading this, do not come to Provence; you will have nightmares.

Dinner? Slices of barely seared duck in a light mustard sauce paired with arugula in a dressing, braised Provencal rabbit with olives and potatoes. Mango sorbet floated on stewed cherries finished my meal. All light, all seasonal, all new to me. That, mesdames et messieurs, was quite a day.