South of France - Part III

2/10/05
Back in Aix, we finally had some rest, spent the day just hanging around in bookstores, sporting stores and theater.

2/11/05
The next day was the opposite of a resting day. Karim, Angie and I left in the morning to the Calanques, huge creeks in the rocky shore of Cassis, where you find trails along the cliffs.



The water in the Calanques has a crystal blue color, sharply switching from clear to dark that you can see even on a cloudy day like the one we had.



Even being so small, and having so much space to crawl, these bugs somehow managed to create a traffic jam.



Roberto and França would just go crazy here. There are over 3.400 conquered and catalogued routes to climb of all levels and God knows how many more waiting to be conquered.
To climb here is like walking over blue water and the scenery is breath taking. Angelique was almost crying for not having the gear to climb, it was fun to watch her desperate face.





After 2h of hike we turned around and walked back to the car. From there we drove through the Route des Crêtes to a place where there are caves on the cliffs facing the Mediterranean. One of the caves is even set with a big table for partying and provided with candles all over its extense by some of the people that use to camp here.





2/12/05
An unpleasant surprise.

This morning I had to move the car to another parking spot before 8AM, otherwise we would get a fine.Well, I woke up late, 8:20AM, and I couldn't find my pants. Everybody (Angie, Marjolaine, Karim and I) was sleeping in the same room and because of the noise I was making Angie woke up too, she suggested that I should go to move the car in my pyjamas anyway, or we would have a fine.
Ok, but I couldn't go without my driving license, that was, of course, in my wallet in the pocket of my missing pants. At this point everybody was awake, Karim offered help and came with me to move the car. We left the apartment and for my surprise we found my wallet on the floor by the door of the building, without the money (around $200 and €40).
It took me a few seconds to realize and a couple more to believe, but, we had been robbed.
On the way to the car I found on the middle of the street another piece, a lip balm, that was in my jeans' pocket, just few meters away from our door.Well, we found the wallet and the lip balm, but my jeans was still missing. We looked for it on the streets and in the garbage bins on the way to the car but couldn't find it. Damn!!.
That wasn't a lucky day, we didn't find another free parking place for the car and decided to come back to Marjolaine's apt with the car and leave it in a not allowed parking spot. When we got back in the apt, Marjolaine told us her hand bag was also missing, she called the police and they said that we had to go to the police station, so we did it.
There we spoke to a cop that asked to come back after 2PM and gave us another number to call, for the investigation team to come and to take a look in the apt, but he warned us, for a small case like this, they wouldn't work in the weekend, we had then to wait until Monday for them to come.
Marjolaine decided to talk to the neighbors upstairs to see if they heard anything. To her surprise, her bag was by the stairs on the next floor. The neighbors didn't hear anything on that night but one of them came back home after 2:30h in the morning, and he said that the bag wasn't there yet, which means, the robber came after that.
At 2PM Marjolaine and I, Adriano, went back to the police to register the case and we brought the bag taken by the robber. Right at the reception the policeman already told us that is not possible to track digitals on those materials. Anyway, Marjolaine has now a official register of the case with the police and she can try to recover the money with her insurance. Around 4PM we departed to Dettwiller. Adriano on pyjamas. :D

South of France - Part II

2/6/05
In the evening we left Aix and went to Sausset les Pins, close to Marseille, to stay at the house of Mirreille and Gerard, two motorcycle lovers. Gerard arrived just a few minutes after us, from his motocross (superbike) session. We chatted a little bit and soon it was time for dinner. Mireille served us: Tomate a la Provençale with pork chops, roasted potatoes and, of course, wine! Ou la la…

2/7/05
In the morning Mireille drove us to Ste Croix, a village by the Mediterranean sea. Here, we found a little church, right by the shore, where the wives of the fishermen were coming to pray when there was a storm. An interesting detail is that the church does not have a cross at the top front, but an anchor.



Few meters ahead there are two leftovers from the second war, a bunker, in which you can’t even get in anymore because it is filled up with earth, and the ruins of an observation point used to spot the enemy on that coast.
From there we went to Martigues; the attraction here is La Petite Venice, a kind of mini Venice, very small by the way, but really cute.



We went back home for lunch and after a delicious Moules Frites a la Provençale, we - Mireille, Gerard, Angie and I - left to visit Marseille. Our first stop was the Ste Lorin church, built in 14th century.



From there we can see the remains of a fort as Gerard explained to me. What is unusual about it is that the cannons were pointing to the city and not the the sea - to control the crazy people of Marseille according to my friendly guide.

An old charity house, historical site of the city, was used to help the homeless from that time, they would find food and shelter there. What caught the attention of Gerard is that by reading the explanation at the entrance of the place, the French text is different then the English, and seems to be more realistic. The French explanation state that the place was used to keep the homeless enclosed in there, in other words, away from the streets of the city.






That might be actually more accurate, since the whole place has no windows to the outside, but only to the chapel in the middle of the yard.

Resisting the time and the changes is a little Fisherman neighborhood, where the boats are right in front of the houses.



After that, we climbed the hill and went to the Basilica Notre Dame de la Guarde.



It is at the top of a mount where from you can see the whole Marseille, very nice view of the city. Inside of the church there are lots of little boats hanging. The fishermen use to make a little replica of their boats and bring it to the church to ask for protection.



Just before heading home we passed by what is considered the Champs Elysée of Marseille and then stopped by the Palais Longchamp, a museum today.



2/8/05
Next day we went to visit the Camargue region, known for having wild bulls and horses freely running around in its fields. There are also lots of flamingos, one of the symbols of Camargue. We went to check the Salin De Girard, a salt production site, but it seems that in winter no salt is being produced, we were expecting to see the huge piles of salt but they just weren't there.

We drove around the Etang de Vaccarès which should be renamed to Duck Lake, because there are thousands of ducks there, all over, and it is a very cool sight when a single duck decides to take off and all the rest goes after it.



The Flamingos are more sparse, but also very interesting.
After the lake we stopped by Ste-Marie de la Mer, a Gypsy city, in a region believed to be where the christianization of France started, around the 2nd century. Here, a rustic church has being the place of Gypsy pilgrimage since the 6th century. In the festivities days, they come from all over Europe and even from other continents. It's the Gypsy's Meca.





From there we went to see what I thought didn't exist anymore: Aigues-Mortes, a city with its ‘complete’ and original medieval wall around it.



The city has been built between 1272 and 1310 to be a port with access to the Mediterranean to trade with Italy and the Orient.

From there Louis IX left for the crusades on two occasions. But once Provence, a dependency of the German Holy Roman Empire, had become part of France in 1481, Marseille replaced Aigues-Mortes and that was a key point for the preservation of the walls. It is all there, a 'modern' city completely surrounded by middle age walls.

Of course today the city of Aigues-Mortes goes way beyond the walls but If you want to buy an apt inside the shield you can have it for a bargain of €500.000 for a 160m

We then went to Arles, a city with roman constructions dating from the 1st century B.C.. The Arena still hosts the corridas, when a guy challenges a bull.



Vincent van Gogh has produced around 600 paintings in Arles, including Cafe de Paris and La Chambre which is the room from the little house that you see in the picture below. Also, Picasso spent a lot of time in Arles to watch corridas and, loving the city, he donated 57 paintings that are currently in the local museum.



2/9/05
Next day we drove around Sausset; Mireille took us to les Petites Calanques of Mejan and of Niolon. On our way back to Aix, we stopped at the aqueduc of Roquefavour, a replica of a Roman aqueduc in Gars (another region of France).

South of France - Part I

2/3/05 12:40 am
After three days of sleeping on the floor, waking up at 7:30h to go skiing and after a long drive from the Alps to Aix en Provence, we had a long and desserved sleep in a warm and comfortable bed. Next morning Marjolaine, Angelique’s sister, and Karim, her boyfriend, left early to go to the university. Karim was free in the afternoon and took us to a tour in Aix en Provence which is a Universitary city. It is made of little streets where a small car can barely fit. There are plenty of little restaurants, bakeries in every other corner and dog's shit everywhere, yep, there is dog's shit everywhere, you always have to be alert not to step in one, but even though, soon or later it will happen...



2/4/05 1:48 pm
The visiting marathon starts. On that day, we stopped by the University to read our emails. Curious enough is that the University does not check if the ones using the computers in their labs are actually students! Anyway, that done we left for a very small village named Vauvenargues where Picasso's house is. It is a private property today and it has a 'kind' sign by the gate saying that it is not open for visits and it also has a reminder that the museum is in Paris.
After that, we went for a little hike in the Reserve de Sainte Victoire.



We got the wrong path and ended up in the middle of nowhere. To make the way back, we walked through the fields that were nicely smelling the herbs de Provence, not a good place to hike if you're hungry and carry no food with you. Also, in this reserve, there is a refuge used by Cezanne, but we didn't get to see it.
We passed through the Barrage de Bimont which is a very small hydroelectric dam that must not produce much electricity, but right from the top of it you can see a smoking nuclear power plant, Gardanne. It does not feel quite good to hike so close to it. But to compensate there was, on the other side, the nice Ste Victoire mount under a blue sky. On the way back we stopped to buy ingredients for Karim, which is from Tunisia, to cook an authentic Tunisian Couscous for us. It took a long time to be ready but it was delicious, we had also Alsatian white wine, Riesling, Chinese hot souce an a weird Tunisian hot sauce that comes in a tube just like a tooth paste!

2/5/05 9:37 am
Next day we went to see Le village Des Bories, a sheperd village made of stone huts. The first ones are believed to settle there around 400 B.C. The houses are made purely of piled stones and the ones that where still standing there date from the Middle Age, 1200 to 1500. Some houses are accomodations, some are bakeries, some for producing wine with still some tools left.


From there we went to Gordes, another town with more then 2000 years of history with a castle, also from the Middle Age, that belonged to the same family for more then 700 years. The city was hit by the German army in 1944. It is open for tourism since 1960. It is considered one of the 7 most beautiful villages in France and it really is! The yellowish houses are blended in to the colour of the mountain. From far away it just seems like a simple mount.



From there we went to Roussillon, another cute village on the top of a hill. Here the rocks are redish and so the whole village is redish too.
Enough of villages! We then went to see the Cistercian Abbey of Senanque, also built in the 12th century. The Abbey is surrounded by Lavanda fields which is today the main source of income for the monks living there.



The Cistercian is a branch of the Christian church which believes that the rich details and decoratian of churches would drift the thoughts of the monks and keep them away from their pourpose which is to reflect about God, so the Abbey is made of raw stones, no decorations at all. You can even see the signatures of the workers from the Middle Age that were constructing the walls of the church. By their signatures on the stones (a simple sign) they could track how much each worker did and pay them accordingly. In the other churches you cannot see it, because the stones are covered with paintings and decors, but it is there.


2/6/05 9:37 am
On the way to the Gorges du Verdon we stoped by Ste-Croix Lac, a breath taking view of a green lake with the mountains in the back. From this view point, there is a map indicating all the sports you can do around here. Biking, canoying, rock climbing, jogging, rafting, hiking, parapent and even doing nothing, just looking, relaxing and appreciating, which is what we were doing there.
We followed the road in the direction of the Gorges du Verdon, which was the big thing of the day, a canyon with a unbelievable green water at the bottom, the Verdon river.





The road is somewhat impressive, with several sections barely wide enough for one car, not to mention that it is at the edge of a huge cliff. It was freezing, completely empty and quiet up there.
After going all around the Gorges, we went to a medieval village, Trigance, from year 400 B.C. It is so small that it might have not more then 300 people, all houses are made of rocks and there is not a single straight wall in the whole village, everything is bending to one side or another. We visited another two other villages, Rougon and Moustier and many others tiny villages that we passed through and there is no way I will remember all the names, but one interesting thing is that all these little villages have a memorial at the entrance for the soldiers killed in the first world war.
That same night, we left Aix en Provence and went to Sausset les Pins, more south and closer to Marseille.

The Alps

Lots of snow, fun and wine... that's was our three-day stay in the Alps!