The End of France

    After four days in Roussillon, it was time to move.  We found an Airbnb in the smaller town of Lauris. There is really nothing of note in Lauris, which made it sound attractive. Lauris was only eleven miles south of Roussillon, but by zig-zagging we could see some extra sights.

  We stopped first in Ménerbes and walked up to the castle. Like so many of the towns in Provence, Ménerbes was built on the top of a hill. Ménerbes was the scene of an amazing siege during the religious wars of the 16th century. Provence was papal territory in those days and the Protestants decided to tweak the pope's nose by holing up in Ménerbes's citadel. Over the next five years, the pope sent 15,000 troops to roust out the 150 Protestant soldiers.

Old jail, Ménerbes

   We had time to kill before checking in to our Airbnb and a sidewalk table in a French café is the perfect place to pass the time. We sipped coffee and watched the life of the village pass by. "Are those guys going to get that big refrigerator into that narrow doorway?" Yes they are.
   Next stop was the town of Bonnieux, built on an even higher hill than Ménerbes. The guidebook says the town is "disappointing," but we found a fine cliffside spot to eat our lunch. The road out of Bonnieux down to Lauris was a never-ending series of switchbacks. I wanted to take it easy, but the locals who knew every curve wanted to run it like a road race. No one beeped, they just rode my bumper, and I pulled over to let them pass whenever there was a scenic overlook. 

View of Ménerbes from Bonnieux  

   Before going to Lauris we stopped in the nearby town of Lourmarin.  Lourmarin has a chateau. Any town with a well preserved chateau will become a tourist hotspot with numerous restaurants, chic shops, and postcard racks.  I was interested in the town's cemetery where the existentialist writer Albert Camus is buried. I used to have an affinity for Camus. 
   Camus grew up in Algeria but had to leave during the war for Algerian independence. He settled in Lourmarin because the area reminded him of his former home. This made me realize that Algeria is not all desert. Its coastal area has a Mediterranean climate, which was why France wanted it. Most French tombs are elaborate crypts in which the whole family is buried. Many are like big waist-high  beds covered with small moveable marble memorials expressing "Regrets" from family members and hunting buddies. Camus' grave was marked with a simple stone with his name and the dates 1913-1960. He died in a car crash.
   We had turned an eleven mile dash into a day long jaunt. Now it was time to head to our new home. First we stopped at a Super U supermarket. The supermarkets in France held all kinds of tempting things and the prices were comparable to home. The restaurants in France confused us. At home we usually share a restaurant meal. This is not a common practice in France. Taking leftovers home is also not common. The restaurants have daily specials which often feature fish, lamb, or duck, none of which appealed to Teresa. So we ended up buying take-out sub sandwiches or cooking in our apartment. Of course we did eat several meals in restaurants, but it was a trial. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's how it was.
   The Airbnb system worked well in France. The lodgings were much less expensive than a hotel room, plus we always got a kitchen. It was more relaxing than a hotel. We always made sure there was free parking.  We communicated with our hosts via the Airbnb website. Céline in Lauris sent us the code to open the electric gate to her driveway. It was rare that a house in town did not have an electric gate. The French value their privacy. Perhaps they like to run around naked, even in town.
   Céline, like all our hosts, was extremely pleasant and accommodating. Our little apartment was adjacent to her family's home. Our place was one long room, ending in a patio overlooking the Durance River and some distant mountains. The one downside of the place was the sleeping quarters. A narrow open stairway led to a loft with low headroom and a beam which I never learned to duck under. 
   Teresa's goal during our trip was to get a good walk in every day. On our first full day in Lauris, we decided to walk the three miles to Lourmarin where we had stopped the day before to visit Camus' grave. I used Google maps to plot a path to Lourmarin on back roads. Many streets in France are posted with the word "Impasse," which means dead-end. But that's just for cars. These roads often continue with a path that connects with another road. We had learned from previous hikes that Google maps is good at showing these little foot paths.
   So on this overcast Saturday morning we headed down the street in front of our house, carrying our furled umbrellas just in case. The road was eventually blocked with boulders to keep out cars. We skirted the boulders and hiked down a steep descent. It looked like this had once been passable for vehicles, but it had gotten deeply rutted by winter rains and never repaired. At the bottom we crossed a narrow road, but the path Google said was there ended in a field.  We had to follow the narrow road up to the busy two lane road into Lourmarin.
   It was not pleasant walking along the two lane road. For long stretches there was almost no shoulder on either side and everyone was out doing their weekend shopping because everything closes on Sunday. We got a break along the way at a nursery that was having an Autumn Festival. There were pony rides and several vendors in tents. Sheep bleated in a pen next to a display of cuts from their predecessors. What impressed us most was the 200 year old olive trees in huge tubs of soil: Year end clearance, only 1614 euros. Delivery extra.

Olive tree: still young at 200 years

  We made it to town around noon and while checking out the restaurants, the one we wanted to eat at closed. It was a bakery that also sold sandwiches. Everyplace that sells sandwiches has at least one table out front for diners. One minute the place had been bustling. When we returned a few minutes later it looked like it hadn't been opened in years. "You snooze, you lose," Teresa said. After three weeks in France we were just getting the hang of closing hours for the various businesses. It was nice to get back to Paris where businesses stayed open all day to snag the tourist dollar.
   The next day we decided to hike over to the Durance River, about two miles away in the zig-zag route Google laid out. The town of Lauris was several hundred feet above the plain of the Durance and the map on my phone showed a small road leading down. We didn't realize it would be along the face of the sheer sandstone cliff the town sits on. The cliff was on our left and at first there was a wall on our right with residences behind it, but all the residences appeared to have been abandoned years ago. Eventually the houses ended and there was a steep drop off on the right side of the path. 
  There was thick vegetation hanging down from the cliff creating a green tunnel. We came to a stretch of brambles which someone had tried to cut away, but we still got scratched and torn. Teresa questioned my navigation. I found a stick to hold the brambles out of her way. We were on the path of no return. Next we had to scramble over  several trees that had fallen across the way. I felt like we were auditioning for the parts of victims in a horror flick. 
   But we're survivors and eventually reached the flat. "We're not going back that way," Teresa confirmed. We found the quiet back road along a tiny canal that used to power an olive oil mill. We were still a mile from the river when ominous clouds began to gather. We had left our umbrellas behind and decided we better head for home. We found a road that avoided the cliffside path we had come on and before long we were back home again, Céline gave us some walnuts and grapes from her yard. Time to relax.
   The next day it rained most of the day. This was the first serious rain of the trip. We learned later that these rains were washing out railbeds in some areas and disrupting train travel. Teresa and I had both downloaded books to our devices and spent a quiet day at home. Céline felt bad about the rain and offered to refund our next two nights if we wanted to leave. But where would we go? We were happy here. During a break in the rain, we walked into the town of Lauris. It was totally untouristy yet it had all the features of towns that became tourist traps. We stopped in a bakery and ordered some goodies. As the woman put them in a bag, I realized I had no money and she was closing in five minutes. I was getting a little too relaxed.
   The next day threatened rain but we decided to drive 30 miles over to the town of Saint-Rémy. This town is famous as the place where Van Gogh checked himself into an asylum for a year. While here he painted some of his most famous paintings. The asylum still functions as a mental health center, but the part where Van Gogh lived is now a museum. Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime. Now even his minor sketches go for a million dollars. Of course none of his paintings are in this low security place, but there are full-size replicas of the paintings he did while he lived here. You can see the gardens he painted. They still grow irises there. If you look to the right from his room window, you can see the jagged mountains that formed the background for several paintings. Over there were the fields where he gathered sunflowers.

At Van Gogh's Asylum, Saint-Rémy

   But the time we finished at the asylum and got down to the city center, the old town, it was 2:00. This is the hour of restaurant closing. "We open again at 7:00 pm." How very Continental. The man in the closed place sent us across the street to another place. We craved soup and the board out front promised "potage." Inside, the waitress asked "English?" and brought us readable menus. But there was no soup listed. Asked about the potage out front, and she said "Oui." You have to be smarter than the menu.
   The map on the phone took us back to Lauris by a different route. It must like variety. When I say it was only a 30 mile drive I don't do justice to the adventure that is driving in Provence. The roads are good and traffic is usually light, but there are constant roundabouts, and towns where the road narrows and you must slow for speed bumps. On the way back, we passed though the town of Orgon which seemed to be carved out of towering limestone cliffs. Men in bars cheek by jowl with our road enjoyed their after work drinks. This place is not on the tourist trail, though we'd like to come back. 
   Day 23: We'd had the car for fifteen days and now it was due back in Orange by 11:00 am. Orange was 46 miles to the west. There was a four lane highway going that way, but that would be boring, plus it was a toll road. We had ninety minutes to go 46 miles. How hard could that be? Not hard as long as the phone map did not start sending us down the wrong way at the roundabouts, and if the traffic wasn't heavy through Cavaillon, and if we didn't have to wait five minutes at a rail crossing. We were in a bit of a hurry because we wanted to drop our luggage off at our hotel in Orange before returning the car, and we had to fill the gas tank to avoid a penalty. Also, the car place closed at 11:30 for their extended lunch hour.
   We got to the hotel at 11:00 and dropped off our bags, but could not find a gas station, so drove right back to the rental place. They did not speak English there, but by signs, the man made me understand that if I filled the tank at the station around the corner I could avoid the penalty. Thumbs up to that. On the mile walk back to the hotel we found a bakery with sandwiches and it was before noon. We were in the pink.
   After getting settled in our hotel, a place where we had spent four nights at the beginning of our trip, we walked a mile to the train station to get our tickets for Arles the next day. Theoretically, you should be able to show up at the station twenty minutes before your train arrives and buy your ticket. There are also machines in the stations that sell tickets, but we had never been able to get them to work. We had been stuck in long ticket lines before, so it was smart to go the day before and be done with it, even if no one checked your ticket on the train. Sometimes they'd do random checks and there was a huge fine for the ticketless.
   Arles, just 40 miles south of Orange, is another Van Gogh hotspot. He lived here for a year and created dozens of immortal paintings, before moving on to  the asylum in Saint-Rémy and his suicide at age 37 shortly thereafter. 
   Teresa was glad to be done with the car, but I liked it for freeing us from having to tote our luggage over rough ground and up and down stairways. Fortunately, Marcel, our Airbnb host in Arles, was happy to pick us up at the train station. On the way to our apartment, he pointed out the controversial new Frank Ghery designed building. "I like it," he said, "but some don't." He also pointed out Paddy Mullins Irish Pub. "If you want a drink after 9 pm, that's the place to go."

Trouble in River City

   Our apartment was across the Rhône River opposite the old town. This apartment was compact, with a loft, but with substantially more headroom than our last place. Marcel's wife Patricia had provided a fine lunch for us with a bottle of wine. After getting settled and enjoying the lunch, we walked across the river. The river had come up from the recent rains and was full of branches and other debris.
  There was something extra-nice about Arles. Yes, it had lots of tourists there for the Roman ruins and the Van Gogh trail, but it also seemed like a place lived in by the locals.Strolling round the winding streets provided lots of visual treats, including a Guinness at Paddy Mullins. The Guinness was also a gustatory treat.

A visual treat in Arles

   The next morning we walked along the river to the train station to get our tickets to Paris. Tied up nearby were a couple of big river cruisers. Luxury. At the train station we learned that a school holiday had begun and travel was tight. The agent worked for a while on her computer and to our relief found tickets for Sunday morning. "You'll have a two hour layover in Avignon," she said. Not a problem.
   Not far from the station was the Yellow House which Van Gogh lived in and also painted. There's just a grassy patch there now. American bombers had hit it during the war while trying to destroy a nearby bridge. They got the bridge later and it was never rebuilt, though the two stone lions on either end are still there. 
  We spent the rest of the day wandering around the city. We had paid to go inside Roman ruins in other cities, and contented ourselves here with walking around the outsides of the arena and theater. I did pay to go down into the crypts under City Hall. These crypts were the foundation of the long gone Roman forum. They were dark and dank and I had the place to myself. I got a frisson at one point when I thought I was lost, until I spotted a bust of Caesar in the distance and made for that and the exit (he goes out).

Roman crypts under modern Arles

  Saturday morning was the weekly market. We had seen some other markets up to now, but this was the best. Do you need a new mattress? Or a table that seats sixteen? Are you hungry or ill clothed?  Do you want a six week old live rabbit as a pet or for supper?  Or a clucking chicken? Do you need ingenious kitchen tools as seen on YouTube? This market took over the main street in Arles. By noon the vendors were folding their tents and packing their trucks. Some of them would be in a different town on Monday or Tuesday. There's always a market somewhere.
   Saturday night we were going to eat at a restaurant. God knows there are enough of them in Arles. We wandered the streets reading the chalk boards out front: Lamb. Duck. Fish. Teresa wanted chicken, but everyone was fresh out of chicken. We kept walking. Fish. Lamb. Duck. In desperation we went to a pizza place. We had a few pizzas in France. They were always cooked in a wood fired oven and should have been good, but they were extra floppy and had an unpizzalike taste. I'm just too used to the stuff I make at home.
   Sunday morning, Marcel drove us to the station. "In an hour, I wouldn't be able to get out of my driveway," he said. The annual Arles 10k Marathon was about to start. The police already had barriers up around town and we had to take the long way around to the station. The train to Avignon took 17 minutes.  We had two hours to kill before the fast train to Paris left.
   After sitting in the sun outside the station for awhile, Teresa suggested we walk uptown. "What, with all our luggage?" I whined. We had spent a day in Avignon earlier in the trip, but I followed along behind my wife pulling my wheeled suitcase, a souvenir laden bag on either shoulder. Teresa also had a mighty load. Well, wouldn't you know it! Another Irish pub! How about we have a wee dram here and watch the world go by sitting on the sidewalk. Or we could watch South Africa play Wales in the World Rugby Quarter Finals. No, outside is best.
   Time passes quickly in a pub or a sidewalk café, and soon we were hurtling northwards at 200 mph on the fast train. Trump was on the front of the Sunday papers and the young couple in the seats facing us seemed to be taunting us by holding it up while they whispered to each other. As we were pulling into the station in Paris, I thanked them for providing a picture of our president, because we had forgotten him while travelling in France. They blushed deeply till we told them we were members of the Resistance. Then they asked if we had enjoyed our time in France. "Oui. Bien sûr!"
   From the station we hiked over to our former hotel near the Bastille. After stowing our gear, we walked up to the Marais and found a restaurant. We learned that they served omelets for breakfast. The French don't really do breakfast, being content with a coffee and a croissant. They have a good lunch and an even better supper. But this place catered to tourists.
  Next morning we returned for our omelets. Pas mal. Not bad, as they say. We wandered around the funky Marais and on to the Louvre. A show on DaVinci had just opened but it was sold out, so we just enjoyed the ambience around the glass pyramid. On the way back to the hotel we found a Jewish falafel place for lunch. There was a live cam TV of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Will this fit in my carry-on?

   After lunch we picked up our luggage and began the ordeal of getting to the airport 12 miles north of the city center. When I get a little older, I'll splurge for a cab. Today we entered the métro, bought our tickets from a machine, and watched how other passengers did it. A bunch of kids were slipping under and over the barriers. We slipped our tickets in the slot and retrieved them in case an inspector wanted to see them. The passage through the barrier is narrow and not meant for people hauling luggage. 
   The Paris Métro is very efficient, but it's not at all handicapped accessible. There are long passageways and flights of stairs to get from one line to another. This is especially true at the Châtelet-Les Halles station where we had to catch a suburban train to the airport.  Our flight would be tomorrow. We had reserved a room at the Ibis Hotel right next to Terminal 3. Our room was reasonably priced and clean, but otherwise bare bones. Later we inspected the restaurants in the lobby. It wasn't quite seven so they were still closed. Then Teresa remembered there was a food store just across the street. Yay, sandwiches! I know it's a bit crazy to admit that we went to France and ate mostly sandwiches and spaghetti cooked in our little apartments, but that's what made us happy gastronomically speaking. We're anti-foodies.
   Our travel troubles were nearly over. The next morning a little shuttle train took us over to Terminal 2, and a 15 minute walk brought us to the Air Canada agents, passing, as we went, people travelling to and from all points of the globe, many weighed down by unwieldy bags and crates. 
   There's little more to tell. Our flight to Montreal went smoothly. It's always easier travelling home. You gain back all the hours you lost travelling east. We cleared customs and after a four hour layover boarded our final flight to Winnipeg. We arrived at nine pm, got supper at an all-night café, then caught a cab to a nearby motel. Next day at 11:30 am, Steve and Jackie Reynolds picked us up, God love 'em. Before heading home, we went to the Forks area downtown for a big plate of spaghetti, naturally.