Monthly Archives: October 2023

Nice, France

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Day 54, Saturday, October 21, 2023

We catch the train to Nice this morning. We are both happy to be sitting on a train instead of driving and navigating.  It is a nice change and Bob can watch the scenery go by instead of concentrating on driving.

I draw on the train. I feel out of practice but it is still nice to be drawing…I haven’t done nearly as much of it as I had hoped to this trip.The Nice train station is really big, clean and airy.

It is a short walk from the train station to the main tourist area by the beach.  We stop at a park for our lunch, and I wonder if the water is from yesterday’s big rain…or if it is a fountain?

A couple minutes later I have my answer.  These two young boys had the best time playing in the water jets.

We laughed at this big dog who jumped and tried to bite every jet of water he passed.  He was having such fun.  There were such neat reflections too.

This very large sea gull was eyeing our lunch, just hoping a few crumbs would fall his way…I’m afraid a few did…who could resist that gaze?

After lunch we visit the Cathedral of Saint Reparata., which is a National Monument.  It is very ornate and in great shape…no peeling paint here.  

The flower market is beautiful and the prices are very reasonable.

We try some socca. It is a thin chickpea bread that is sprinkled with pepper.  We have to wait a few minutes for a fresh pan to arrive (it is brought hot from the ovens in a wheeled cart) and it is delicious! It is also a bargain at just 3€ for a huge slice.  I am going to have to try making this at home.

Even though we have just had lunch, and socca, I am craving a cassis (black current) sorbet from Fenocchio’s, a world famous ice cream shop. They have 94 flavors of  ice creams and 35 of sorbet, but I stick with my favourite.  

After my sorbet we walk towards the beach.  

Nice has a pebble beach, and lots of sun worshippers.  I stay at the beach to draw some of them and Bob goes for a walk and climbs to two viewpoint.  There is one on top of the cream round structure in the distance and another higher up on top of the hill.

I take a photo of someone who I think is Bob…and he takes a photo trying to find me on the beach.  Do we think alike?

This is definitely me, I am sitting right beside the two rinse towers…and I get a light spray every time someone rinses off!  I was settled in by the time this happens the first time so I decide to stay put, in spite of the occasional mist of water that floats my way.

I am happier with my beach drawings.

This fellow was sitting beside me and he was very brown.  He was also wearing black underpants, which appears to be a common thing here.  People are not shy about changing on the beach, women pull off their tops and bras to change into their bathing suits and I saw lots of men just wearing underpants as their bathing suit.  There were a few topless women as well…it is the French Riviera after all.

We do a bit of window shopping, or as they say here, leche-vitrine, which translates to lick the windows!  I have had a couple treats here, but gluten really doesn’t agree with me so I have to content myself with a bit of window licking!  Oh and did you notice the prices?  

We stroll along the boardwalk, people watching and enjoying the sunshine…

but the sun is getting glow in the sky and we head back to catch our train.

Bob notices something strange about this building… Here is a clue.

Yes, the whole side of the building is a giant mural!  We pass this interesting fountain…

and there are seven of these statues high on poles above the street.  Google tells me that they were created by Jaume Plensa, a Spanish artist who specializes in monumental art.

They represent the seven continents and the communication between the different communities of today’s society. They are titled “Conversation à Nice”and they are illuminated every night, with slowly changing colours.  Too bad we won’t see that but it is a long ride home.

We were in Nice over 40 years ago and visited the Matisse Museum.  I was hoping to visit it again today, but it closes during the noon hour, and then we just ran out of time.  I am OK with not visiting so many museums this trip, there are so many other things to do and only so much time.

Cannes, The Morning After the Storm

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Day 53, Friday, October 20, 2023

This morning everything looks pretty normal.  We were lucky as a town north of Nice was not so fortunate.  Here is a short video showing some of the flooding there.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nice-mayor-speaks-scene-flooding-101453363.html

It looks pretty normal after breakfast, so Bob decides he should go and check out what the ocean looks like… and all I can think of is rogue waves!  They have not lifted the Red Alert at this point.

Here is another view to the west from our apartment balcony.

This is definitely a different ocean than the one we saw yesterday, when there were almost no waves at all.

This is the front view of the Cannes sign from yesterday’s post and the hill that Bob climbed…

and he found the daily local market.

This boat is so big that Bob can’t even get it all in one photo!

Here is the view from the stern end.

Bob thought this boat looked quite impressive.  He arrives home just in time for lunch.  I am just happy that he didn’t get swept out to sea by a rogue wave! 😃 😂I have an Osteopath appointment in the early afternoon.  I’m hoping it will help alleviate the headaches I have been having.  Then we both veg out for the rest of the day, reading, and watching TV.

Cannes…. Emergency Red Alert!

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Day 52, Thursday, October 19, 2023

It is cloudy, rainy day so we decide to spend the day at home.  We had a rather interesting evening though.  The Emergency Alert on our phone went off letting us know that there was a Red Alert for high winds, torrential rain, high waves and possible flooding.

This is the information about the alert.

“Météo France has upgraded its storm warning for the Alpes-Maritimes to a red alert – while the Alpes-Maritimes préfecture has ordered all schools and town halls to remain closed on Friday.

Torrential rainfall is forecast between 4am and 10am on Friday. The department is also on an orange alert for strong winds and high waves.

The forecaster has warned of “a particularly intense rain storm episode” overnight.  Locally, up to 25cm of rain could fall within a few hours – in an echo of the deadly floods that hit the Riviera in October 2015.

The City of Nice has opened a crisis centre overnight to monitor the worsening weather conditions.It has already ordered the closure of all parks, gardens, cemeteries and coastal paths until further notice.

All schools and creches in the Alpes-Maritimes will be closed on Friday. Boarding school pupils are being sent home by bus.The Alpes Maritimes préfecture is asking people to work from home on Friday wherever possible.

What’s happening tonight is a so-called Mediterranean episode – a weather phenomenon in which hot and humid air from the Mediterranean generates violent storms, most commonly in the autumn, that can see a large amount of rain fall in just a few hours.

The storm could see waves up to four metres high and winds gusting up to 110 kilometres per hour.

In the event of violent storms, the official advice is to avoid driving and stay at home, stay away from coastal paths, avoid going into cellars or underground car parks and stay informed with your local mairie.

The weather is due to calm down again on Saturday.”

Needless to say it was a bit hard to get to sleep.  We weren’t sure what to expect.  It got very windy with heavy rain when I got up about 4:00 am and the sky had a weird yellowish light but in a couple of hours it settled down.  I think we were lucky and missed the worst of it.

Cannes, France

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Day 51, Wednesday, October 18, 2023

This sweet little mourning dove joined me this morning as I sat and worked on our blog.  He visited for about twenty minutes before flying away.

I am having a stay at home day and Bob decided to go climb to the high point in Cannes.

There is a great view of the city from up here.

From the distant hills…

to a view of the harbour we walked to yesterday.  There were a few showers but Bob said he found places to hide and wait them out.

Cannes, France… Big Boats

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Day 50, Tuesday, October 17th, 2023

We are in the French Riviera!  We thought it would get warmer and sunnier the further south we went, but not so…today is cloudy and only 21°.  On our way to the beach I notice these strange cones from some type of coniferous tree, no idea what they are but they were very prickly!

Our first view of the Mediterranean Sea this trip.  No sunbathers on the beach today.

It started to rain a bit and this little sweetie wanted her own umbrella!  I asked her dad if I could ‘prends un photo’ and he smiled and said yes.  She was such an independent little girl.

soon we are at he harbour checking out the boats.  

People watching is very interesting.  This young lady posed for several photos for her friend…and me!  It was quite the outfit she was wearing, with her thong panties quite visible.

There are a lot of sailboats moored here…

and then there are the big boats…

and the really big boats…

complete with all the accessories!  It is really mind boggling to see these huge boats and we can only imagine how much they cost, not only to purchase but to maintain and operate.  Not something we will ever have to worry about!

The boats names are interesting…from the rather strange  ‘maxi beer Oliver’s bear’, to the curious No.9 (is this the ninth boat that they have owned?, to the quite pretentious Veni Vedi Vici  ( I Came, I Saw, I Conquered ) to the more modest ‘Lucky Us’.

I wonder if this is a game of “My mast is taller than your mast?”

There are so many of these huge boats, or perhaps I should be calling them ships?  I’m not sure of the correct terminology.

Boats aren’t the only expensive item in Cannes.  The little black boots are 1100 € and the tall boots are 1300 € !

I don’t think we can afford a vacation home here either!  Look a the price for a three or four room apartment, ranging from 74 to 110 square meters.

On our walk we passed several interesting murals, all movie or film related.

Carcassonne to Cannes and The Fonsernes 9 Locks

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Day 49, Monday, October 16th, 2023

Today we travel from Carcassonne to Cannes.  It is a 4 1/2 hour drive if we use the toll highway and 7 1/2 hours without so we decide to pay the tolls.  We make a side trip to Beziers to visit the Fonsernes 9 Locks.  On our way there we drive by a very strange design on Google maps… I wonder if it might be some sort of irrigation system?

A bit of research solves the puzzle.  Who knew?

‘The Étang de Montady, or Pond of Montady is a drained pond or lagoon.. It was built by monks and wealthy Béziers landowners during the second half of the 13th century. The Étang de Montady was drained to provide farmland by making radial ditches from a single center point out to the extremities.  The water flows to this center point and is then drained by sixteen vertical shafts to an underground culvert.’~ info from Wikipedia.

It was a bit of a challenge to find the locks.  First of all we drove to the town of Beziers where we thought we would find the locks, but there were no locks in sight.  We did find a spot to have our lunch though, overlooking a pretty river and the Cathedral Saint-Nazaire.

We check at the location again and this is what google maps tells us!  Really??  We need to get from the blue arrow to the red pin…and we do it!  Pretty impressive navigating and driving I think! I wanted a photo of this pretty bush covered with orange berries, and Bob hams it up by giving himself an orange moustache.

The Canal du Midi connects the Mediterranean Sea to Toulouse.  It has 360 navigable kilometers and there is a drop of more than twenty meters from this location to the town of Beziers.  The locks were built in 1676 to deal with that change in elevation.

We watched these two boats make their way through the locks.

The water level begins to lower…as the water pours into the basin below.

Soon the water levels in the two basins are equal and the lock gates open…

and the boats advance to the next basin and this process is repeated 7more times.

This boat with four couples from South Africa barely has room to squeeze through the open gates.

The 9 locks of Fonseranes have a total of 8 ovoid-shaped basins and 9 doors and in 1996, they were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as is the entire Canal du Midi.

At the bottom of the locks there is a gate that appears unused for some time.  It has grown a water garden on its backside.

Back on the highway we pass through yet another toll booth.  This one is pretty big.  The crazy thing is that on the other side there are no lanes.  Once you pay your toll the gate goes up and all the cars need to merge back onto the highway.  It is kind of crazy.

Bob says he can tell we are getting close to the French Riviera because there are expensive cars on the road.  A Lamborghini costs anywhere from $221,000 to more than three million dollars!  I can’t even imagine driving a car that is that expensive.

The turn off to Cannes is a bit convoluted…we have had a lot of strange routes on this trip.

We check into our next Airbnb…only this one has palm trees and a view of the ocean in the distance.

 

 

Montolieu, Village of Books

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Day 48, Sunday, October 15, 2023.

We are on our way to Montolieu which is known as a Book Town.  I love driving down these pretty.tree lined roads.

“The happy story about this village, with 800 residents, and books, would not have been written without the desire, charisma and enthusiasm of Michel Braibant, a Belgian bookbinder who was living in Carcassonne, who sadly died just two years after his lifetime mission was completed in 1992. Aware of the concept of ‘book towns’ in Europe, he decided to create a new Book Village in Montolieu, which would be home to bookshops and craftspeople, as well as a conservatory for Book Arts and Trades.”   ~ Carcassonne Tourism Booklet

We find a bench in this little park next to the Saint-André church for our picnic lunch.

The inside of Saint-André is well preserved…

with lots of decorative paintings in the chapels.  But take look at those pews in the photo above….they were most uncomfortable!

We are at the Museum of Book Arts and Crafts when it opens its doors at 2:00.  This display of 1,100 years of handwriting was interesting.

There were many different types of print making machines and printing presses, most of which I had never heard of.  This Linotype machine uses hot metal injected into a mold made by ‘typing’ on all those keys to make lines of text, which was much faster to use than hand setting individual lead type letters.  After they were finished printing the type would be melted down and reused.  Quite ingenious.

A little film explaining lithographic printing brought back memories of my university days and all night printing sessions!  Bob used to help me with these printing sessions, so he found it interesting too.

Now, this made me feel rather old!  This Gestetner machine is just like the one I used when I first started teaching way back in the ’70’s.  It was messy and slow and the machine was very temperamental.  This is what we used for handouts before photo copy machines were in common use.

This large paper cutter is from the late 1800’s

We spend an hour and a half in the museum and when we leave, the bookstores that were closed for lunch are now open.  There are 15 bookstores in this tiny town and they only sell second hand books.  

Most of them have bins of books out on the street to entice customers.

A peek inside one of the bigger bookstores.There are some interesting book themed signs, although we are not sure what this stake of burnt looking books is supposed to represent.

Another book sculpture….seems staked books are a bit of a theme? I do feel a bit sorry for French children.  This is a typical French school playground. Cities and towns have few areas where children can run and play on grass.  Most parks have signs to keep off the grass, if there is even any grass!  I think because the population is so dense, that if people were allowed on the grass it just wouldn’t survive the heavy use.

These old houses have very thick walls.  New windows are installed here but look at how deep set they are.

We sit for a while watching these Pétanque players. They often take this game quite seriously and they are very good players.  We have to laugh though when one of the players takes the little target ball from another team and hides it.  They were just like young boys playing keep-away, passing the little ball from one to the other all the while exclaiming loudly that they didn’t have the ball at all!  Too funny.

More tree lined streets on the drive home.  I will miss these beautiful trees when we leave.

Caunes-Minervois, and Brousses, France

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Day 47, Saturday, October 14, 2023.

Bob has been doing a fantastic job as tour director.  He has found two little villages nearby that look interesting, Caunes-Minervois, which is known as the Red Marble Village, and Brousses, which has a working paper mill.  First stop is the Red Marble Village.  We find parking along a dry river bed and and a walkway with lots of red marble sculptures.

The sculptures are quite large…however this poor fellow has lost his horns.

We walk into the town and turn the corner to find this lovely little park with an old fountain and the biggest Sycamore trees…or at least that is what I thought they were. The sign says that they are 200 year old Plane trees.   I do a bit of Googling and it seems that a Sycamore is a type of Plane tree or maybe a Plane tree is a type of Sycamore?   It isn’t clear but I am not going to spend any more time trying to figure it out.  Guess I need to start calling these trees Plane trees.

This is quite a pretty little village, with flowering Morning Glory vines, 

and lots of narrow streets. 

We had stopped at the tourist information and the walking map we picked up led us past this magnificent marble horse head.  Of course I needed my photo with this one.

One interesting thing we saw was a couple being shown a very old, run down looking house by a real estate person (the man walking towards the doorway). Seems like they were seriously thinking of purchasing…it didn’t look very appealing to me, but?

Our walking tour soon leads us back to the square with the ‘Plane’ trees. 

We follow the tourist map to this hilltop view of the valley and the village and do our best to find the trail to the red marble quarry, but have no luck.  It certainly isn’t well marked, and the trail just seems to die out. We can see the backside of the quarry which is a huge long pile of stone rubble along the road, but we don’t see any way to go further. 

We go back to the car where we have our lunch and then on the way back to town stop at a little “marble garden” to see several more marble sculptures.

On our drive to the paper mill we pass the ruins of three castles.  There is a walking trail  but it looks a bit more strenuous than we thought so we decided to keep driving to the paper mill in Brousses.

It is a lovely drive through vineyard after vineyard…

with hills off in the distance.  I can’t help but think that owning a vineyard must be an awful lot of work and not nearly as idyllic and romantic as it is often portrayed in movies and novels.

We stop to try to find out what this strange machine might be.  There are several  buildings at its base, but no sign or explanation.  Both wheels are turning slowly…maybe someone knows what this is?

The machine above was located right next to a huge solar panel farm and the ground is littered with these tiny white snail shells, but no sign of any live snails.

It took us a while to find the paper mill.  We had the wrong spot pinned on Google maps but we eventually sorted it out.  The Moulin à Papier, or Paper Mill in Broussess wasn’t what I was expecting.  It used to produce paper commercially but now the granddaughter runs the mill which has been in the family for seven generations.  They now make paper by hand using pretty much the same process that I use back home with our Paper Arts Guild.  After a sheet of paper is made it needs to be couched  (pronounced “cooched”)  or transfered to another surface. Here they have been couched onto synthetic interfacing, then pressed and hung to dry in the rafters. Every year, artist Catherine Cappeau makes a collection of paper dresses, which you can see on display in the paper mill.

This huge old Hollander is no longer in use today  It is probably five times a large as the one we use in our guild.  This machine is used to beat the fibres to make the paper pulp.

The Hollander in use today can be seen behind the hanging sheets.  This is the area of the mill that is used for paper making.  There are only two papermakers who work here today.  They use a lot of recycled cotton cloth, mostly blue jeans and bed sheets. The only coloured paper they make comes from the colour of the cotton cloth that is used to make the pulp.  The material is cut into small pieces and then processed in the Hollander.  Interestingly, they also use horse and elephant dug to make paper as well.

Now this is a press!

There is little store here, where paper, handmade books, cards and other paper related items are sold.  I think that most of the mill’s income likely comes from the tours they offer several times a day, every day except Christmas and New Years!  They are set up for school tours as well.  It was interesting, and there was a lot of equipment that was in use 100 years ago when this mill was in full operation.  However I didn’t really learn anything new, other than our Guild members back home makes really good quality handmade paper and we don’t charge nearly enough when we offer items for sale!

Today it is the last paper mill in operation in this area.  There were six paper mills here in 1845.  This millstone grinder, with its 3 tonne stones used to grind 300 kms of recycled paper fibres a day in 1954!

There is a bridge over the Dure River and a little picnic area.

It is really pretty location.

There are some interesting clouds with shafts of sunlight on the drive home.

Carcassonne, Friday 13th…

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Day 46, Friday, October 13, 2023.

Bob decided he does not want to drive on Friday 13.  I didn’t know he was so superstitious!  That works for me.  I am happy stay put for a bit.  We had originally planned a couple day trips from Carcassonne: to Albi to visit the Toulouse Lautrec museum and to Toulouse for a tour of the AirBus factory.  That isn’t going to happen now as I’m not feeling up to two long days of travel and sightseeing.  Too bad but it is what it is.  So I have a quiet morning and Bob goes exploring. He climbs the hill to visit the back side of La Cité.

He walks over to the cemetery we saw in the distance yesterday.  We both enjoy visiting old cemeteries.

On the way to La Cité he walks along a wall covered with a medieval style mural spelling out the name Carcassonne.  We saw this at the end of street when we walked to La Cité yesterday but didn’t look at it then. I was unable to find out any information about this, which is a shame. It is really quite lovely.,

In the late afternoon we both go for a little walk.  I find more gargoyles, well…actually Bob was the one who spotted these.

We go into Église Saint Vincent and… discover that we can climb the bell tower for just 2.5 euros!  I’m not wanting to do it today but I hope we can get back another day.  We have climbed a lot of bell towers on our other trips, but so far not a one this time.

The old city in Carcassone has a lovely big open square with a fountain and lots of restaurants and cafés around its perimeter.  There are lots of people sitting outside enjoying the lovely evening.

I had to get a photo of this huge old Sycamore tree.  I wish they would grow back home.  Our winters are just too cold.

Shop windows are starting to display Halloween items.  These creatures are all made of chocolate.  We have seen so many closed shops, restaurants and galleries.  Every block in this old part of town, which is frequented by tourists, has at least one or two shops that have shut down.  On some streets almost every second shop is closed. I am pretty sure this is because of Covid.  It makes me quite sad.

 

Medieval Cité in Carcassonne, France

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Day 45, Thursday, October 12, 2023.

I’m feeling bit better this morning so we go visit the medieval citadel called la Cité.  It is a half hour walk and we pass a church on the way that has incredible gargoyles.  I love gargoyles.

I thought this one was particularly interesting. This is one of the entrance gates to the old city of Carcassone.

The medieval city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has 52 towers and 2 ramparts.  Bob is standing beside a sculpture of Dame Carcas who ruled the city when it was attacked by Charlemagne in the 8th Century.   After being under siege for five years, there was only a sack of grain and one pig left to eat.  Dame Carcas fed the sack of wheat to the pig and threw it over the ramparts at the enemy, who thought that they must have a lot of food left if they could throw it over the walls, so they called off the siege and left. Dame Carcas had the bells of the city rung in victory, “Carcas… sonne” means  “Carcas is ringing”.

This is the massive entrance past the outer ramparts into the Cité.  This citadel has two sets of walls and two ramparts for protection.

and I am standing at the entrance to the residence of the ruling family built inside the fortress in 1130.

Here is another view of what is really a fortress within a fortress.

Our visit starts with a walk along part of the ramparts overlooking an interior courtyard…

and continues through some of the buildings and towers.

These wooden additions to the ramparts allowed soldiers to attack the enemy from above.  There are holes in the floor to allow attack from above on anyone trying to enter the fortress.

I was expecting to see furnished rooms, similar to our visits to the chateaus of the Loire Valley but any rooms we walk through are unfurnished.  A couple room have sculptures that were removed from Saint-Nazaire Church during the restoration of this walled city in 1846 and placed here for preservation.  I particularly liked these carved heads that were part of the exterior cornice.  They are all smiling cheerfully.This is mostly an opportunity to see the fortifications that make this citadel so unique.

I love all the colours on this old tiled roof.

From the ramparts we can see the path we will be taking when we leave the citadel, however we found a set of stairs near the beginning of this long ramp that is a much shorter route.Carcassonne  is now considered to be the largest and best conserved medieval fortress in Europe.  It is impressive with its set of double walls and ramparts.  Both sets of walls and the area between them can be seen in this photo.

This one tower looked out of place, it was built with different stone blocks and had a different look that the rest.  

The Saint-Nazaire Basilica has an outdoor theatre that was built where the cloister once stood.  It is just visible behind the church and has 5,000 seats and is in use for productions every summer.

We sit for a while inside the church listening to beautiful cello music.  I think the musician just liked the acoustics…he played several songs and then just got up and left.

On a plaque outside the church is a reproduction of drawings of some of the church’s gargoyles drawn in 1858.  I guess I am not the only one who likes gargoyles!

On our way home.