the Laughing Boomer

 

Fabulous France

We visited France for a relatively short time, about nine days in total, once as a quick drive up from Barcelona and then after our Morocco trip, flying from Marakkesh to Marseilles. Some of our itinerary was determined by the discount airlines and their flight destinations, and in this case it worked wonderfully.

Argeles-sur-Mer has to be one of the loveliest places we’ve visited in our year of travel.It’s near the Spanish border. Argeles was originally a holiday retreat for the nearby town of Perpignan. Apparently thirty percent of the town´s villas were destroyed in 1945. Although Argeles is a destination for French vacationers, it´s resisted commercialization. The beach is long and lovely, with palm trees and oleander bushes lining a wide promenade, a couple of small cafes and a small port nearby. People bring their beach umbrellas and spend the day by the sea. We visited our friends Dena and Ross in a small town, Sorede, and then drove along the winding coastline to the Spanish border and the Costa Brava.

We had imagined Marseilles to be a grungy little town as portrayed by old movies. Instead it’s a vibrant city of 800,000 with a lovely Vieux Porte or Old Harbour with a promenade, boat tours and seaside restaurants.The Notre-Dame De La Garde is impressive – a huge cathedral on the top of a hill crowned with a massive gold statue. It was ornately decorated inside, but in a unique fashion and interestingly enough had dozens of original paintings, from small to large. We assumed them to be donations from local estates.The Petit-Train-Marseilles was a pleasant way to see the town and glorious coastline.We had an excellent meal – one of many in France – oysters, foie gras, moules, (mussels) and salmon with various cream sauces.

Our next stop was Arles, home of Vincent Van Gogh for a year. We missed the Saturday markets but enjoyed strolling through the town. Not much of Van Gogh remains, but the town has a Van Gogh trail for those wanting to trace his time there. The huge plane trees, Roman remains and old streets and ponts over the river make it easy to see why he came and stayed.

About 30 km away from Arles are wetlands in the Rhone delta, called the Parc Naturel Carmague. It´s famous for its wild horses.The area is also a bull-breeding centre, a birding reserve and has rice and salt museums. These tell the story of the famous French sea-salt produced over the centuries from the wetlands. We visited the Parc Ornithologique Du Pont-Du-Gau and saw a surprising number of species, including flamingos. Imagine our surprise when we went for an early morning walk in Saint Maries (for four Maries) de la Mer and in the lagoon were hundreds more flamingos. Saint Maries is a wonderful, quaint, simple town, with great seafood and a bullfighting centre. As we drove into town a horse show was in progress along the main street. Our seaside meal of fresh oysters, wine and listening to live Flamenco music was a memorable one. This part of France has a strong Spanish influence.

We left Saint Maries after a lovely morning beachside stroll and headed to Montpellier, where we planned to stay. We followed directions to the historic centre, but had to keep moving as there was no place to park. We saw a few outdoor coffee shops, again on a busy street but had to keep driving. We were basically spun out of Montpellier. After a year of traveling, we’ve come to know something about urban planning, and Montpellier needs help. Too bad, because it looked like a great town. Instead of stopping, we drove on to Avignon, famous for the song Sur le Pont, Avignon.

Avignon is an inland city near the River Rhone.We found a parking spot immediately and within five minutes were in the thick of this busy tourist town. We strolled along the broad, pedestrian-friendly Rue de la Republica, and viewed the Palace of the Popes, the Cathedral and the famous Avignon bridge. The major summer arts festival here means literally thousands of posters are plastered all over town. But, instead of being pasted everywhere, they are mounted on cardboard and tied to poles with string. We enjoyed our afternoon there, even though it was a very hot 37 degrees, and moved on to Aix-en-Provence for the night.

Aix is another charming town where we could have easily stayed a week. It’s also tourist-central with lots of outdoor cafes, statues, and an outdoor arts market. Several of the French towns have delightful merry-go-rounds, hand-painted with the themes of the town.The impressionist painters stayed in many of these Provence towns and little brass “C” in the sidewalk showed the Cezanne trail in Aix. We saw an exhibition of Cezanne and Picasso, which demonstrated the connection and influence of the two on each other. A lovely town – we will be back, but after our day there we drove on through small seaside towns such as La Ciotat, St. Cyr-sur Mer, Hyeres, before arriving at St. Tropez.

St. Tropez is too much – an overload of gigantic yachts, clogged streets and too many tourists. The actual town itself was not that nice but the promenade was tremendously busy with strollers out looking to see and be seen. After a night in St. Tropez we moved on. We were advised it would take two-and-a-half hours to go 45 km, and it took several hours, almost the whole day to reach our final destination – Nice. Millions of French citizens holiday in the coast, and along with international tourism, it means the whole coast suffers with traffic jams in high season. We enjoyed the view for short distances along the coast, but then drove up over the mountains to reach the main highway to make some time.

The whole French Riviera coast has breathtakingly-beautiful scenery, azure beaches, and small coves. The terrain is true Provence – worn-down mountains, lots of deciduous trees, huge plane trees, acres and acres of vineyards and lovely terra-cotta roofed farmhouses against a blue sky.

Nice, on the Cote d´Azur, topped the cake for us. We would move their in a heartbeat, if we wanted to pay 500,000 Euros for a 500 square foot apartment. Nice is a planned city that was part of Italy until 1860 and it shows. The four-mile long beach at Baie des Anges, the Promenade Des Anglais has wide boulevards and gigantic palm trees down the middle of the street, along with lots of flowers. The beach has dozens of areas where you can rent chaises and umbrellas for the day. The weather was wonderful and we enjoyed our hours-long stroll.

Many of the buildings are gorgeous, in the Belle-Epoch style, and the town has a gracious elegance about it. It’s a walking city, with major Chagall and Matisse exhibits and dozens of sidewalk-cafes, and these cafes serve truly fabulous food. Another thing we’ve learned in our year of traveling is that cities are popular for a reason. Unfortunately, we didn’t run into Elton John, Mick Jagger or Sean Connery, all whom own homes there. Simply put, Nice is nice. Unfortunately our French visit came to an end as we dropped our rental car here to catch a train to Milan. We drove over 600 kilometres in a week.

The south of France needs lots of time. We missed all sorts of wonderful towns such as perfume-producing Grasse. We found the French people to be very friendly, helpful and honest. Both women and men were very elegant, and yes, French women don´t get fat! The prices are what they are – expensive yes, but not overly so except in St. Tropez. France is definitely on our list as a place to return. We can see why southern France is consistently ranked as the number one place in the world to live and visit. It is truly beautiful.