France | LisaLarry.com

Le Tour

Lisa / July 26, 2009 / France, Travel

We were both excited to discover that the next to final stage of the Tour de France, stage 20, was going to come within a half hour of where we are living. Mont Ventoux is a punishing 20 km climb at 8% grade and is the last stretch of stage 20.

Looking up at Mont Ventoux from the town of Saint Colombe. The finish line is right where the tower is.

We left our apartment at 3 am on Saturday morning to get a spot along the route. The area near the top of Mont Ventoux had already been full and closed off by police for several days, so the best we could hope for was a spot somewhere along the climb. We packed some snacks, our American flags (who knew we’d have another use for them after D-Day in Normandy?), and a bunch of water and headed out.

Arriving at the route was like coming into a huge all-night tailgating party. Cars, campers, and tents were strewn alongside the road and the vineyards everywhere. Young’uns were busy painting various thoughts of either derision or encouragement along the road for the riders to see as they drove along, everything from “Cantador dopes!” to “Go on, you can do it!”. It reminded me of tailgating at all the Dave Matthews Band concerts I’ve been to in Hartford with friends over the years. One giant drunken party, only instead of lots of beer and various illegal substances, the crowd was hopped up on too much wine and cheese, no doubt.

Campers set up wherever they could find a flat spot of ground

After hitting the spot where the police had closed off the road, we found a place to secure our little car on about km 2 of the 20-km slope and then tried to sleep. Sleeping in the car never results in a good outcome either for one’s sense of rest or one’s back and neck. We awoke with the sun and as we stretched our sore necks, we noticed a parade of hundreds of hikers and bikers making their way up the mountain. The bikers were doing it, obviously, because they just wanted to say that they also had climbed Mont Ventoux just before the peloton. The hikers wanted to be further up the mountain and had no way to get past the road blocks except on foot. I applauded their diligence but was perfectly happy myself to stay where we were. I wasn’t really up for a nearly 20 km climb in flip flops.

After a while we decided to walk up the road to the nearest town, Saint Colombe, to see what was happening and to eat some early morning sandwiches. It was definitely a festival atmosphere, with loud music, tons of noisy people, and souvenir vans stopping every few feet as they drove up the road to sell official Tour merchandise.

According to the schedule of the stage, the bikers weren’t expected to arrive at our spot until a little after 3 pm, which made for a long, very hot day. The sun was relentless and there wasn’t much of a breeze, unfortunately. We chased shade as much as we could and cursed the fact that we forgot to bring sunblock (I wasn’t thinking too clearly at 3am) as we felt our arms and legs bake in the Provencal sunshine.

About an hour before the bikers were scheduled to arrive, the sponsor entourage began making its way up the mountain, driving specialized vehicles sort of like parade floats and throwing out freebies into the crowd, everything from gummy bears to newspapers to bottles of water to balloons for waving at the riders. The crowd was becoming palpably excited and it was infectious.

We waited, and wilted, and tried to turn so the sun wasn’t hitting the worst burned parts of us. Finally the moment arrived as we saw the first appearance of the gendarmerie clearing the road and saw the press cars and press helicopter hovering on the road just below the bend.

The lead press cars and press helicopters tipped us off that their arrival was imminent.

The gendarmes clearing the road for the bikers.

My job was to man the video camera while Larry was getting shots off with his digital slr camera. We had known ahead of time that Lance Armstrong was in 3rd place overall but didn’t know where he’d be within the pack in this stage. The lead team of only about 5 riders came through first, and then there was a break while more team vehicles made their way past, before the second, larger group came through.

Team cars coming through with extra bikes and other equipment

We couldn’t even tell until we checked the footage later because it all happened so fast, but Lance Armstrong was in the second group, along with the winner of this year’s tour, Alberto Contador. You can see him on the other side of Contador, wearing the Astana team jersey and black socks and shoes, in the video that Larry took below.

The third and final group came through shortly after that, and then – it was over.

The final and largest group coming through

12 hours of tailgating for essentially 5 minutes of riders blowing by. It was totally worth it. Larry was especially excited as he grew up watching the Tour on TV and remembers watching many years where the Tour included the climb up Mont Ventoux. Now, he had been able to witness it in person.

We went back to the nearest village below us, Bedoin, where we watched the riders complete the climb and arrive triumphantly at the summit, along with hundreds of other spectators.

Music of the Provençal Summertime

Larry / July 23, 2009 / Concerts, France, Travel, Vagabonding

(Double-click video to play. Single-click to pause/stop.)

Due to the noise the cicadas make, I’ll transcribe the audio.
Larry: Talk about them…
Lisa: You are listening to the music of Provençal summertime which is the cicadas, or cigales in French. They are loud and they are everywhere! But I kind of like it.

The True Van Gogh Country

Lisa / July 23, 2009 / Concerts, France, Miscellany, Travel

For our third wedding anniversary, we decided to spend the day immersed in Van Gogh. We set out for Arles and St. Remy de Provence, the former being the place where he lived and shared an apartment with Gaugin before famously losing his ear, and the second being the site of the mental hospital where he spent a very productive year after the incident in Arles. Arles and St. Remy are the places where most of his best-known and most beloved works were painted. Van Gogh painted 187 paintings while in Arles and 142 paintings in the year he was at St. Remy.

We went first to St. Remy to visit the sanitarium at St. Paul de Mausole, which is just outside the center of St. Remy and is still a mental institution, now known as the Van Gogh Institute. Here in a separate part of the complex they have kept and preserved Van Gogh’s room as it was when he stayed here. They have hanging on the walls several of Van Gogh’s letters written to his brother Theo describing his surroundings. Judging from his writings, it actually seems he was very happy there.

View from Van Gogh's bedroom - at least as it looks today

Out in the gardens - now you can see why sunflowers were the subject of so many of his paintings!

Outside of the building that holds Van Gogh’s room are the gardens hung with blown up reproductions of Van Gogh’s paintings created at St. Remy, hung in the spots where they were created. For those who love Van Gogh’s work, as we do, it is almost a sacred experience. Ostensibly his most famous painting (and my personal favorite), Starry Night, was painted at St. Remy.

One of the many paintings he did in the gardens at St. Remy

My favorite self portrait - done while at St. Remy

Once he left St. Remy, he went to live just outside of Paris, near a doctor who was treating him, where he then shot himself in the chest in a field. The initial shot didn’t kill him – he wandered back to the auberge where he was staying and died two days later in his brother Theo’s arms. His last words to his beloved brother were “La tristesse durera toujours” – “The sadness will last forever”. In a sad footnote, Theo, his closest confidant and friend in life, died of what one can only describe as heartbreak six months later. They are now buried side by side just outside of Paris. Van Gogh did not even begin his career as an artist until he was 27. He was 37 years old when he died. Imagine what he could have done had he lived a full life.

We followed up St. Remy with a visit to Arles, where Van Gogh lived with Paul Gaugin and painted many of his best-known works. At the tourist office they have mapped a ‘Van Gogh Route’ that you can follow to visit all of the spots frequented or made famous by Van Gogh. Unfortunately the house he lived in, Maison Jaune or Yellow House, was destroyed during World War II.

We also visited the Roman coliseum at Arles, built in during the first century. Unfortunately we could not go inside as they were busy holding a bullfight, which they do every Wednesday during the month of July. It was not a tempting activity for us.

La Cafe de la Nuit in Arles - subject of some of Van Gogh's paintings

Part of the remains of an old Roman bridge in Arles

We returned back to the town of St. Remy for dinner, stopping to visit the birthplace of Nostradamus while we wandered the streets looking for a restaurant.

This little guy left the bar where he was spending his evening to come and say hello to Larry. He then returned to his post and assumed his seat. Hilarious.

Vaison la Romaine; Seat of the Papacy

Lisa / July 22, 2009 / France, Travel

We began a recent Tuesday morning with a trip to the north to nearby Vaison-la-Romaine to attend its weekly market and check out the many Roman ruins present in that city. Vaison-la-Romaine’s weekly market is second in size only to Carpentras, where we are staying.

Towns always get very crowded on market days

At the fish monger stand. That sure looks like a shark to me.

You can get some idea from this just how vast these ruins are.

I'm sure this guy has some stories to tell

Though we had been in and around Avignon in the car many times when we went to church or were on our way to other spots, we had yet to stop and visit the city and the Palais des Papes. We spent a sweltering afternoon walking through the crowded streets of Avignon (especially crowded due to the annual Avignon theater festival which takes place during the month of July) and walking in the steps of the Popes of the 14th century. The Palais des Papes is a considered one of the most important medieval Gothic buildings in existence. Unfortunately once the Popes abandoned Avignon and returned to Rome, it was poorly kept and then completely ransacked during the French Revolution. Still, it is an impressive, massive building.

Another view of the outside from one of the towers

The annual theatre festival brought a lot of visitors and street performers to the city.

Every lamp post and street corner was covered with posters

Performers trying to drum up publicity for their show

We even caught a view of the famed Pont d’Avignon on our way into town. We meant to go back after the Palace of the Popes but by then we were too hot and tired.

Paris of the South and Tchaikovsky in a Roman Theatre

Lisa / July 20, 2009 / France, Travel

We found a good excuse to explore Aix-en-Provence, about an hour away from us, one day when we discovered that the only English-language Harry Potter showing was in Aix. We had been meaning to go and here was the perfect excuse. It is a fairly large city (population ~140,000) closer to the coast, near Marseille, and has the reputation of being the Paris of the South, both for its sophistication and its beauty.

We spent our entire time in the old town, which is as beautiful as expected. There is a main tree-lined street full of restaurants and businesses, Cours Mirabeau. It is a beautiful street bordered on one end by open-air markets selling books, CD’s, DVD’s and other trinkets, a beautiful traditional carousel, and carts selling “un vrai hot dog de New York”. (We tried one just to test their marketing claim – not a bad approximation of a New York food cart hot dog. Not Gray’s Papaya, to be sure, but not bad). The street is laid with small stones and punctuated at every intersection with a moss-covered fountain. One side of the street (the shady side) is full of restaurants and cafes with large sidewalk terraces – the other is full of businesses and stores. We had a great time exploring that street and other back streets and squares within the city before heading to our movie.

Fountain at one end of the Cours Mirabeau

Paul Cezanne spent much of his life at Aix

A few days later, we decided to head about 1/2 hour north to the city or Orange, most famous for its Roman ruins, including a spectacular open air theatre dating from before the birth of Christ. It is considered the best-preserved Roman antiquity in Europe, and is the only Roman theatre to retain its original 12-foot statue of Caesar Augustus. It boasts a complete stage wall with seats built into the side of the hill – holding 7,000 spectators. Orange also has a famed arc de triomphe dating from about 25 A.D.

We first spent some time up on a hill overlooking the city, just above the Roman theatre.

Looking down on the Roman theatre at Oranges

Locals dancing at a restaurant on top of the hill

We noticed that they were preparing for an orchestral concert – like many cities in Europe in the summertime, Orange has its own music festival called the Chorégies. The Chorégies have been celebrated each summer for over 100 years. We drove back down the hill and parked the car to find dinner, but decided to walk by the theatre to see if we could find out something about the concert. We were called to from across the street by an usher who offered us free tickets to the orchestral concert inside. Apparently they had empty seats and wanted to fill them. It wasn’t a tough decision to endure our empty stomachs for a couple more hours so that we could listen to beautiful music in such a setting. Because nearly the entire stage wall of the theatre is still in tact, the acoustics are impeccable. One can hear whispering on the stage from even the highest seats in the house. The concert started with a beautiful piece by Tchaikovsky with some incredible violin solos, followed by Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

We finished the night with dinner at a bistro across the street from the theatre. The arc de triomphe would have to wait for another visit.