Catalonia et Provence

This entire post is to be read out loud using stereotypical bad accents.  The first couple of pages should be read as if written in Castilian Spanish (all “s’s, and soft c’s are to be pronounced “th”). I can’t expect you to produce a Catalan accent, as that is far less internationally recognizable. For those who don’t know, and I didn’t before coming to Barcelona, Catalan is a language all its own. It isn’t even related directly to Spanish. It is derived from Latin like all of the romance languages, but other than that, it is no more Spanish than it is French. Castilian, however, is the dialect of Spanish that is considered most pure by those in Spain, sort of like “Oxford English”. The Spanish call it“Castellano”. I call it "shilly, becaushze of the lishpinesh." In any case, according to Wikipedia, 98% of the population of Barcelona speaks Castilian Spanish. About 60% speak Catalan as well. I speak neither, though I have a shot at understanding 50% of what is said in the former, and 10% of what is said in the latter. There you have it.

Once we get to France, you may change to your worst French accent (see French knight in castle, Monty Python, the Holy Grail.) Add in the occasional “Uh-huh-huh” or “Poo-poo”, or whatever else feels hoity-toity French to you for best results.

Bar”th”elona is my new favorite big city.  Sorry ‘bout that, Boston.  And no, San Francisco, I haven’t forgotten about you…it is just, well, what have you done for me lately?  Barcelona is just the right combination of cosmopolitan modernity and historical old-school Europe.  It is almost uber-clean like Singapore, but with old stone buildings and crazy labyrinth-like neighborhoods that you’d find in Paris or London.  The subway system is easy and clean and takes you everywhere.  The museums are plentiful and friendly, the waterfront is picturesque, and the people are sophisticated yet amiable.  Nobody tries to sell you things you don’t want.  Outsiders seem welcome, not for their cash, but for the neighborliness of it all.  The Gaudi architecture makes the town unique and a bit whimsical.  I just fell in love.

Our apartment in Barcelona was glorious, and on the eighth floor, providing us both with an extra workout and with a great view.  The only negative worth reporting here was in the bathroom.  We were finally so close to having a good shower!  In place after place since the trip began, we have either had no hot water, or no water pressure, or no substantial water volume, or a combination of these travesties.  “My kingdom for a good shower,” I’ve proclaimed more than once on this trip.  Well in Barcelona it all came so close.  There was plenty of water coming out of the nozzle, and the pressure was excellent.  It was plenty hot too, so what was the problem?  Well, the stall was so small I could not rotate within it.  Seriously!  It was located in the corner and so had two tiled walls.  The glass door was a rounded affair that created a space something like a quarter of a circle to stand in with a radius of less than a meter. But there was this enormous floor to ceiling mechanism protruding from the tiled walls and from which the water shot out as if from little water pistols.  Water could spout horizontally from five or six different heights.  I have no idea why anyone would want single streams of water bursting out at belly button level and at other even more awkward levels, but that was an option.  Attached to this enormous contraption, and taking up maybe half of the available space of the stall, was a bench that jutted out at about knee-level, leaving one with even less room to maneuver.  I tried to sit on the bench, but then my knees wouldn’t fit within the space the door provided.  If I weighed another thirty pounds I wouldn’t have even been able to shut the glass door when standing.  As it was, I had to contort myself into some pretty crazy shapes just to get a good scrub on.  The saddest part?  They could have tripled the size of the shower without sacrificing any other usable space in the bathroom, if they just got rid of the stupid bidet that none of us would even dream of using.  Sigh.  Ah well, the rest of the apartment was perfect.  It was large, well-lit, comfortably furnished and tastefully decorated, and all of the moving parts actually worked!  The kitchen was small but very usable. And the view really was incredible.  

You can't see much of the bench at the bottom, but you can see the rounded door track at the top of the shower.

The view out of the balcony window of our apartment.

Another memorable thing about the apartment was the laundry situation. The building was sort of a super tall doughnut. The hole in the middle was probably to supply more daylight into the apartments. "What does this have to do with laundry," you ask? Well, there was a working washing machine in the apartment, a huge bonus. But there was no dryer. We had to hang our laundry out to dry on clotheslines set up in the "hole" between apartments. But we were eight stories up and there was no way into the hole from the ground level. So if we dropped anything while hanging our clothes, it was gone for good. I could just imagine the pile of lost socks and such on the ground eight floors down. I couldn't actually see anything down there as it got progressively darker the lower you looked, and there was so much other hanging laundry from the floors below, that there was no seeing the ground. But hey, in my mind, the pile was spectacular. The hole was maybe fifteen square meters. I picture the ground covered completely in people’s skivvies up to a height of a couple of meters or whatever couldn’t be reached by people on the second floor, as there were no windows on the ground level. But enough about the apartment, what of the city?

As I have said, Barcelona is simply fantastic.  We visited the Parque Guell in town, famous for endless examples of Gaudi craziness. Then we visited the insanely ahead-of-its-time La Pedrera apartment building that Gaudi designed.  Finally, we topped it off with a visit to his crowning achievement, La Sagrada Familia, the most grandiose cathedral ever conceived.  Gaudi was a very busy genius.  I believe he was also certifiably loony.  I loved it all.  My favorite part of the cathedral wasn’t even Gaudi’s work though.  A sculptor named Subirachs put all of this amazing detail into the Passion Façade that just blew Carol and I away.  You should “Google” images of the Sagrada Familia Passion Façade to see what I’m referring to.  Our pictures don’t do it justice.  Though in our defense we were trying to work around all of the scaffolding and the thousands of other looky-loos that were in the way of a good shot.  I hadn’t realized before we got to Spain that the construction wasn’t finished.  Even though the building was started around 1900, and construction has gone on continuously ever since then, they still won’t be done building for another forty years or so.  Who says they don’t build ‘em like they used to?

Some of the cool sculpture work on the outside of La Sagrada Familia

This is the roof of the apartment building we visited.  Those crazy helmet things are chimney vents.

A shot of the inside of La Sagrada Familia cathedral.

One of dozens of stained glass windows in the cathedral.

We also visited the Miro museum as Senor Miro is one of Carol’s personal favorites.  A quick stop by the Olympic stadium, which hosted the 1992 summer games, and another by the national museum, mostly to get views of the city, and we had run out of specific destinations. The rest of Barcelona for us was just about getting lost among the shops and cafes and churches and museums in the Gothic district.  Tapas bars were ubiquitous, and we partook as often as was economically feasible.  We even cooked a couple of our own meals based on authentic Catalan recipes.  We did pretty well, if I do say so myself, and I do.

The National Museum.  The view of the city from the top of the front steps is pretty sweet.

On our last day in Barcelona we picked up a European sim-card for the phone so we could actually make a phone call when necessary, and then we got the car that we have leased for the remainder of our time in continental Europe.  We chose the driving alternative mostly to give us the ultimate flexibility to go when and where we want.  Cost-wise, I think it is a wash.  With the train we would need to buy four tickets wherever we went.  Then we would need bus tickets and taxis whenever the train wasn’t sufficient.  But with the car, there are the hundreds of Euros worth of tolls, the parking costs are not unsubstantial, and the thousand Euros worth of diesel we’ll end up buying add quite a bit to the cost of leasing.  In the end the decision was less about costs and more about flexibility and route planning stress-relief.  The trains can only bring you to so many places.  With a car, the options are endless.  The problem is that you have to actually concentrate on the road while driving and you miss some of the incredible scenery along the way.  I wish the kids could drive.  They hardly ever look out the window anyway.  Scenery is not worth craning your neck for, in their humble opinion.  I, on the other hand, don’t get enough neck-craning opportunities, as I need to keep my eye on the road and on all of those crazy European drivers.

It is now time to switch to your worst French accent as you continue to read this post out loud.

Our first stop after Barcelona was Carcassone in Southwestern France. It is a walled city with an incredible castle built in sections first by the ancient Romans (we’re talking B.C. here) and then the Visigoths in the 6^th century and French in the 12^th century.  When you picture a castle in your mind’s eye, this is what you picture.  We took an hour-long audio tour of the place and were blown away by the medieviality of it all.  Yes, I know that is not a word, but it should be.  Moats and drawbridges and cannons and knights and well, the whole shebang, seem like more than just fairy tales now.

Carcassone

"I told them we've already got one (snicker, snicker)."  Don't get the reference?  Watch Monty Python: "The Holy Grail."  You can thank me later.

Extra cannonballs in the castle.

Carcassone was just a quick stop.  Two nights and one full day of exploration later, we were off to Provence, the countryside of southern France and wine country extraordinaire.  While there, I often felt as if I was back home touring Napa or Sonoma.  Only each time that feeling overtook me we would immediately come upon another hilltop town with its own castle and I’d be reminded that home was indeed not quite so close at hand.  We stayed in a sleepy little village outside of Rousillon, one of those hilltop castle affairs, and coincidentally the seat of power in the region a thousand years earlier.  Our two-story rental house was as “Provencal” as they come, complete with wooden ceilings and stone walls and a fireplace in every room.  It would have been absolutely perfect if it weren’t so darn drafty.  Sadly, Europe is apparently going through one of its coldest and wettest springs in quite a while.  We have had trouble getting out of our warm beds each morning.  But despite the literal dampness we haven’t let the weather put a metaphorical damper on our sightseeing.

Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct built in the first century A.D.  It is 50 meters high, and only drops in elevation by only 2.5 cm over the entire length.  Just steep enough to keep the water flowing, and no steeper.  Unbelievable engineering.

The clay around Roussillon is full of ochre, used worldwide since medieval times for dyes.  This is an abandoned quarry.

Carol and I visited (the kids chose to stay at home) at least a dozen of those hilltop villages.  Every one had at least one ancient church or cathedral, and most had some form of medieval castle or at least some walls that were once part of a castle that has since fallen.  But each one was unique in some way and all were worth the visit.  The problem is that now, only a week later, the details have been lost in my memory.  The collection of towns is now, for me, just one big smushed-up memory full of fuzzy recollections.  That will have to do, I suppose.  I don’t regret any of the time spent navigating the hillsides finding each of the towns.  Carol’s biggest regret from Provence is that we missed lavender season.  There were almost as many lavender fields as there were vineyards.  But the row-upon-row of lavender plants were still brown as the buds weren’t due for another few months.  It would have been so amazing if the ground were covered in purple hues as depicted in all of the paintings and photographs on display in every town.  Ah well, you can’t have everything.

Now I know what you are thinking. "No, your biggest regret should have been not sampling a few hundred different bottles of wine," you say. We were, after all, in Provence. But as you may or may not know, I don’t drink wine, and Carol doesn’t drink at all. So I suppose the crime is in simply being a non-wine-drinker in Provence, not in actually failing to partake once there. Sorry, that is sacrilegious to most of my readers, I know.

The castles in these towns are huge, but the doors are so little!

This is Roussillon, I think. So many hilltop towns! Notice the color of the buildings is the same as the clay above.

This is not Roussillon.  Can't tell you anymore which town it is.  I've got a map with a dozen towns circled that we visited.  It is one of those.  That's the best I can do.

This is Chateau de la Barben, where we got to see inside one of the ancient mansions, but more importantly, where the kids got to go on an Easter Egg Hunt.

Some pictures from the hunt in the gardens.

In Provence, we tried a lot of local recipes again.  The recipes were all about tomato sauces with olives and garlic.  The short ribs were awesome.  The Provencal Shrimp dish was above average, but only earned us three and half stars on the local Trip Advisor hotel page.  We’re working on that.  Cooking is fun for us both, especially after the two straight months of restaurants in Asia.  But it is difficult to cook in other people’s kitchens, especially when you find there are no spatulas, or there is no colander, or the burner only works intermittently, or the pots and pans collect soot due to some problem with the fuel on the stove and you get black all over everything trying to clean up.  But it is a culinary adventure each and every night and we are trying to laugh at the goofy setbacks rather than get frustrated by them.  I did finally just buy a spatula to carry with us from here on out.  

I know, the picture is too posed.  But we had to get a shot of one our attempts at Provence cuisine in our cute kitchen.

The opening round of what was to become dozens of games of can-pong on kitchen tables around Europe.  Josh's spirits have risen substantially since he got this as a birthday gift.

The real difficulty comes in the shopping.  We have frequented many a farmer’s market, and we love tasting the local delicacies before buying, but inevitably we do find ourselves at the supermarket as well, looking lost among the shelves with no way out but through guess-work.  “You think this is tomato paste, honey?”  “Could be… either that or it’s floor wax.  Buy it, we’ll find out later.”

You should have seen the look on the cashier’s face when I dumped all of my fruits and vegetables on her conveyor without any price stickers.  Little did I know, you have to put the items on a scale in the actual vegetable section of the market, and then push a button indicating what is being weighed.  A little sticker comes out that you attach to your lemon or your asparagus or your whatever-that-white-and-green-fuzzy-looking-thingymabob is called in French or Italian.  Well, the cashier wasn’t amused.  I was sent back to the broccoli section with a stern reprimand in what I can only assume was French mixed with some southern dialect of Klingon.  I didn’t know at first where I was being sent to exactly or why I was banned from the check-out line, but I did know I had been a bad, bad boy.  I had far too many groceries already on the belt to pick them all up now.  So I left poor Chloe there with the warden and ran as fast as my bum-foot would carry me, carrying all of my produce, all the while enduring disparaging comments from the locals who had me pegged perfectly as a stupid tourist.  Managing the sticker machine was rough the first time around with no guidance.  I’ve got the hang of it now, but there is always the problem of identifying your produce when the options are all in French (or now, Italian) and the picture list is often sub-comprehensive.  But I did my best, though I think twelve Euros is a bit steep for one avocado.  Perhaps the machine thought I was buying caviar?  I flew back to the counter, thankfully inconveniencing nobody but the cashier, and dropped my goods with a giant smile and a hardy exhale. 

This was actually taken later in Italy, but it shows the machines you use to price your own fruit and veggies.  Carol particularly likes the plastic gloves they make you wear to handle the fruit.  They allow dogs in the grocery stores, but no touching the produce with bare hands! In case you were curious, her purse looks like an owl when hanging straight. It was purchased in Bangkok.

All was now good, except that I had five bags worth of groceries and no bags in which to carry said groceries.  The shopping basket must not leave the store!  I was used to having to pay for grocery bags when I forgot to bring my reusable ones.  But that wasn’t even an option in this mammoth store.  Nope, it is your own bags or nothing.  While I applaud the environmental policy, I simply wished I had been informed of it prior to the completion of check-out. “Chloe, quick, take your rainjacket off.  We’re improvising!”  We did manage to get it all out to the car, but not without looking like complete morons, and not without a smug smile from our friendly neighborhood grocer.  Ah well, chalk it up as Stupid Gringo move number thirty-seven or eight.

We drove from Rousillon to the Cote D’Azur, attempting to experience the French Riviera in one day and night.  We don’t really like the uber-touristy spots, preferring instead the small towns that feel more real.  But some things just have to be seen, and the Riviera is one of those things.  This traveling day just so happened to be Carol’s birthday.  So other than taking in the scenery, the most important thing on the agenda was placating her sweet tooth.   But before I discuss the destination, I need to say a bit more about the journey. 

I often sigh wistfully when I see one of the trains go by.  It seems so tranquil and romantic to just sit on the train and watch the countryside pass by your window.  They pass us going so fast and looking so sleek and modern, that I just can’t help being envious of the passengers.  But as Carol continues to remind me, dealing with train schedules and finding stations, as well as getting from said stations to places we actually want to be, would require a whole lot of planning that, with the car, can be wholly avoided.  The GPS we bought back in the states continues to be completely useless.  It never finds anything.  Seriously, I typed in “Pisa” the other day and it replied with a virtual “Huh?” But the GPS that came with the car is awesome.  We never need to know how to get anywhere because the lovely disembodied British lady on our dash is simply brilliant that way.  

It is not quite truthful to say that she hasn’t gotten us into some trouble, mind you.  On our very first day of driving I took exactly six wrong turns in Barcelona due in large part to her lack of one-way street knowledge and we spent a good extra half an hour trying to leave town.  A few days later we got on the expressway going the wrong direction due to some ambiguous guidance about bearing right and ended up having to drive a full 40 km round trip (including three Euros in tolls) just to get back to where we started.  Twenty kilometers of me grumbling about there never being an exit when you need one and then twenty more back with me grumbling about paying extra tolls was not what Carol had in mind when picturing our first day in France.

The first stop on the birthday girl’s tour was a sweet little beach town called Cassis, just east of Marseille.  It was our first meeting with the Mediterranean itself, and it was perfect.  I’d go back and spend a week in that little town in a heartbeat.  We ate a picnic lunch on a breakwater and Josh and I got soaked by a rogue wave.  Not quite Samara-kayaking size, mind you, but big enough to get our attention.  We window-shopped and quick-snuck a little fruit-tart into our mouths when the calorie-fairy wasn’t looking.  Then we got back in the car and continued up the coast.  We had to pass right by San Raphael, for fear that it might make us homesick.  There are so many beautiful little towns!  Why does anyone go to the big tourist traps?  Same reason we did, I guess.  The next stop was Cannes.

Our first siting of the Mediterranean, other than from an airplane.  This was taken in Cassis.

Cassis.

In Cannes, we didn’t notice any big film festival going on, but the whole town just seemed to ooze money.  We walked along the main drag on the beach with one particular destination in mind.  We were going to have tea at the Carlton hotel, come hell or high water.  Thankfully, neither came.  Global warming wasn’t raising the water level fast enough to thwart our binge and it was rough to choose among the desserts, but I wouldn’t quite equate it to hell. We got a seat right away. None of us actually drank tea. Carol had a latte and a fruit tart. The kids had cakes and hot chocolate. I had crème brulee and an American cup of good ole coffee. The experience was quite extravagant and indulgent. Just what the birthday girl ordered. I shielded my eyes when it came time to sign the bill. I was afraid the snack cost more than our entire week in Cambodia.

The Carlton Hotel (a.k.a. the original Ritz-Carlton) made famous by the Cary Grant movie "North by Northwest."

Happy Birthday Carol!

Back in the car again, our intent was to see Monaco before we found our hotel.  But we got wiped out before that could happen and decided to make a bee-line for our latest home-for-the-night.  Unfortunately, near Monaco, a bee-line really means a snaking set of multiple dozens of switchbacks down an incredibly steep mountain towards the seaside that is so curvy it makes most roller-coasters seem like zip-lines.  We showed up at our hotel a bit groggy from a combination of motion-sickness and altitude-sickness, only to find out that our reservation didn’t take.  Apparently, there was a glitch on the booking website.  Carol and I would have been horrified if it didn’t occur to us that among all of this traveling, this is the first time that anything like this had happened.  In fact, it forced us to count our blessings on this trip.  

Now as I type these next few sentences, know that I am knocking on wood with my head (can’t use my hands, I’m typing, remember?) so as not to tempt fate.  We have never had a piece of luggage lost on all of these flights and train rides and bus rides.  We have never had anything of major importance (passports, tickets, wallets) stolen from us. We haven’t lost anything that couldn’t be replaced, well except for a few hundred pictures in a stolen camera in Costa Rica. But that is chump change, right? Oh, and I lost my wedding ring in the ocean, but that could have happened back home too. Can’t blame that on traveling! We’ve never been stuck in a predicament that wasn’t easily remedied (though the wrong train in Japan still laughs at us).  No snafus at customs or immigration.  No clerical errors at an airport or a hotel.  No disagreements about money with a house-owner or a shop-keeper.  No traffic tickets or parking tickets or stupid-tourist tickets.  We have been blessed.  Though this does lead me to question something about myself.  I’ve always believed that life deals each of us with just as much adversity as we can handle, making us stronger in the process.  Does this mean that I’m not capable of handling much?

Well, the latest problem turned out to be a non-problem in the end.  The hotel apologized and found us a comparable hotel in the next town over for the same price.  It was just fine.  Instead of staying in Eze Sur Mer, as was planned, we stayed in an itty-bitty town just west of that called Beaulieu Sur Mer.  But the only thing we did there was eat and sleep.  It was a place to deposit the exhausted kids and go have some night-time fun in Monte Carlo.  It was a quick drive to Monaco although we ended up in some brightly lit space-age tunnels under the city that Marge (our GPS, if you weren’t paying attention) didn’t seem to understand. After emerging from the tunnels and parking, we walked out of the garage and into the square and then stopped. What should we do? Neither of us gambles. Carol doesn’t drink, so we weren’t going to a bar. We’d already eaten dinner and weren’t about to blow $100 on dessert as we’d already had two desserts that day (OK, Carol had three, but admittedly it was her birthday). Ignoring the fact that I hate dancing, we couldn’t do that anyway because of my busted foot. Are we really so old and lame that we couldn’t figure out anything to do in the way of adult fun?

One of many hotel-casinos in Monaco.

We wander the streets and do some window-shopping, but are surprised to find nothing open on a Friday night. This is ridiculous! “OK, fine, let’s see what fun we can find in that casino… I’ll blow $50 at a blackjack table just to be able to say I did.” Then we get within 50 meters of the door and notice that every man within eye-shot is wearing a custom-fit Italian suit and the minimum heel size for a woman’s shoe appears to be four inches. Everyone is between the ages of twenty and thirty and at least three levels of good-looking better than us. Carol and I are wearing our nicest clothes (jeans and a fleece for each, because we couldn’t fit anything nicer in the suitcase!) We shame ourselves out of going in and instead just wander the city looking at the stunning architecture. We are absolute party-animals, I know.

The next morning we went back to Monaco when all of the vampires were asleep, so that we could visit the much-hailed aquarium there.  It was better than the hype.  We watched an octopus for close to half an hour as it attempted to navigate a maze provided as a challenge for it.  The little guy never made it to his lunch while we were watching, but it seemed obvious that he was smart enough to figure it out eventually.  We saw plenty of species we’d never seen before, even though the number of aquariums we have been to over time has easily reached double digits.  The aquarium is also a superb maritime museum that was started by Prince Albert I and so includes all kinds of stuff from around 1900.  It was also presided over by Jacques Cousteau for about thirty years.  In addition to the appeal of the intriguing exhibits, the building itself is an incredible bit of architecture.  And, to boot, it has a spectacular view of the city on one side and the Mediterranean on the other.  It was definitely worth the time.

Oceanographic museums are bit more over-the-top grandiose in Monaco.

The outside of the building isn't too shabby either.

Our octopus friend and Carol's favorite fish siting.

Driving from the Cote d’Azur to Tuscany was relatively easy.  The hardest part was figuring out the new system for taking tolls on the motorways.  Every country does things differently, and it is quite stressful the first few times around.  Are we in the correct lane at the tollbooth?  Do we take a ticket or pay as we go?  Do we need correct change?  Do we have to buy a pass ahead of time?  It is tough when you have dozens of cars behind you wanting to get through and passed the ignorant tourists.  But we survived Spain and France, and we’ll survive Italy as well.  In fact, last night we flew by a poor guy who was stopped in the middle of the ten-lane plaza, about 50 feet from the toll booths, apparently baffled as to which way he should proceed.  Ha-ha, loser…

So now we are in Lucca, Italy, a little walled town between Pisa and Florence.  We’ve already visited both of those towns and much more, but our adventures here will have to wait for the next post.  So for now, I bid you adieu!