Your Very Own Canal Du Midi Moment - Images et Réflexion Vers le Sud du France (French Reflections)

Bonjour Again Dear Friends!

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Thank you for all your kind emails and words throughout the last series.  Yes, I am still writing, but it is taking a lot longer at the moment and I'm only halfway through a large manuscript.

So, instead of a slowly grinding out a new series of short stories here, I decided that for a while I will simply post some favorite photos and share a few reflections (both literally and figuratively) on the south of France with you.  The title of this series translates literally as "Images and Reflections Toward the South of France"  which sounds fine in French but seems bizarre in English so I will also call the series "French Reflections".  Such is the nature of personal translation!


 For those of you who complained that there were no photos of me in the last series - I include this one complete with heavy camera bag!

You can see how I hate smiling for the camera... is that pain in the eyes?  Very probably.  That wan smile tells you I'm thinking, "Just hurry up and take the shot!"  So with that request out of the way, onward to some photos that I like.

     I carry a camera most days out. (This explains why my purse has to be so big!)  One day, it was with me on a long drive in the Aude, a department adjacent to my own, the Pyrénées-Orientales.  The drive was heavenly and I was glad to have taken a picnic for it.

     Here is some beauty for the eyes and soul.  Come with me and share these few calm images of the Canal du Midi taken on an autumn's day in 2014.

     The little roads are quiet and rich with colors once the tourist season is over. It was a bright November day with only a scattering of high clouds to accentuate the blue skies.

      The mornings and evenings are usually cool at that time of the year, but the afternoons tend to warm up enough to enjoy sitting out in the sun,

     Best of all were the little villages along the way.  They were sleepy little hamlets, no supermarkets, no fast food, and no traffic.  The busiest scene I saw was two men on a bench watching the water flow by.  But they smiled with true feeling and said "Bonjour,"  when I got out of the car to snap the bridge in the distance.  I have never found the French to be aloof.  Everywhere I go, the people are friendly and kind.

      It makes me believe that to be a myth or maybe it just applies to tourists in Paris who don't speak any French?

     The canal meant seeing double vision.  First in plain view and then with everything along the banks creating new Monet-esque paintings on the water at every turn.  Very fun and satisfying for those who love taking photos.

    If I have time this summer, I hope to get back over to the Aude and see what it's like in the tourist season.  'Till we have more time to share a few reflections on the south of France, here is one last shot of a chateau along the Canal du Midi.  À la prochaine, mes amis! (Until next time, my friends!)  We'll visit Perpignan then, to see it now, Click here.

Nous Sommes Fous, le septième partie (the 7th & final part of the move to France)

Some people were sure we were crazy and often, in the midst of all the insanity of an international move, we agreed.  But at last our goal was just hours away.  All aboard – for the last stage of the road to a new life in the south of France...
                                                         (for those who missed the opening, part 1 can be read here)

     We awoke in the splendor of the art-deco room in the hotel Aletti Palace.

 Our pets had slept as well as we, stretched across the bottom of the wide bed, on the protective cover we had draped there before falling off the cliff of exhaustion into oblivious slumber.  There was the memory of the elegant room-service candlelit dinner we’d shared the night before that still made me sure I had dreamt it.  We rose, refreshed, invigorated, and filled with excitement.  Now, before breakfast arrived, it was time for a quick walk with the dog and cat.

     Outside, morning glowed on the stately buildings of Vichy.  The colors of autumn were illuminated by soft sunlight.  But this was a business walk and so we could not tarry.  Once attended to, it was straight back indoors.  Soon we had replenished our energy with scrambled eggs as well as the traditional French breakfast.  The juice, baguettes, croissants, with strong, hot coffee tasted like manna from heaven.

      There was no time to waste – the road was calling.  So with renewed determination to keep up with our fellow drivers, we rejoined the Auto-route.  This time, my husband joined in with the overtaking in a manic abandon.  I remarked to myself, as I gripped the map with some trepidation, that he was going to make a splendid French driver. 

     As we joined the A75, the clouds returned and shortly, a light rain.  Then, with numerous warnings from flashing information signs, the traffic slowed down.  The pace dropped to a crawl.  Every now and then, we came to a stop.    

     Men in reflective rain capes were shepherding us down a wiggly bit of road.  Below, a silver filament threaded the base of the hills.  It was the Tarn River.  In the misty valley, huge cranes swung gigantic loads of steel and we could see a line of tall towers covered in scaffolding.  On these, the busy workforce looked as small as ants.  We descended to the heart of the action.  Here, workers hurried along the roadside, and sometimes crossed it without so much as a by-your-leave look at us.  They knew we weren’t going anywhere fast that day.

     Through our closed windows, came the sound of creation on an epic scale.  Here, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, something huge was going on.  Just over a year later, we would see the inauguration on TV and realize that we had driven around the legs of what was to become the tallest bridge in the world, le Viaduc de Millau.  

     Once past the construction site, the traffic resumed its break-neck speed and then the road divided left and right as we arrived at the foot of France.  The majority of the traffic went left on the A750.  They were off to Marseilles and beyond where you will find Provence, Monte Carlo, Nice, and all the ritzy playgrounds of the well-heeled rich.  We stuck with the A75 to the right which curved down to Beziers.  It was well past noon by then.  We were hungry but a drive around the town offered us no central places to park.  With both our pets and the bags in the car, we didn’t want to leave them to explore.

     A few minutes later we were back on the motorway, now the A9, which has the lovely name of "La Catalane".  There we spied a rest-stop with a restaurant whose appearance reminded me of Pizza Hut.  It was a "Courtpaille" (Short Straw) a chain of restaurants famous for serving grilled foods.  The first one opened in 1961 and was in a round building with a peaked straw roof.  Though these days the roofs are tiled, the distinctive design remains the same and makes them easy to spot all over France.  Here, we were served a sumptuous mixed salad that was so French is was dotted with warm goat's cheese.  This is not a cheese that we care for, but we were so darned glad to be having our first really French meal, that we ate it all... well... I ate all of mine: my husband hid most of his cheese under the last of the lettuce leaves!

    Another hour and we flew past Narbonne.  The afternoon sun suddenly burst through the clouds and threw long pink beams of light across the vista.  Now the Med sparkled off to our left.  Ahead of us we saw what we had been longing for – the chain of the Albères Mountains, her arms open wide, beckoning us and bidding us a welcome home.  Just beyond Fitou and we cheered at the sign “department des Pyrénées Orientales.”  The fatigue just melted away.    

     Fast forward.   Perpignan flashed by.   Like a bee to a flower, my husband directed our car to the coastal town of Argelès-sur-Mer.   Suddenly we were parked just a few hundred meters from the sea and our pets felt the soft sand between their paws for the first time.   We rang the bell and our friends met us with hugs, tears, and large glasses of wine. 

 Our dog was pleased to meet their dogs.  (The cat not so much – he decided to stay in the car!)  Soon, we were enjoying dinner in their salon with the terrace doors open on a strangely balmy evening at the end of October.  Our host delighted us with her Cordon Bleu standard of three courses of simple, yet divine food.  To describe it as a salad, pasta, and a dessert gives no impression of how delightful the meal was.  I realized that our lives had just changed.

     The scent of pine trees wafted in from the open terrace doors, there was the murmuring sound of French conversations from those who walked along the beach path, and beyond that I could hear the gentle lap of the Mediterranean Sea on the shore…Welcome to France! 

We were home. 

And so the long journey was done and we began the next stage in our happy lives together.  Our dreams blossomed into an amazing reality.  My husband and I enjoyed every moment of our life together in France.  Although I had worked as a teacher, my other passion was writing poetry and telling stories.  He encouraged me to achieve my own dream of writing in a more serious way.

    Over a hundred articles later and two books in, I told him I should finally get started on a personal blog to share some of our adventures in a way that all of our readers, family members, and friends could enjoy more than the occasional email.  We outlined what those blogs would be like and the seeds for this story were sown.

But life was so much fun, that the writing was always only secondary to the enjoyment of the everyday.  After the fourth book was published, I wrote several drafts of this series, always meaning to put it online and never quite getting around to it.

     Mid-way through the last year, we were told that an aggressive cancer meant that he only had a very short time left.  We finished this series and outlined other books and series.  While we worked on this one, “Nous Sommes Fous” we reminisced about all the wonderful things we had seen and done with our life here in France.  It had been a time without regrets and one day as we sat editing these blog posts, he said to me, 

“So you see, not so crazy after all!”

Nous Sommes Fous - la sixième partie (the 6th part of the move to France)

We all have a strand of crazy, but how much do you have to have to want to retire to the south of France? 

(for those who missed the opening, part one can be read here)

Probably quite a lot....                    

     We were rocketing to Vichy from Paris in a rental car that was far too small for us, our

large husky dog, the grumpy cat, two good sized kennels, four suitcases, a guitar, and a laptop computer.  (This was in the days of 4 pound laptops, mind you.)  The rain had turned to snow for a brief interval  and a bit of minor roadwork slowed the pace of the traffic down for a while.  

     The CD of bluesy music was almost in sync with the soft rhythm of the windshield wipers as Peggy Lee crooned, “Here’s that rainy day.”  And it seemed appropriate since we were now cocooned in a quiet, ethereal world.  The song’s tinge of sorrow rolled off our happy hearts as easily as the rain was swept from the windshield.  We were on our way to the long anticipated retirement in the south of France and our hearts sang.

      The Auto-route was smooth, large, well sign-posted, and hummed along with traffic on a really large scale.  Even when the rain became heavy, we were still feeling sunny.  The road just went on and on and on.  Brightly lit signs admonished the totally mad French drivers around us that they should be going 110 kph instead of the normal 130.  The flashing reminders must have only added fuel to the fire of the daring ‘pilots’ (racing car drivers)  as they continued to overtake and pass us as an astounding speed.  Plumes of water marked their course as they vanished from sight.

     The next few rest stops were simply punctuation marks along that long ribbon of road.  At last the rain stopped and the clearing sky revealed that the day was waning.  We were getting tired and the hardest task was keeping ourselves awake.  The cool air from an open window helped a lot.    

     It was late that evening when, after over 300 miles of driving; we reached Vichy, our destination.  Here, we had reservations at a hotel that promised us luxury and the right to have our pets in the room.  Remembering the flea-pit we had stayed in the night before our flight, we were a bit skeptical yet hopeful.    

The town was a maze of one way roads and night had fallen.  In the dark, the city lights created a fairy tale scene.  The buildings were impressive.  Even in my sleepy state, the phrase, “La Belle Epoque” came to mind.  Art Deco surrounds on grand doors and wide windows seemed to be de rigueur (obligatory).  It was clear that as a Spa town, Vichy had been, or probably still was, a rich man’s playground.  But all we wanted was to crawl into bed.  The last of our reserves were finally depleted.

     I felt a little cranky, but did my best to read out the map directions to my equally tired spouse.  It was to no avail.  We saw many amazing hotels, but not ours.

     At least there were many people on the streets.  We stopped several times to ask if anyone knew where The Aletti Palace Hotel was.  Each time the answer began with “Oui.  Vous êtes près” (Yes. You are close).  Then instructions would follow.  There was a serious flaw in my understanding though and we never found it.  Later, I was to realize that every time a person said, “tout droit” (straight ahead) I had mis-heard them and only caught the word, “Droit” (right).  As a result, we drove in circles.

      Every bit of French I thought I knew slowly leaked out of my exhausted brain and we felt lost.  When, at last, we spied a lighted entry at the back of a particularly large and fancy hotel, I said, “I’ll ask if they have a map we can use.  In a place that grand, somebody must speak English.”  

    My husband stopped the car and out I got, staggering a bit.  Of course, it turned out to be the back entrance to the hotel.  “Bienvenue!  You are most Welcome.” said the smiling receptionist who came over to help me.  I think she could see how close I was to collapsing right then and there.    

     We had made it, in spite of my failing language skills!  Joyfully, I ran back to the car and my husband drove us around to the front where, lo and behold, a parking space waited for us.  We entered the lobby a few minutes later with our pets on leads.  Our husky had her tail furled high and her nose in the air.  The cat kept pace with his tail straight up and swaggered in as if he owned the place. 

 I was wondering if perhaps I had fallen asleep and was having an amazing dream.  The chandeliers cast golden light on the white marble floors.  Rich, red pillars held up the lofty ceiling.  Elegantly dressed people passed us on their way to dinner, simply nodding at us as they murmured, “Monsieur-Dame.”  Not only that - they actually smiled at our animals.  This had to be a fantasy brought on by jet lag.  A matching set of staircases embraced the lobby and beckoned us to ascend to heavenly slumber.  Yes, I really must be dreaming, I thought.   The place was, indeed, a palace.... Welcome to France.    

And so we were halfway there.  The next day we would strike out for the final stage of our long trek to reach the south of France...but would we get there or were we on an endless journey?   Find Out in Part 7 Right Here.