I am going to have to write this email as quickly as possible, as I am exhausted and have to get up reasonably early tomorrow to catch a bus to the Pont du Gard, from which I will be travelling to Nimes. While the buses here are not that bad, they also do not run all too frequently between cities, making travel a little awkward. The train strike has, naturally, continued; I expect to travel exclusively by bus for the next two days.
First off, why I am tired: while the mad dash of my travels from city to city has ended for the next few days, I had very noisy roommates last night. I expect to be able to catch up on sleep tonight; I should be out like a light.
The French take their supermarkets seriously. The one that I visited today was air-conditioned to sub-Arctic temperatures -- so much for energy conservation -- and its employees displayed one of the oddest commercial proclivities that I have ever seen: instead of making their produce physically accessible to patrons, they blocked off whole sections of the supermarket -- say, the dairy or fruit juice sections -- with crates of new produce, which they stacked as though they were on vacation. I must have spent a good half-hour in the grocery store today -- I felt as though I were asleep at times - and yet whole sections of it that had been blocked off when I got there remained that way when I left, with no evidence of coming change in sight.
While I had initially been hoping to see both Orange and Arles today, I quickly decided to see only the former, due to the train strike, and to leave the latter until Wednesday. Arles, Orange, and Nimes all contain spectacular Roman ruins, while the Pont du Gard is in itself a Roman ruin (a giant aqueduct, which used to supply Nimes with water). Miraculously, I scheduled four whole days for Avignon, though it was not out of foresight: rather, I wanted to continue rushing through France, visiting Saint-Remy-de-Provence and Aix-en-Provence on my fourth day here, which, in fairness, I could almost have done if the trains were running. As it is, I will have to skip the Roman ruins of Saint-Remy-de-Provence and the pleasures of many of the villages near here; this is an area in which one could very happily spend an entire week.
The joys of being in Avignon, ignoring the incredible food and nearby attractions, were again pressed upon me as I walked to the bus station today. (More accurately, I went to the tourist office, which is top-notch, and was directed to a nearby bus station.) Avignon's entire defensive wall from several hundred years ago is intact, and the avenue outside of the city wall is lined on both sides with trees whose bark resembles that of a eucalyptus. It seems that just being here, in the light that Van Gogh coveted, is a pleasure; it is hard to find words for it.
Between trying to figure out where I could get a bus ticket and being seated on the bus, I was helped by one crabby bus station employee and a very friendly driver. I was reminded of what a friend's grandfather had said to me about having moved from Russia to Israel: people are everywhere the same. (I had been assuming that all Russians were blackguards and all Israelis saints; not so, it turned out.) Certain conditions, such as excessive traffic on the roads, corruption in the police force, excellent health care, a lack of social welfare, excellent social welfare, &c., impact how people interact with one another, but it seems that their character is, at root, unchanging across cultures.
I am not sure why I considered that important to note, as it amounts to saying that we are biologically the same (i.e., equal at birth), but it seemed illuminating at the time.
Some small notes: there was music, a local pop station, playing on the bus, which was one of those little touches that makes life more enjoyable, such as flowerbeds, indoor plants, and gaudily-colored houses and benches; I wondered why buses everywhere did not play music. I noticed that the price of gas here was, unless my eyes deceived me -- for I barely caught a glimpse of the gas station's display -- 1.26 Euros per liter, or more expensive than in Vancouver. I saw a French driver drive an entire block backwards down a one-way road (which a curve in it) at the same speed as which one drives forwards, which is neither here nor there, and I saw a Frenchman chew another one out for driving poorly, which is saying a lot. On the bus, we passed a great many of the tree-covered hills and rocky crags of which I wrote earlier, only they were prettier than the ones in the south-west of France, and we passed through a town called "Courthezon," the name of which reminded me of the word "courtesan" (an unfortunate name for any town), which had a beautiful stone arch, an ornately-sculpted fountain, and crumbling stone houses. Pity the poor bastards who live there! The town looked like it had not changed in the last four hundred years.
Orange itself was both spectacular and small. I got magnificently lost, as French city maps rarely correspond to cities' actual layout, and very few streets in France are accompanied by street signs, and even so I managed to see the whole of the city within two hours -- that is, the interesting parts of it. Orange was full of stone fountains, little statues, and the same stone churches and buildings that I had seen in Courthezon, and on top of that, it had a massive Roman triumphal arch, a wall built by the Romans, a fantastic opera house, and one of the best Roman amphitheaters in all of Europe, the best view of which was from a hill behind it. I wondered, as I looked at the amphitheater, why people are so crazy about seeing Roman ruins. I do not know what they tell us or what cultural knowledge they give us besides the fact that our predecessors loved grandeur. I suppose that one does not have to understand such things, though; one enjoys such monuments nonetheless. The front wall of the amphitheater was at least a hundred feet tall, and some of the statues and pillars that had been inside it two thousand years ago were still erect. The seating looked to be made from a totally different material from the back wall, as a result of which one must consider it to be part of a contemporary restoration, but the back wall alone, which was probably over a hundred feet long, was awesome. I went directly from the amphitheater to the bus stop and only had to wait some twenty minutes before a bus arrived and took me back to Avignon. I had finished sightseeing for the day by two o'clock.
Travelling by bus has been interesting, as, while it is slower than travelling by train, it also gives one a much closer look at the landscape through which one is passing. I have almost finished with my notes! I have seen a couple of hawks over the past few days, and on the way from Toulouse to Avignon I just barely saw a bunch of white wading birds, which I hope to hell were not great egrets, as if they were, I missed a great opportunity to look at them by focusing on my interlocutor. My last note, beside my actual last one, is that there was live music in Toulouse and that people gathered in crowds there, unlike in Bordeaux, which was a furnace of death.
My actual last note is that I went to a real Provencal restaurant last night; more broadly speaking, I have figured out my diet for the next few days. I have, I believe, completed my pastry checklist, and I am still holding off on ice cream until I get to Avignon, as, while Avignon has at least one nearby place advertising "artisanal" ice cream, I expect that the word is just part of a fancy catch-phrase and that the ice cream is nothing to brag about.
In short, I am going to focus on eating real food for the next few days.
One thing that I have done, as detailed above, is buy groceries. These will cover my lunches and one more of my dinners, having already covered dinner today. I can buy my breakfasts cheaply at a sandwicherie/patisserie across the street (focusing on the former half of the place's expertise), and I am going to buy one more dinner at a restaurant, having eaten out for my first night here.
When I went looking for a place at which to eat the other night, I admit that one my first considerations was convenience. Many restaurants, I had been told, would be closed on Sunday night (It is, after all, France.), and I did not want to have to walk far to get something to eat. I went to a central plaza near a couple of tourist attractions, always a bad idea, and found a few decent-looking restaurants, choosing one for the night at hand and one, since it looked equally-good, for one of the coming nights. The one that I had had spelling errors on its English menu; there were flies on its tables; and it had, for dozens of tables, only two waiters, one of them a thin, harried man with gray hair and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt and tie and the other of them a fatter, lumbering man in jeans. I considered all of these positives: the restaurant cared more about food preparation than the English language, and its waiters were authentic Frenchmen.
Since I am tired, I will rush through the meal, which was so-so. I was told, when I got back to the hostel -- and this should not be much of a surprise given the restaurant's location -- that the restaurants on the plaza that I visited were strictly for tourists and did not serve real French food. The woman working for the hostel proceeded to start giving me recommendations, but she was interrupted by other patrons who had just arrived, and, while I sort of vaguely meant to ask her for more recommendations than one once she had finished with the other customers, and she sort of vaguely meant to give me more, and I sort of vaguely wanted to tell her, when she recommended a place specializing in meat and wine, that I did not drink wine, none of that happened, and I was left with a recommendation that did not interest me. The woman did not show up at the hostel this evening -- one assumes that she had no shift today -- and so, not having had the chance to consult with her again, I might end up returning to the plaza on Wednesday night to try the second of the restaurants that I picked that day, though I would be happy to try something different if I saw the woman again tomorrow. That concludes my thoughts for the night. This is probably one of the quicker blog posts that I have written.
First off, why I am tired: while the mad dash of my travels from city to city has ended for the next few days, I had very noisy roommates last night. I expect to be able to catch up on sleep tonight; I should be out like a light.
The French take their supermarkets seriously. The one that I visited today was air-conditioned to sub-Arctic temperatures -- so much for energy conservation -- and its employees displayed one of the oddest commercial proclivities that I have ever seen: instead of making their produce physically accessible to patrons, they blocked off whole sections of the supermarket -- say, the dairy or fruit juice sections -- with crates of new produce, which they stacked as though they were on vacation. I must have spent a good half-hour in the grocery store today -- I felt as though I were asleep at times - and yet whole sections of it that had been blocked off when I got there remained that way when I left, with no evidence of coming change in sight.
While I had initially been hoping to see both Orange and Arles today, I quickly decided to see only the former, due to the train strike, and to leave the latter until Wednesday. Arles, Orange, and Nimes all contain spectacular Roman ruins, while the Pont du Gard is in itself a Roman ruin (a giant aqueduct, which used to supply Nimes with water). Miraculously, I scheduled four whole days for Avignon, though it was not out of foresight: rather, I wanted to continue rushing through France, visiting Saint-Remy-de-Provence and Aix-en-Provence on my fourth day here, which, in fairness, I could almost have done if the trains were running. As it is, I will have to skip the Roman ruins of Saint-Remy-de-Provence and the pleasures of many of the villages near here; this is an area in which one could very happily spend an entire week.
The joys of being in Avignon, ignoring the incredible food and nearby attractions, were again pressed upon me as I walked to the bus station today. (More accurately, I went to the tourist office, which is top-notch, and was directed to a nearby bus station.) Avignon's entire defensive wall from several hundred years ago is intact, and the avenue outside of the city wall is lined on both sides with trees whose bark resembles that of a eucalyptus. It seems that just being here, in the light that Van Gogh coveted, is a pleasure; it is hard to find words for it.
Between trying to figure out where I could get a bus ticket and being seated on the bus, I was helped by one crabby bus station employee and a very friendly driver. I was reminded of what a friend's grandfather had said to me about having moved from Russia to Israel: people are everywhere the same. (I had been assuming that all Russians were blackguards and all Israelis saints; not so, it turned out.) Certain conditions, such as excessive traffic on the roads, corruption in the police force, excellent health care, a lack of social welfare, excellent social welfare, &c., impact how people interact with one another, but it seems that their character is, at root, unchanging across cultures.
I am not sure why I considered that important to note, as it amounts to saying that we are biologically the same (i.e., equal at birth), but it seemed illuminating at the time.
Some small notes: there was music, a local pop station, playing on the bus, which was one of those little touches that makes life more enjoyable, such as flowerbeds, indoor plants, and gaudily-colored houses and benches; I wondered why buses everywhere did not play music. I noticed that the price of gas here was, unless my eyes deceived me -- for I barely caught a glimpse of the gas station's display -- 1.26 Euros per liter, or more expensive than in Vancouver. I saw a French driver drive an entire block backwards down a one-way road (which a curve in it) at the same speed as which one drives forwards, which is neither here nor there, and I saw a Frenchman chew another one out for driving poorly, which is saying a lot. On the bus, we passed a great many of the tree-covered hills and rocky crags of which I wrote earlier, only they were prettier than the ones in the south-west of France, and we passed through a town called "Courthezon," the name of which reminded me of the word "courtesan" (an unfortunate name for any town), which had a beautiful stone arch, an ornately-sculpted fountain, and crumbling stone houses. Pity the poor bastards who live there! The town looked like it had not changed in the last four hundred years.
Orange itself was both spectacular and small. I got magnificently lost, as French city maps rarely correspond to cities' actual layout, and very few streets in France are accompanied by street signs, and even so I managed to see the whole of the city within two hours -- that is, the interesting parts of it. Orange was full of stone fountains, little statues, and the same stone churches and buildings that I had seen in Courthezon, and on top of that, it had a massive Roman triumphal arch, a wall built by the Romans, a fantastic opera house, and one of the best Roman amphitheaters in all of Europe, the best view of which was from a hill behind it. I wondered, as I looked at the amphitheater, why people are so crazy about seeing Roman ruins. I do not know what they tell us or what cultural knowledge they give us besides the fact that our predecessors loved grandeur. I suppose that one does not have to understand such things, though; one enjoys such monuments nonetheless. The front wall of the amphitheater was at least a hundred feet tall, and some of the statues and pillars that had been inside it two thousand years ago were still erect. The seating looked to be made from a totally different material from the back wall, as a result of which one must consider it to be part of a contemporary restoration, but the back wall alone, which was probably over a hundred feet long, was awesome. I went directly from the amphitheater to the bus stop and only had to wait some twenty minutes before a bus arrived and took me back to Avignon. I had finished sightseeing for the day by two o'clock.
Travelling by bus has been interesting, as, while it is slower than travelling by train, it also gives one a much closer look at the landscape through which one is passing. I have almost finished with my notes! I have seen a couple of hawks over the past few days, and on the way from Toulouse to Avignon I just barely saw a bunch of white wading birds, which I hope to hell were not great egrets, as if they were, I missed a great opportunity to look at them by focusing on my interlocutor. My last note, beside my actual last one, is that there was live music in Toulouse and that people gathered in crowds there, unlike in Bordeaux, which was a furnace of death.
My actual last note is that I went to a real Provencal restaurant last night; more broadly speaking, I have figured out my diet for the next few days. I have, I believe, completed my pastry checklist, and I am still holding off on ice cream until I get to Avignon, as, while Avignon has at least one nearby place advertising "artisanal" ice cream, I expect that the word is just part of a fancy catch-phrase and that the ice cream is nothing to brag about.
In short, I am going to focus on eating real food for the next few days.
One thing that I have done, as detailed above, is buy groceries. These will cover my lunches and one more of my dinners, having already covered dinner today. I can buy my breakfasts cheaply at a sandwicherie/patisserie across the street (focusing on the former half of the place's expertise), and I am going to buy one more dinner at a restaurant, having eaten out for my first night here.
When I went looking for a place at which to eat the other night, I admit that one my first considerations was convenience. Many restaurants, I had been told, would be closed on Sunday night (It is, after all, France.), and I did not want to have to walk far to get something to eat. I went to a central plaza near a couple of tourist attractions, always a bad idea, and found a few decent-looking restaurants, choosing one for the night at hand and one, since it looked equally-good, for one of the coming nights. The one that I had had spelling errors on its English menu; there were flies on its tables; and it had, for dozens of tables, only two waiters, one of them a thin, harried man with gray hair and a short-sleeved, button-down shirt and tie and the other of them a fatter, lumbering man in jeans. I considered all of these positives: the restaurant cared more about food preparation than the English language, and its waiters were authentic Frenchmen.
Since I am tired, I will rush through the meal, which was so-so. I was told, when I got back to the hostel -- and this should not be much of a surprise given the restaurant's location -- that the restaurants on the plaza that I visited were strictly for tourists and did not serve real French food. The woman working for the hostel proceeded to start giving me recommendations, but she was interrupted by other patrons who had just arrived, and, while I sort of vaguely meant to ask her for more recommendations than one once she had finished with the other customers, and she sort of vaguely meant to give me more, and I sort of vaguely wanted to tell her, when she recommended a place specializing in meat and wine, that I did not drink wine, none of that happened, and I was left with a recommendation that did not interest me. The woman did not show up at the hostel this evening -- one assumes that she had no shift today -- and so, not having had the chance to consult with her again, I might end up returning to the plaza on Wednesday night to try the second of the restaurants that I picked that day, though I would be happy to try something different if I saw the woman again tomorrow. That concludes my thoughts for the night. This is probably one of the quicker blog posts that I have written.
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| This is part of the facade of Orange's amphitheater. |
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