Musings

As we headed out this morning, a fire truck and fire car consulted in front of the cathedral complex. Pompier means fire department.

And, around the corner, we came across two people walking flowers to…a shop(?), and two workers changing a lightbulb (no joke), using a high ladder…and another worker passing by. Ampoule means light bulb.

In the plaza around the market, many people had tables and displays on the ground of…just about everything but food…bird cages, western decorative items, bad art, record albums, books, household items, antique children’s bicycles, cross-stitched tablecloths…a wide assortment. Tablecloths are nappes.

Pass through the flower vendors under an awning and enter Les Halles, the market, and find enticing foodstuffs. This is about one-quarter of the seafood at this stall. The next stall was serving oysters on the half shell—at 11am, mind you!—and all but one of the tables was full. We kept strolling.

The locals meet up at Les Halles, wisely bringing their wheeled carriers…paniers?—oh, wait, the one on the right is a voiture d’enfant.

Heading south toward the wall, we found a service station…diesel is gazole, meaning gas-oil mix…and sans plomb, you can figure it out.

Ah, there’s the city wall, looking inside out. Wall is le
mur (duh, like mural).

Found these flying buttress on a church…église.

This was called a tartelette, and wow was it tasty. How can it not be? Cheese, sliced potatoes and bacon (more like smoky ham), hot and gooey (and more than I expected—that was a large ramekin!). With a salade verte.

This was the back of the hôtel d’ville, or city hall.

Me, I want one of those foot props! Foot is pied (like piedmont!).

Hey, way in the background, center, see the snow? That’s la
neige here.

Nice shadows in this courtyard after dark…shadows are ombres.

And, with that, bonsoir.

Posted at 5:15 PM | Comments Off on In French…

We set off for the southeast quadrant of the city—inside the walls, of course. Somewhere central to the old city, I found this gnarly garden peeking over the second-story wall. Wonder how mossy it is inside.

A bit farther, we found this looming belltower, with the “teeth” detail on the spire. If I were a better historic preservationist, I would know the real name for those zipper-teeth features.

We finally reached the street of the dyers, which has a creek running alongside it. This chapel has its own footbridge for worshippers to cross into it.

They have left a few waterwheels intact in the creek, and they slowly turn turn turn. In the walls, we could see the sockets for the axles of missing ones. Not sure what the waterwheel power was used for; the adjacent buildings are mostly residences, with a few converted(?) into offices. Nothing looks like the workplace of dyers.

We lunched at the restaurant under the curved awning around the curve in the rear-ground.

I had the veg lunch: hot leek puree soup, a quiche of onion with sweet potato chunks on top, and a salad with assorted veg, including raw bicolor beets.

From there, we went to the south city wall, crossed outside briefly, then made our way north, toward the river, staying east of the ex-pope-complex.

We crossed outside the wall, and managed to dash across several lanes of traffic (when the traffic wasn’t there), to walk along the river. I wondered how close the water was to the city walls in medieval times.

We wandered west along the water, saw a free pedestrian ferry that crosses to the island, back and forth. It doesn’t look like an island because it’s a big one. We watched the ferry get caught in the swift current, and maneuver against the river’s force.

One of the tourist spots of Avignon is this bridge stub, originally built between 1177 and 1185. It was the downstream-most bridge of the river, and I imagine toll collection was a fierce business. The bridge was destroyed and rebuilt in the 1200s, and these arches are often dated to the 1340s. The bridge was abandoned in the mid-1600s. The bridge went across the island and a second branch of the Rhône, so it was much longer than it looks here. [Note dandelions flourishing in the lawn.]

We crossed back through the wall, re-entering the old city. As near as I can tell, nowhere along the wall can tourists access the top. The walls seem narrow, but high. Now, anyway.

We took a break, then went out for a hot meal. This is my plate, sea bream with assorted veg, including yellow potatoes, purple potatoes, roasted tomatoes orange and red, roasted sweet orange pepper, fresh pea shoots and alfalfa sprouts, with a bit of tasty gravy and fresh bread.

I’ve been craving veg, and I got them today!

Posted at 3:50 PM | Comments Off on Upward views, but not only upward

We packed and cleaned up, then left our temporary home, and walked to the regional bus station. No problem getting a ticket, and not a long wait for our (fast) bus—great!

For us, the bus ride was an urban escape. We saw geological formations.

We saw row crops and farm buildings

We saw grape vines. (Duh. France.)

We spotted a rail bridge crossing a river.

And when we spotted familiar city walls, we knew we’d reached Avignon. When we were here before, we never entered the walls. That’s why Avignon is on our itinerary.

Making our way north from the bus station, we found carousel broncos…two stories!

We checked in our new housing, and found out our space is multi-level. We enter at street level, go down about a half story, enter our quarters (well, the zone we inhabit), then up one level to the living room/kitchen, up an additional half-level to the bathroom and toilet off the landing (large shower; claw-foot tub), and up another half-level to the generous bedroom/private sitting room. The main rooms look out onto the owner’s private garden, so lovely, although many of his potted plants got zapped by the cold temps a week ago. He has ancient pittosporums, if I understood him correctly. Something for me to look up!

Our next stop: food—a hot lunch. This is the Guru’s roast chicken and veg and mashed.

Off exploring we went up and up, to an elevated garden between the pope buildings and the water. Apparently it is above a huge cistern that supplied the city’s water at one time. We found gardeners busy.

We also found excellent views of the city, and beyond. The river splits upstream of Avignon. This landform is an island…look carefully in the background, center for the other branch of the river. Downstream—and the Mediterranean—is to the left.

Later, we were out and about again, and the late-day sun lit up the archives (left third) and papal palace (center and right).

We feel like we have a sense of the flavor of the city from today’s brief explorations, leaving plenty to investigate over the next two days! For now, rest!

Posted at 2:08 PM | Comments Off on Moving day

…trust I won’t be boaring boring today.

Flat dogs only?

Fountain of the brass lions.

Typical bicycle parking.

Atypical bicycle parking.

Street activities and overcast over clock tower.

Below street activities aka archaeologists in trenches.

Church dome.

Bread of life pitch.

Simple salad side, came with my moussaka.

Many of our paths in old Aix. Wiggles and irregularities mostly due to narrowness of streets combined with height of buildings.

Posted at 3:57 PM | 1 Comment »

Not much vegetation other than trees and weeds…but we did find this blooming shrub…apple relative?

Around the corner, a nice web of vines, leafless, and a juniper(?).

Found a book market, with a few browsers and very little selling/buying.

Strange look on the lion’s face…winsome?

Interesting split shutters, I theorized to keep the line of sight from below into the room truncated.

Love the dangling foot outside this pediment…don’t know the story being told. She’s got a crown with a castle atop it and he’s dumping out the wine(?) jug…perhaps harvest symbolism in wheat, sunrays, and veggie pile.

Never seen a lock like this….

Today’s hood-photo: burger night for the Guru. Burger in elegant bun with pink mayo sauce, fries, wine, and a side of salmon-avocado sushi. Of course.

Posted at 2:12 PM | Comments Off on Sunday stroll

We start and end the photo-day with market moments. Here’s the morning periodic market nearest us. This vendor offers dried fruits and nuts.

Elsewhere it’s pack-up time. Look at these gorgeous cabbages.

Nearby, the machinery waits to make all pristine again. As if the Saturday-market never was here. In Mexico, this function would be performed by a squad of men with ill-fitting boots and brooms made from twigs.

Moving on, I’m assuming freezing temps are rare here (duh), as otehrwise there’d be sewage backups on the upper floors.

Came across this demonstration that seemed to indicate that “animals” need to be elevated in importance. They are more imporant living creatures than plants? I am confused…okay to kill plants but not critters? I struggle with these arguments.

We kept walking.

Presto! We’ve logged another Apple store!

And onward to a chronologically later neighborhood, with straight streets and vertical-walled buildings. Seems rigid after “our” part of the city (and its web of narrow streets). And beautiful in its away.

Looming church tower. They do that.

Jump in time to…our fancy dinner out. This is the Guru’s appetizer, tartare de sauman Gravlax. Salmon with cukes in large, artsy chunks, with a side of leafy greens. Our main courses were lamb shank (him), and simple stewed beef over polenta pavings (me)—both super yummy.

Working our way homeward, we found plazas of tables and boisterous merrymakers. Saturday night, ya know, and a lovely evening it is!

With elegant plane tree branches above.

Just had to include this…choices at Monop’ checkout (just to the left) this evening: champagne or cactus. Some humor there, in the stocking crew.

Posted at 4:29 PM | Comments Off on Market…to…market

Rainy early, so we got going late—no reason not to! As the skies cleared and the streets were still wet, we headed out for a wander, with no other destination than a meal when we became hungry.

Soon, the sun gave us light and shadow art.

And on a plaza, too.

Note the plane (sycamore-ish) trees…detest the severe pruning that makes them all knotty and knobbly.

We stumbled into this curving section of what is billed as a stretch of the medieval wall—the inside was to the right.

And, just down the way, this wall and tower, which must be from a later wall that enclosed a bit more real estate.

Note plane tree far right….

A street veg display. Most species are from France.

And, on that same corner, a lovely old sign above…. Your chemiserie destination.

Under the sign a mini-minibus waits for the bollard to descend and permit passage.

In the next block, a pawn-bollard was down. Love the paving-stone pattern.

The face fountain…I only gave you a face yesterday.

More plane trees….

On the other side of the same square, a human figure behind a pigeon screen, below a day-of-the-month device that’s way off.

Lunch break! This is my chicken breast stuffed with crayfish, sides of mashed potatoes and poêlée de champignons—which turns out to be fried/sauteed mushrooms. Yum. And a wine from this area, from a town a mere 17km from central Aix.

Full, we wandered apartment-ward, passing by this plaza undergoing rebuilding…in the process revealing the bases of old walls/foundations…apparently of the palace of the town’s count. Didn’t catch the date—17th, maybe 18th century?

After a siesta-like downtime, we headed back out to see the city under lights. Nice night!

Discovered that some plane trees are afflicted with a fungus tree types call canker (chancre coloré here), and soon will be cut down. That is a big problem in this town of many, but not exclusively, plane trees.

Yawn…tomorrow!

Posted at 2:57 PM | Comments Off on Street adventures

Having seen opening times listed as 9am (Google), 10am (city website), and nothing (official webpage), we gambled that the gate to the closed-Tuesday fort might be open at 10:45am. Not. And it was overcast and windy. We took sanctuary behind one wall of the church, where the wind was more indirect. Note: no sun, windy, cold. Our destinations for touristing became the fort (beige, left) and the Mucem/MuCEM (black, central).

We didn’t spend long in the fort (windy, cold), but the view was terrific—harbor entrance is below me.

An exhibition area in the fort was touted as Picasso. Turned out Picasso kinda art-decorated some theater productions, including costumes and backdrops. Kinda like “George Washington slept here.”

On to the Mucem, which is covered with this platelet web made of concrete. We went down hallways of nothing, and found a gallery labeled Roman-photo.

Me, not knowing French and thinking I can sort out obvious words thought some kind of Italian whatever-art. We were there ten minutes before I figured out it means “photo novel.” This is an everyday publication type somewhere between harlequin romance and comic book, which was popular everywhere, including France, Italy, and, here, Spain.

At some point, the production involved high-end cameras, and well-known actors, from Sophia Lauren to Brad Pitt (or maybe Pitt’s face was used, but he didn’t pose, kinda like People?)

The stories seem to have been heavy on human-human interactions, and adult subjects. Some were scary.

Others used character-types we’d recognize from other forms of theater.

The exhibit included this half-car used for two-shots. Love the receding palm trees. No turns if you want to sustain the driving effect.

Down another hallway, we found a bunch of de Gaulle documentaries. That’s the big guy speaking. And he was tall, and had a world-class schnozz. The Guru says when he was a kid he got de Gaulle and Jimmy Durante confused.

On a lower level, we found what seems to have been the permanent display on general Mediterranean history…accent on the people of wine, olives, and cereal agriculture. And bulls…well, more cows, I’d bet.

Love this wine-jug saddle. Gotta move that product to market, no?

Another gallery got into Ottoman-Genoese history. Love all the little scenarios in this painting.

In the museum, this guy was nicknamed Barberousse (he died in 1546). The label named him formally Kheir ed-Din. WikiPee in French calls him Khizir Khayr ad-Dîn and Khayr ad-Din. English WikiPee calls him Hayreddin Barbarossa and Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha, and says his Turkish name was Hızır Hayreddin (Hayrettin) Paşa (among others). Easier to stick to Barberousse/Barbarossa. He was a famous pirate, navy-man, and, along with his brothers, took control of Algiers, then opted to ally with Turkey/the Ottoman empire against the threat of Spain. Confused? Yeah, it’s one of those mixed, complex stories typical of Mediterranean folk for millennia.

As we left the museum, we could feel fine precip. Wet, though, not the snow that nearby areas got today. We walked back to our neighborhood and I sampled a family restaurant’s version of marmite, the fish stew I had two days ago. No garlic-mustard or cheese, so simpler flavors. Except for the two langoustines, no shells. Same dried baguette slices. In this case the soup/broth was served separate from the bowl of mixed seafood species, except for a bit in the seafood bowl; this meant the soup stayed hotter, perfect for ladling at will into the seafood. The flavor of the soup was along the same lines, and I still don’t know exactly what it was/is.

Precip was a bit more intense as we skedaddled down to the bakery to get a quiche snack for later and pain au chocolat for tomorrow with our coffee. Tomorrow is a travel day, and we understand that today’s snow flurries/wintery mix in Aix will become rain for our visit. Oh, yay.

Posted at 12:16 PM | 1 Comment »

That’s the headline. As we got to the gate to the bridge to the “north fort” and also the MuCEM (pronounced museum), we saw it was closed and locked. Plan B time.

Plan B was walk down to the harbor front, then go right or north around the base of the fort on this narrow walkway, then work our way north. We started at the place we began to harbor-walk yesterday, but went the opposite direction.

We had a good view of the mouth of the harbor and a pedestrian ferry entering, along with a sailboat motoring out.

Further along, we could see a large shipping/people/vehicle ferry leaving the port headed across the Mediterranean; crossing is about 20 hours.

We looped around the MuCEM building to a big terrace suitable for water-views; below it is a parking garage. MuCEM is short for Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. Yup, closed. That brought us around to a land-view through the Ferris Wheel. The MuCEM is the black building, far right.

Another ferry leaving. The Corsica route also crosses to Algiers, but takes 23 hours.

Walked under the wheel. Did not feel compelled to take a ride. Nor did many other people, although we did see two young girls dragging probably grandma and grandpa toward the ticket office. Let’s get high!

Working our way north past a ferry dock and passenger and car entrance/exit, looking inland the buildings are not new, and it seems preservationists are making developers preserve the façades. This orange-ish building with the white outlined windows is one end of a large, busy mall in the gutted interior. Can’t tell that from here.

We did go in a mall on the water side. Also busy, and not just people off the ferries. Went up two levels and presto, an Apple store! With a fantastic view of the Mediterranean!

Little cool for sitting today….

We walked through the store and onto the terrace. The north end was near a Corsica ferry being loaded. We saw semis rolling on.

Headed inland and passed on the land side of the cathedral. This is the route “home.”

We’re taking it easier today, probably just fine that we didn’t make it a museum day and need to apply our brain cells to thoughtfulness. Teehee!

Posted at 12:00 PM | 2 Comments »

We went to bed early last night, thoroughly pooped. My eyes were closed by 8pm after a longlonglong travel day. We slept and slept. We finally got up just before 11am. [Have I slept that long since I was an infant?] We were thoroughly rejuvenated (no surprise!), especially after the pot of coffee the Guru made…coffee and milk thoughtfully stocked in our apartment!

We set off to explore the harbor. Marseille’s harbor is a rectangular U with the opening to the west. We live in the old town, on the north side. There’s a fort on each side of the harbor opening. This photo is from the north fort toward the south fort. Also, the southern skyline is dominated by the Basilique Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, high on a rocky outcrop. Although it looks older, it was built in the late mid-1800s. If you get closer or have a big lens, you can see the glinting, gilded statue of the Virgin atop the belltower.

Down at the harbor, you can see that what was once a working harbor used by fisherman, traders, and pirates navies, there’s still a bit of evidence of fishing, but mostly the harbor is full of moored pleasure boats, both sailing and motoring.

I was quite interested in these boat supports/jacks, for the endlessly necessary work on hull cleaning and maintenance.

The many docks radiating out from the wide apron around the water are all protected by gates; this one even had barbed wire. As near as we could tell, each dock was controlled by a different group, usually named a Society of Somethingorother.

Tourists did the usual lots of phone checking, pictures, music, whatever….

Oddly, I noticed no selfie-sticks. Wha? Bring a friend instead?

The base of the U has an artistic high reflective…roof(?), creating probably highly appreciated shade in the summer heat. Today, not so much. Note winter coats.

We took the obligatory close-up shots. Here’s a fine one showing complex anchor engineering.

We also took, uhem, I took many mast-reflection shots. Here’s only one, Lucky You.

We finally got around to the south end of the U, and looked back across the harbor mouth at the northern harbor-protecting fort.

Along the way, we stopped for a big seafood lunch. Big. Mine was a bowl of mixed species. I could not identify the flavors in the broth, quite tasty, but I’m pretty sure it was thickened with bread crumbs. It was served with a small bowl of grated hard cheese, and a small bowl of mustard with garlic and I don’t know what else. I wasn’t sure what to do with them, so after I’d gotten some of the shells out of the way (mmmmm), I stirred them both in. The broth was good both before and after the additions.

The Guru had moules frites, which is mussels with a side of fries. The mussels had marsala (pretty sure) and garlic (definitely) in the steaming/boiling liquid/broth; also yummmmm.

After our lovely, sun-drenched walking tour of the harbor (we missed the cross-harbor pedestrian ferry (1€ for two people), and so walked around the east end of the harbor, then cut north and west finally getting into the narrow streets of our neighborhood. There’s plenty of elevation change, and some sections are all steps.

We had such fun, and took hundreds of photos; I only include the merest sample, chosen to include the highlights—boats, buildings, sunlight. Also, see the moon!? Time to head to the bakery for some take-home quiche for tonight and pain au chocolat for breakfast. Our world is pretty darned fine.

Oops. I almost forgot to add that out our kitchen window I can see this headless Barbie on the tile roof across the street. Abandoned art, or art by abandonment?

Posted at 2:42 PM | Comments Off on Harbor day