Finally getting France in hand. I still have to write about Paris, but I've fallen out of chronology and must pick Arles back up. We took a day trip there and to St. Remy during our week in Aix.
I hope that what I'm about to say doesn't wound anyone; likely nobody who's reading this, but there's that chance. Here's another thing about blogging: it's not a diary; it's public. But it's diary-ish enough to claim a kind of intimacy. Who's it for? Who's a diary for? The Tolstoys kept diaries and somewhere I read about how they used them as weapons of passive aggression; each knew the other was snooping into her/his diary, yet the snooper couldn't say anything about what s/he found there, since that would be admitting to snooping. Yet each knew full well, and said things in those diaries to bait the other. In sum, a complex discursive situation.
If I believe--and I do--that all stories are told by someone, to someone, for some purpose--then I need to sort that, at least in order to tell this story. Maybe that will evince. I don't know who is reading, but mainly I think about ST when I write this stuff. And my family (hi, family).
I loved Arles. I loved it despite the fact that we had only a few hours there, and that the reason(s) our visit was too short had to do with other people dithering, to the point where I thought that little vein in a person's forehead--well, Gary's first, mine not long after--might explode. Eight of us went. We left too late. In fact the plan was to leave too late, but we had some late risers in the party. Okay, I can understand that, so I quit arguing for 8 and settled for 9, but then they switched it to 10. But then they were late for the meeting time, and then renting the cars took forever (and for which we paid way too dearly), and then driving was pretty scary because the person driving our car kept stalling it, and the person navigating wasn't doing too well, and my little forehead vein was beating but I just sank down in the back seat and practiced breathing deeply. I couldn't see out all that well anyway, since the car was a bad car, with windows like tank slits. But when we got to the parking structure in Arles and there was one of those long circular conversations about where to go and meeting times and studying maps and this went on and on and on.... until finally Gary walked rapidly across the street into the walled part of the city and I just shrugged and followed him. We had only 3 hours--it started out as 2, but I begged another. They were buying museum passes! 3 hours, and we needed to eat, so any one museum was going to be about it. Gary and I walked into the main piazza and immediately my vein shrank back and slowed down. I loved that piazza, I wanted to sit there and just breathe, watch. There was a guy playing sax by the cathedral, and 2 young men dancing to the music in the fountain. I got the camera out quickly, waved it at them to ask, and they smiled and waved at me. The sax guy had several dogs guarding his backpack. Gary got engrossed in the iron on the cathedral door--we were finally seeing Arles. Of course it's after noon already, closing on one....
The cathedral interior, and in fact outside in Arles, was wrought iron heaven (I've come to understand that a lot of wrought iron = a nice town in Gary's book--almost as important to him as the food.) We saw where revolutionaries has chopped the heads off figures in a sephulcre. I read about it all later, since we started to feel pressed... so off to the Roman arena, quick look through the fence at the roman theatre on the way. We took a few photos, then up to the top for a view over the town. I guess it is nice the arena is still used (no bullfights that day) but it seemed almost too restored--that's probably the romantic ruin ideals working on me. We met the rest of the party on our way out, as they were going in. A quick lunch at a little place near the wall--panini and beer, a sweet young man brought us our food and undercharged us, was grateful when we gave him the real total without making a big deal. I liked that Arles felt like real people lived in it, most of them no doubt devoted to the tourism industry, but still--the ambiance appealed over Aix's. You could get a sandwich here without taking out a loan for it.
Now it gets fuzzy, but I know we made our way to some Van Gogh sites like the Hotel Dieu, getting lost once, the veins starting back up when we realized just like that it was time to go back to the meeting place, the car park. Where we waited for 45 minutes, because they were all late. Of course they thought the meeting time was 1/2 hour later than I had been told, but they probably decided to change it after Gary stalked across the street, or maybe my vein was beating too hard to hear it. They were late for that anyway. At any rate, we were almost at the point of getting the bus schedule or finding a room for the night (I wish we had!) when here they came. Another 20 minutes or so of bathrooms, and we're on our way to St. Remy.
The drive was lovely and twisty, but of course I saw most of it through the tank slits and the fits and starts of car stalling. We stopped for a couple of scenic overlooks, so I did get a good look then (and nearly run over on the highway trying to take the group picture). We get to St. Remy and they can't find anywhere to park, can't find the center of town (with 2 or 3 maps...) so we park like a mile or so out of town, then race into town and I grab someon'es Rick Steves and by his calculations, we have just enough time to hoof it down to the St. Paul monastery where Van Gogh painted like a million things, and it's a 15-minute hike. Long story short, it was a hot, dusty, 30 minute hike (what does Steves do, run?) and he was off on the hours as well. No amount of begging would change the mind of the attendant, who was closing her shop and getting on her motorcycle. Of course, since I was insisting on seeing this (from my grab of the Steves, the only thing still open) the hot dusty walk was my fault, and things were more than a little tense. But I was darned if I was going to just stand on a corner in St Remy and dither.
We took the back way back--much pleasanter, a trail of sorts that evidently Vincent hiked and painted along. Gary picked me a spring of lavender, which I still have, and still smells, faintly, of that walk. There were places where the path was overgrown and uh-oh, there it was, leaves of 3, let me be, poison ivy. Somehow I avoided it.
It becomes important to eat in Arles, because one of the drivers does not want to have the twisty drive away from St. Remy in the dark, so after a long stop for water at a gas station, where I feel I am forcing a decision about restaurants, but someone has a list and I have a cell phone. We call and reserve, and finally get back to the cars and back on the way to Arles. By the time we get there (getting only slightly lost--the ohter car got 30 minutes more lost) I have forgotten the name of the restaurant, and the other car has the list. I know the name of the street it is on, and we are standing on it, so I just call from the last number dialed on the cell phone and ask what is the name--and turn around and see a guy in a window talking to me, on the phone. Within 2 minutes I was nursing a well-earned pastis, and Gary ordered a whole bottle of wine, intending to drink it himself, to calm down.
The name must remain forgotten--I could find it again, without a map, but the name is just gone. My head vein had gotten too big a workout. too bad; it was a fabulous meal. I remember best the duck paté on pumpkin bread. At one point during the meal, a parade started by. And kept going, and going, and going. I think everyone in Provence must have been in that parade: on horses, in carts, playing instruments, dancing, in costume, carrying agricultural implements, bearing baskets of fruit and vegetables, etc etc etc etc. We'd think it had ended but it would turn out just to be a lull or a gap, and here more people would come parading. I was all the way at the back on the long table so getting up to go to the door to see was a bit of a trial, so mostly I just saw glimpses and was well fed and oiled while all of Provence went by. I asked the waiter what the parade was for, and he said, "Ils sont heureux," which made about as much sense as anything by then.
The ride back to Aix was a nightmare. Stalling upmteen times. Angry words exchanged in the front seat. Stuck in the back, Gary nearly clawing my arm off at one point, and we both just stayed really really quiet, practicing trying to breathe at all. Getting lost in Aix, on the one-way streets, even going down one of them the wrong way, into traffic.... We were blamed for not helpiing, but we did not have the map and we could not see through the tank slits, and when we did volunteer an opinion it was disregarded. This went on for at least an hour, circling around Aix, it was the wee small hours, and we had an early morning train to Paris. Finally we got close enough to Maison de Carlotta to demand to be let out, foreheads both blazing. That was that, until a lot of email about the rental bill and other things tacked on.... suffice it to say, we don't travel that way. If I plan too much, it may be because I have the control thing--but it also may be because I want to have a good time, and for those with me to, too. That requires planning for excursions if you only have a day--and not waiting until you're already lost to use the map.
Prickly, prickly...but it was a hard day. I feel badly, because I really do like these folks, all of them, but I cannot abide the way some of them travel. Gary and I like to get up, get going, if it's a day that calls for going. If it's a day of lazy, we're pretty good at that. Gary's a good driver, I'm a good navigator--I make mistakes sometimes, but I catch them quickly, usually. I plan enough so we won't wind up taking out a second mortgage to rent a car, but we don't haggle over prices and nitpick at incidental expenses. We are both stubborn and opinionated, I know that. But above all, we decide we're going somewhere, we go. It's easier with 2. Maybe there's a rule of proportion here: the more people in one's group, the harder it gets.
We want to go back to Arles some day. Until then I'll remember the 2 guys dancing and the light and airy piazza, the parade and the duck paté. I will forget the dithering, or try to. But I think that day put us off group travel for good.
