Preparing to head out again!

A new trip is being planned for the end of April and the first couple of weeks in May.  We have not been able to travel the last couple of years...well, unless you count spending most of last year living in a condo in Chicago taking care of precious Wesley.

Our good friend, Diana, is going to travel with me this year.  Leon has decided he is not up to traveling this year.  I have not put anything on the blog since our trip in 2014, so decided I needed to brush up with a trial run on our new travel computer. 

Diana and I are heading to London for a few days on our own, then will join up with a Rick Steves 7 day tour of London.

 Diana has never been to London, and I have only been once back in 1999 when we took the whole family on a month long tour of Europe.  I have no sense of direction, and Leon has always been my guide, so it will be interesting to see how many time I get lost on this trip.  Luckily, Diana is pretty good in that department, so I will depend on her to keep us safe.

After our tour is over, we will take the Eurostar to Paris, where we have an apartment rented for another week.  That is the part I am looking forward to the most.  I love having an apartment in Paris and pretending that I live there!

I will try to keep family and friends updated once we are on our way.  I'm getting excited!

More snow, a long drive, and home again

We woke up to snow again on Wednesday morning.  We had known that snow was forecast, but as we checked the forecast, it was predicted to begin around 10:00.  We planned to be on the road by then, so weren’t too worried.  While I was in the shower, Leon looked outside and…it was snowing!  There were big huge snowflakes coming right down and the roofs were already accumulating snow.  It was 0 degrees Celsius.  We had planned to go to the little market this morning and get a baguette for breakfast, so we hurriedly got dressed and walked in that beautiful (my word, not Leon’s) snow up to the little market.  No thieving dog anywhere this morning, so we bought a baguette and our last pain au chocolat and came back to start breakfast.  It was still snowing when we started to load the car.  A service truck was blocking our little one-way street, so we decided to just make two trips to the car with all our gear instead of trying to drive down. 

I took a couple of photos of our little apartment once we picked up the clutter and were ready to leave.  I should always do that first before it gets a lived in look.  Anyway, the living/dining/kitchen are all one room.  There is a curtained doorway that leads to the bedroom and bath.  The bedroom was too messy to take a photo of…sorry about that.

As we headed out, the donkeys were eating their breakfast in the field below the chateau.

We saw a couple of snowplows on the roads and there were salt and sand trucks out, so the roads, even going over the mountains were very clear.  Once we reached Avignon, the skies started to clear, and we had sunshine and blue skies the rest of the drive.

We had driven to Lauris a few times to a larger grocery store, but on the way out of town, we drove by the bluff side of town and saw this wonderful sight.  We really had no clue that Lauris was a mountain town because the other side does not look like this.

This wall and town were just off in the distance, so don't know the name, but thought it was interesting.

When we got to Orange, we saw this fort on the top of a mountain.

Just outside Orange is the site of a nuclear power station that has two cooling towers and 4 domes.  We thought it was interesting that right beside the nuclear power station were some wind turbines.

There was a hilltop town almost directly across from the power station.

Most of today’s photos were taken from the car as we drove along, so their quality varies from pretty good to pretty poor.  One thing I did not get a photo of was the “Ferme des crocodiles” signs along the road close to Orange.  There were several signs advertising the ferme, one of which was a historical marker type of sign right on the road.

There were wind warnings out all along the Vaucluse region.  There are big signs across the auto route that can be changed to tell about repair work, accidents, etc. on the highways.  The signs now had a photo of a wind sock inside a red warning triangle with the words, “Vent violent soyez prudent.”  The first signs we saw just had an outline of a wind sock inside the triangle, and it took a while for us to figure out what the outline was.    The Vaucluse/Luberon region is famous for its Mistral winds.  If you have read the Peter Mayle book about “A Year in Provence,” you are familiar with the Mistral.  

The auto route is an expensive interstate quality highway that has a ton of trucks.  The speed limit is 81 miles an hour (130 km) on most of it, with a lane that trucks have to travel in.  They may move left to pass a slower truck, but have to travel in the far right lane.  Often there are 3 lanes.  Trucks are not allowed to go faster than 90 km/h which is about 56 mph.  Our tolls for the day totaled 53.8 Euros or about $72.  

We crossed the Rhone River at Vienne.  The grapes here are called Cote de Rhone…wonder why?

We crossed the Rhone again in Lyon.  We saw this interesting building under construction right beside the river as we drove South last week, but did not get a photo of it.  Here is the back side.  We wondered if it were a Frank Gehry design.  It is called the Museum of Confluence, meaning the confluence of the Rhone and Saone Rivers.

There is a wonderful church on top of the highest hill in Lyon.  We walked up that hill once with Diana and visited the church.  The mosaics inside were beautiful, but today, we just got a photo from the car.  The auto route goes through a lot of tunnels in Lyon, so you miss most of the scenery of that beautiful city.

Just north of Lyon is the village of Chateauneuf.  It is dominated by its chateau, which is beautiful from the highway.  The chateau was built in the 15^th century.

We drove back through Beaune, and once again saw snow in the shady spots north and west of town.  It is always nice to see signs on the side of the road pointing to places we have visited on previous trips, and it brings back fond memories of places like Vezelay, Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, Avignon, Dijon, and Grenoble.

As we drove along, we noticed that all the overpasses had metal railings, and they were painted all sorts of colors from red to purple, blue, lime green, yellow, emerald green.  Of course, the only one I managed to get a photo of was mustard yellow, but it seemed that there was neither rhyme nor reason for the colors.  Leon said he thought they just painted them whatever color was on sale at the time.

Another thing that was interesting was the amount of mistletoe we saw on trees as we drove along.  I should have gotten a better photo, but by the time I thought about it, it was starting to get dark.  It gets pitch black about 5:00 in France right now, you know.

The fields are all plowed up getting ready for the next crop, or bright green.  Everything in France seemed lots greener than it is here.

A couple of trivia things…the aires or roadside rest stops are very close together on the auto route.  I guess since there is such limited access on the payages, that they have to be, but there were big rest stops with gas, food, and sometimes lodging about every 12 km apart.  Sometimes just an aire with restrooms and nothing more were only 2-4 km apart.  That is way more frequently than we have them in the USA.  We did not see a single policeman on the payage.  We also did not see the signs warning of cameras taking photos of speeders, either.  

I am always complaining about women’s restrooms in the USA as having no privacy while toilettes in France have no cracks by the doors, and have walls and doors that give complete privacy. When you go into a stall and close the door, you pull a little lever that shows “occupied”  on the exterior so nobody has to knock or peer under the stall to see if it is busy.  Why can’t Americans made restrooms like these?

We made it to Paris, stopped by the hotel and left our luggage, dropped off the rental car at the airport and took the shuttle back to the hotel, then settled in to repacking and consolidating our luggage so we only had two each.  We were up early Thursday morning, took the shuttle to the airport and made it through security and to our gate with plenty of time to spare.  Charles de Gaulle Airport was not very busy at all when we were there, so we zipped right through security.

We knew that the Northeast had bad weather while we were in France, and I took these photos of snow from the plane windows...probably eastern Canada.

We saw a strange phenomenon when we were flying over the ocean.  It was just a circle of rainbow colors that seemed to be following us.  It was very cloudy down below but we were high above the clouds in bright sunight.  Leon said it was a complete rainbow...a complete circle.  I tried to get some photos.  Look hard and see if you can see a circular rainbow.

We landed in Chicago and had an almost 3 hour layover, so Caroline and David came to the airport, and we had a nice visit with them.  We have spent the past several Thanksgivings in Chicago, so it seemed right to spend some time with Caroline on Turkey Day.  David is the travel pro, so he pointed us to our gate…O’Hare was not busy either, so we flew through security and headed to our gate.  Our plane had a little computer glitch, so we sat on the tarmac for an extra 30 minutes before we took off and had an uneventful flight to XNA.  Leon went to get the car while I waited for our luggage, then we headed home…happy to be here, but sad to have our vacation in France over for another year.

Our last day exploring in Lourmarin

It has been a lazy day today.  Because the original forecast was for snow, we planned to just stay here and explore in Lourmarin for the day.  It has been cloudy and cold all day but no snow.  Now the forecast is for snow tomorrow when we will be driving toward Paris.

Last night at sunset, a red glow was over the village, so Leon suggested I take a couple of photos.  It gives the streets outside an eerie glow.

 Our apartment is upstairs over a restaurant.  There is a door beside the restaurant that we enter, then go up two sets of stairs.  There is an apartment at the top of the first set of stairs, then up the second set is our apartment with another apartment opposite our front door.  There is an apartment above us up another flight of stairs, but we have not heard anyone in it.  We sometimes hear the people whose apartment is sort of beside our bedroom.  Our door has 3 locks on it, so we feel pretty safe when we are locked in except for the fact that we think half the town has keys to our door!  Apparently the stairway is used as storage for the chairs and tables from the sidewalk restaurant below.  Sometimes we come in and can barely get by to the stairs.  Also, Walter told us that there has been a disagreement over who maintains the stairwell since there are 4 apartments and the restaurant who use it, so nobody maintains it.  It looks like a stairwell in a tenement building...or at least in a building that is 300 years old.

                                  Locks on the inside:

Our shutters are engineering works of art.  Leon loves them.  We have exterior louvered shutters that we close at night, then we make sure that the glass windows are closed, then there are interior wooden shutters that close with the same metal mechanism that locks the windows.  It is really interesting that it is such a complex locking system but obviously over a hundred years old.  There are 3 of these "buckles."  The rod is attached to the window and closes it when the wooden interior shutters are open.  Then you have to turn the rod so that the flange catches in the buckle on the right door, then you turn the handle and that latches the two interior shutters to the windows, and they are all locked down securely. 

We ate breakfast and decided to walk up to do one more load of laundry, buy a few more postcards, go to La Poste for stamps, and explore more of our neighborhood.

This little narrow path is on the way to the other apartment where we do laundry.  The houses were built so close to the edge of the church, or maybe it was the other way around, that a fat person could not walk through there. The church is on the left.

We took the scenic route back to the apartment through some narrow streets and down a path by a little stream.  We think that the little roofed area is where the town laundry used to be.

It is just amazing how narrow the streets are.  We have seen more than one car with skinned mirrors or scraped sides.  

Each doorway or set of windows is so unique.  I was getting ready to take a photo of one window that had lovely colored shutters and a window box of red flowers when Leon pointed out that there was a man sitting just inside the window watching me zoom in on his window.  I decided to just pass on that one!

I don’t think I mentioned that the author and Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus, is buried in the cemetery here.  There is a street named after him, too.

There is a little boutique on the way to the laundry that I think has a problem with its spelling...

 

The Christmas lights have been turned on.  We watched the crews put them up yesterday, but tonight they were turned on.  I will have to see if I can get a photo of them.  The ones here are not gaudy like we have seen in some of the other villages.  These are simple lights strung across the street in our little plaza.  We have not seen them in other parts of town.

We made a ham sandwich with the ham we bought on market day.  We are cleaning out the refrigerator since we are leaving tomorrow.  It is always interesting to see American products here.  We bought some Pringles and Colgate toothpaste at the Super U.  The little mini fridge in this apartment is a Whirlpool.

We have a flock of pigeons that roosts on the roof across the plaza from us.  When they take off en masse, it sounds like someone turned on a huge engine.  They fly right over us, and if we are looking out the window, we automatically duck. 

 Oh, Jason and Jennifer...I saw this Jeep parked right outside our window today and thought of you.

We went to a different restaurant for dinner tonight.  They had a plat du jour which we had no clue what it was…a filet of something.  Leon ordered the rib steak and I ordered the special not knowing what it was going to be.  We were brought out our wine and a little bowl of very salty, wrinkled dark olives.  They really were quite good.  When our meals came, mine was fish.  It was really quite good.  Leon and I used to think we could at least order from a menu in France…we recognized poulet, agneau, boeuf,  and poisson, but now they are getting too detailed for us.

We decided we might as well order dessert, so we asked our waitress to recommend something.  She said she loved the tiramisu Nutella and the chocolate cake.  The owner told her she should say she “liked” those instead of “loved” but we told her that we say “loved” for food, too.  She really did not know very much English at all, but as usual, she did better than we did with French.  The desserts were wonderful.  Leon got the chocolate cake.  It was warm, dense, and very chocolaty sitting in a big pool of vanilla sauce with whipped cream on top.  Mine was served in a little jar with a lid like old fashioned canning jars.  It had a big chunk of chocolate in the bottom with a luscious pudding on top and was sprinkled with cocoa.  I did not taste Nutella, just chocolate, and no coffee flavor like tiramisu usually has, but it was delicious anyway.  We both “loved” our desserts!

  On the way back we noticed a tree that had been strung with lights, so got a photo of it.  Hard to believe that everyone is getting ready for Christmas. You can see the strings of lights in our little square in the distance.

Off to Paris tomorrow.