Provence

Although we had planned on climbing for a third day today, our bodies and fingertips had other ideas. Therefore, when we woke up to weeping, bruised fingertips and painfully sore backs (yes, we are getting old), we decided that a little touring would be more enjoyable.

We started by driving through the upper reaches of the Verdon, past the big lake near St. Julien-du-Verdun

and on along the D952 through Castellane and the charming little village of La Palud and through the gorges. The trees in the Gorges were just starting to turn and a dense but fast moving fog brought in some dramatic lighting. Unfortunately, I only had my digital camera with me but took some decent shots:


Further down along a hairpin turn, we saw a sign for an overlook, which we walked up to


Because of the fog and many years of people walking up the limestone slabs, the going was very tricky, and a field of maybe twenty people (mostly pensioners) was quickly thinned out to only a handful. Somehow everyone managed to escape landing on their backs on the way down.


By chance, we happened upon another of the "most beautiful villages in France" called Moustiers St. Marie, which was indeed beautiful



and hidden at a notch in the impressive limestone cliffs. We bought a tablecloth and a few olive oil dispensers and wandered around town, over the bridges and through the small alleys.




I was a little surprised to find a store called "SARL MUFRAGGI", which sells Japanese swords!

Moustiers is one of several places in France which are known for Faience, so we looked at several of the stores to see their wares. It's an impressive technique, but not really my style, and outrageously expensive. Additionally, many of the store owners were so uptight that they didn't even allow pictures to be taken in their stores.

We had a quick and nasty sandwich lunch, and then continued south and stumbled upon the oddly named Allemagne-en-Provence. It has an impressive castle


which is also a four star hotel with very reasonable prices (80 euro for the smallest room).

The gates were locked, so we kept driving along the D952, past the CEA Cardarache. The CEA (Commisariat a l'Energie Atomique) is one of the major scientific funding agencies in France, and happens to be my former employer. It is the very worst that you could imagine a French Bureaucracy could be: lumbering, tedious, full of dead wood and backwards. It's a wonder that any scientist can survive in that environment, and its a true testament to the aptitude of French Scientists that many of them still manage to produce world class science. Case in point: the CEA Cardarache is the future site of a highly sought after international nuclear fusion project called ITER. After extensive bidding by several host nations, the CEA won the contract in june 2005. Anyway, I don't have my hard won CEA badge anymore (This included a criminal background check in the US!), so we couldn't go in. Instead, we continued on to Cadanet, but were very disappointed and got back in our car after about five minutes of wandering around. From Cadanet, we drove to St. Remy-de-Provence for an ice cream break

and walked through the narrow streets

where we found an excellent pottery store called Terre e Provence. Pottery in Provence is a funny thing: everything seems to be of decent quality, but it's rare (at least for me) to find something that I really like. Too often the designs are overly busy, with terrible brush work and poor craftsmanship. At this store however, everything was beautiful, and we bought a few espresso cups and a lovely olive oil jug.
On the way out of town, I pointed out the Glanum and we drove up the road, under the stunted evergreens and exposed limestone slabs and down into the valley of Les Baux de Provence: our only preconceived goal of the day. Why les Baux? In this valley overlooked by a medieval fort are century old olive groves which make the best olive oil I have ever tasted (and I have tasted quite a few olive oils). The brand is called Castelas

and you can drive right up to the same building where they mill the olives. There's a small storefront inside the building, where my mom and her childhood friend Shelly and I first discovered the oil a year and a half ago (purely by chance of course!).

We bought enough olive oil for a long time (3 litres for 50 euro, compared with $32 for 500 mL in the states). In a funny coincidence, as we were paying for the olive oil, one of the olive oil guys poked his head out of the production room and asked how many cases Williams Sonoma had ordered! It turns out that they had ordered a few palettes of Castelas over the past few weeks.

We drove away and blew kisses at the fantastic olive trees


Outside of St. Remy, I took Chloe to the mental hospital (Monastiere Saint-Paul) which housed Van Gogh from 1888 to 1889, during which time he painted The Starry Night, Irises, Olive Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun, A famous self portrait and many others. Now, there is a absolutely ridiculous sculpture of him, complete with bas relief van gogh "brushstrokes", holding a cluster of sunflowers!

We walked into the beautiful atrium


and then headed back onto the country roads and onto the autoroute back to Grenoble.

It was a great day, and watching it all fade away into the distance of the autoroute put me into that unique state of mind that you get when you know that you're about to leave. It's a strange mix of candor and emotion that isn't present in everyday life because it would drive you crazy. All the things that you put up with or take for granted are suddenly laid bare, because you know that they will be gone in a month: the asshole who smokes in the elevator, the old ladies who let their dogs defecate on the sidewalk, the motorcycles on the bike path, the guys trying to cut you off at every intersection, the poltroons who burn their trash on windless days next to the highway, $50 to fill your microcars gas tank, the beautiful villages that you just stumble upon randomly, century old olive groves, no traffic tickets, fantastic rock climbing, unpasteurized cheeses, wine without all of the yuppie snobbery. Inevitably you start trying to add it all up, but its a fruitless and impossible exercise. You are left with the obvious and unsatisfying fact that you be more than a little relieved to get on that plane in Lyon on November 12th, but at the same time will miss France terribly.