Cezanne, Sextius and Calisson d'Aix

Standing in Barcelona Sants, we were handed our reservations.
"You cannot make reservations for France in Spain."
"Um. Okay."
"So when you hit Valence, make your reservation there. Three euros per person."
"Will that make us late for our next connection?"
"No. Never. Not at all."
This crossed our mind as we stepped off our train, late by five minutes, to see our connection pulling away. No train to Aix for another five hours, which would put us in Aix five hours later than we said we would be. Patching together some communication with our AirBnb host Regine, we sat in the TGV Gare armed with a beer and some episodes of The Wire. Nothing like some drug related killing and conspiracy to take your mind off. Gazing out the picture window, sun high, lanes of lavender run out, flanked by golden wheat. The mountains rise out in the distance, a skirt of dense grass and wildflowers billowing out like a blanket.

We staggered through the narrow lanes of Aix as the sun was setting and everyone was piling out of their apartments into the cooler air and up to a table filled with chilled wine. Aix en Provence has the heat of Mataro without the merciful proximity to the water. Taking a cold shower morning and night accomplishes as much as making your towel damp. And though they don't call it that, everyone takes a siesta. The only people who stay open are the ones slinging cold beverages which usually seems to consist of some Pastis and Perrier or rose wine on ice. We got in the spirit of things and bought our own bottle of Ricard, which we liked with a wedge of lemon and a spritz of tonic.

The first university in Aix was founded in the early 1400's and with a population of only about 145,000 it's well established as a university town. I didn't realize this until at 430 am on our first night where we were 'entertained' by the antics of four drunken French boys in the apartment across the narrow street from us which involved swinging from their laundry line. Surprisingly resilient.

Aix itself was founded in 123 AD as part of the Roman empire and there is something distinct about Provence in comparison to Paris. It has it's European class and flare with something a little different. When trying to discover the must-sees in the region, two common things pop up: fountains and markets. The former is obviously a point of pride from the Roman empire. One fountain, along the famous Cours Mirabeau, aptly named the "Mossy fountain" for the cape of moss that obscures any detailing that was once visible, is fed by a hot spring that also fed the Roman Baths at the northwest corner of the historic centre.

The latter truly holds the magic of Provence. Select mornings during the week, shaded narrow streets open up into a square filled with lanes of vendors selling everything local imaginable, from rosemary blossom honey, herbs de provence, local cheese, handmade pasta, fresh baguettes, olives, even Calisson d'Aix, a tiny local specialty. Wandering out of one market, your wicker basket overflowing with local goodies, you pick up a fresh bouquet of flowers for your table and a tasty bottle of Cotes du Rhone to tie it all together.

Provence was the first time I understood why sometimes you should chill red wine. Drinking red wine at 'room temperature', the temperature it is coming off the counter, is like drinking blood. Thick, red, and seemingly hot.

Cezanne is the prize child of Provence. Anywhere he did anything so much as stub out a cigarette there's a little bronze "C" to mark it's significance. They have made Atelier Cezanne, his studio into a museum. And by museum, I mean they put a gate on his house and didn't move a thing. And they charge 5 euro for it.

The way to see Provencal France, in retrospect, would be to leapfrog through the region spending a few days in each, experience the unique landscape, culture, and gastronomic specialities of each. We poked around found a cheap rental car that we could rent for a day and maybe get our taste of the French Riviera. We were charmed by this idea. Fields of lavender, the aptly named 'azure' waters of the Mediterranean, a good bowl of bouillabaisse maybe. Before we knew it we were screaming down the A50, screaming at French drivers who are apparently ignorant of what signal lights are for or what 'following distance' is.

Weaving through wine country, we spit out in St. Tropez for our little slice of the high life. Not one for the ritzy beach crowd, we headed to Plage de Pampellone, a stretch of beach southeast of St. Tropez. A beach of unmanicured sand, calm waters and lanes of people, men and women, going COMPLETELY al fresco. Any moment of 'whoa boobs' that I had in Mataro was instantly trumped by moments of 'there's ANOTHER penis' in St. Tropez. In poking around as to the best beaches, we were told if you wanted something more 'risqué' you should try Plage Tahiti, it's 'clothing optional'. I'm not exactly sure what they meant by risqué, but I'm of the opinion now that I would have to see people playing beer pong with a special appendage before I would consider nudity 'risqué' on a French beach.

Piling back into the car, we wove through the hairpin turns of the French Riviera, flanked by rows of grapevines, and climbing ivy, plumes of palm trees and brick lain fences coiling around AOC designations and plummeting cliffs. Cassis was easily our favourite and the most striking. The mountainous Le Chateau rising to the east and the gorge-like Calanques to the West, said to be France's Grand Canyon, it was the first in the region to receive an AOC distinction for it's wine with a Cassis white known worldwide.

From Cannes to Bandol, Cassis to Marseille, Nice to Avignon, we waved to each as we wove, with the windows open, back to our stomping grounds.

We made our rental back with about four minutes to spare. Swinging by for some fresh charcuterie and another baguette, my in-house chef made our last night in Provence one to remember with a primavera of fresh tomatoes, ashed chèvre, fresh pasta and olives. He also cleaned out the fridge which was nice of him.

Things I learned in Provence:
There is no shame in putting ice in wine.
A baguette and some olives is a meal in itself.
All cultures have a siesta. Or at least they should.

Quote from Provence:
Moozh: I don't care who I offend when I say this. French drivers are the worst drivers I've ever seen. Fuck French drivers, babe.

A Sticker on the Sky and a Wild Goose Chase

Paris: Part One

I'm typically not one to idealize Paris. The French and specifically Parisian heritage I still have, if any, has raised me to be overly familiar with the ways of the Parisian French. The snobbery was no surprise, the aloofness and independent nature totally familiar. The food, the wine, the pastries: I just finished a program where it was all injected to our jugular as gospel truth.

But damn Paris is gorgeous. And it does need two posts.

Paris began with us realizing that our train pass was not as simple and cheap as I thought and had made it sound. We had to take a bit of a detour to keep it cheap which still put us in Paris for 2pm. Paris was our first experience with AirBnB, a vacation rental by owner situation. We found a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarter, top floor from which you can see the Pantheon and, after dark, the beam from the Eiffel Tower. It overlooked the clusters of those iconic Parisian rooftops, each like a mantlepiece lined with terracotta pots, vases and found things. 

 

We got ourselves unpacked and went down to the neighbourhood Carrefour to pick up some food. I can verifiably say that we ate a baguette everyday for four days. Our diet did stray from that but we made sure to incorporate something quintessentially Parisienne into our food cost. And everyone we saw was walking with one. Baguette, some good double cream brie and some jambon, we were set. We picked up three or four bottles of beautiful French red wine. For a couple of Euros each, how could you not? After this, we explored one of the most popular areas for food markets and cafes, the Rue de Mouffetard. Bourdain suggested a cafe along Rue de Mouffetard called La Papillion. We thought, maybe we'll hit it. Ya know, on our way home, real flexible like. Not open. In fact, closed until August 17th. All good, coincidental bad luck. Through this we discovered our morning ritual, a cafe dilonge (long shot espresso) at Le Verse Tojours and freshly baked croissants and Boulangerie a la Monde. 

We realized quickly people can tell when you're a tourist, even if you're trying hard not to look like one. And when they can tell you're a tourist, they ask where you're from. When you tell them Canada, they automatically assume you speak French. It's amazing how much you can pull together, just vocabulary wise. But 'Je ne parlez pas Francais' goes a long way when someone starts asking you for directions. 

First day, we went to book our train reservations for Barcelona, and from there waltzed along the Seine while the morning opened up. Curving around the Seine, you first see Ile St Joseph, the first of the two islands situated in the middle of the seine. Paris grew out of a small settlement of a tribe named the Parisii on these islands. Above the eastern most point of Ile de la Cite rises the gothic spires and gargoyles of the cathedral of Notre Dame. I instantly move into my most operatic rendition of the Bells of Notre Dame from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is unfortunate because then for the rest of the day I had about six bars of it stuck in my head. 

We snap pictures of the exterior as we eye the forever snaking line to get into Notre Dame. We decide to come back earlier the next day and we'll got and find a place that Anthony Bourdain said has great croissants and OJ. This is the moment in our programming where we realized GoogleMaps is not in Europe what it is in North America. Another half hour of walking and staring at streets, feeling confused. We hit the Pantheon, by our place, which is where Marie Curie, Voltaire and Rousseau are all buried. It's for all the brainy ones. You can climb the steps all the way to the top to see a replica of Foucault's 67m pendulum that he used to prove the rotation of the earth. It had to be installed into the bell of the Pantheon because no where else at the time was big enough to fit it. 

We headed home and had our first French meal. Cheese and bread with some chilled Rose. We eased our aching feet and then took a walk to the Luxembourg Palace, which is now the seat of the French Senate. The French very much take pride in their gardens. Disney movies weren't lying. So many different flowers and succulents, palm trees, and topiaries. At most of the castles and palaces we saw, all the trees are are blunted into squares. 

On our way home, we walked back through Rue de Mouffetard and found an Egyptian cafe with hookah. Sitting in cafe as the sun set, and the terraces opened for the late night drinks along the tiny cobblestoned streets was the perfect way to end our first day. We kicked our shoes off and collapsed into bed. We fell asleep to the distant sound of an accordion playing in the background. 

Our second day we were determined to get a handle on addresses and to find them definitively on the maps. No more GoogleMaps nonsense. First stop, the Invalides.  Louis XIV built the Hotel de la Invalides for unwell soldiers. It was meant to be a place for the sick and the dying, where they would otherwise have no where to go and no one to care for them. It has fifteen different courtyard including one called the 'cour d'honneur', or 'Court of Honor' for military parades. This set it up to be somewhat of a big deal. Parisian rioters stormed the Invalides and took the cannons so that they could storm the Bastille during the French Rev. Alfred Dreyfus was degraded here during the Dreyfus affair. Napoleon is buried there! The building itself was inspired by St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and conversely, the Capitol building in Washington, DC was based off of Les Invalides. That 'wedding cake' construction just has this je ne se quois. 

From there we were going to go find another Bourdain destination, armed with better directions and addresses. Our destination is Le Royale, for friggin croissants and OJ. This time, we found it fairly quickly and very quickly found that it was closed. Until September 3. We start that kind of laughing -that funny laughing. Not funny 'ha-ha' but funny 'something's loose up there' laughing.  

From here, we were only a few blocks off of Tour Eiffel. Laughing off the Le Royale but feeling a little hungry, we wandered over to the Champs de Mars to take some pictures. The sky was cloudless and it somehow functioned to emphasize how…small the Eiffel Tower is. It's not small. It's an 81-story building. But it stands so LARGE in memory, in cultural consciousness, that when you see it, the first thing that leaps to mind is, "I thought it'd be bigger." It kind of looked like a sticker on the sky, one that you bought at a Post Card shop. 

What about Bourdain's other suggestion near the Eiffel Tower? We have truly bad luck with this stuff. Feeling like the Eiffel Tower kind of looked like a sticker against the sky at the moment, with high sun and no cloud, we went for one last jaunt. Well worth it. 

La Cocotte, is a restaurant concept from Christian Constant where he centres his menu around a Staub cocotte, which is a stoneware baking dish. Almost everything came in it. Some nice red wine, some amazing country style pate, some red fish with tapanade and the original Cesar Ritz salad, all within view of the Eiffel Tower, that day got to be our splurge. 

From there, we crossed the Seine and up to the Arc de Triomphe. We pushed past the ritzy shopping district on Avenue George V and up Avenue Champs Elysee. The Arc is much bigger in person than it looks. We wander through the tunnel that leads up to the Arc. Temporary fences partition off the arch. There are veterans, flags and a full military band. Everyone in the place was just silent. We later find out that August 10th is the anniversary of the storming of the Tuileries and the start of the French Revolution. The ceremony lasted probably about half an hour. There is a tomb of an Unknown Soldier underneath the arch. There is always a flame lit above the inscription that reads, ICI REPOSE UN SOLDAT FRANÇAIS MORT POUR LA PATRIE 1914–1918 ("Here lies a French soldier who died for the fatherland 1914–1918"). 

From the Arc you could see the sun just dipping behind the spire of the Eiffel Tower. Reading to sit down and relax with some wine, we wandered over. The Eiffel Tower is one of the buildings that is so large in lore and in expectation that when you see it during the day, when there is all the hustle and bustle, it's almost underwhelming. But then night falls. The columns light up with spot lights. Suddenly, it reaches up into the black night, it's beam seemingly reaching far beyond Paris. It is all you have been told and all you imagined when you pictured it in your mind. The first five minutes of the hour arrive. Bulbs that line every beam on the tower go off randomly. It really does sparkle. And it takes your breath away. When the lights first started, there was a collective gasp from the entire park. There is something about watching it sparkle that pictures don't do justice to. It simply seems lit up. But seeing it sparkle makes it what you walked across Paris to see. 

All credits for these photos go to my husband,
Moozh Dempsey

The 'sparkle' was gone as it came and we stayed until a merciful chill started to set it, just watching the beam circle around. Strolling back down the Champ de Mars, you walk past the twenty-something girls travelling Europe together and snapping pictures of each other in front of the tower. You pass the small French families eating dinner as their young kids dance and scream in the dusk. You pass the couples sitting and making a moment of it. You cross to the back green, past the uni students and the partiers drinking bottles of wine to themselves. Past the Mur de la Paix, or Mural of Peace, where 'peace' is written in 32 different languages to symbolize life in the third millennium.

Paris is just getting started.

Bonjour! Un croissant, s'il vous plait. Quatre-vingts centimes. Merci au vous. Bientôt!

Get a friggin croissant. Eat it. Repeat. Enjoy.

Things I learned in Paris:
Don't miss the moment. (Are you seeing a pattern?)
Even histories that are so far beyond you can sometimes still feel relevant.
Bread and cheese is a friggin meal man!

Quote from Paris:
Me: Our waitress is so nice.
Moozh: Why?
Me: She got all excited when I got here, "Bonjour! Ca Va Bien!"
Moozh: What does that mean?
Me: I don't know but I said, "Bien" and she acted like that made sense.