On to Italy

We left St Remy to drive into Italy, having been told about the craziness of that particular motorway as it enters Italy. The E80, along the south coast of France was very nice and smooth. We sailed along with Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo viewed from above and then we hit the tunnels!

This is what it looked like from our view in the car. Our destination was Lucca, which is  just a little north of Florence. I swear we must have spent at least half of the journey underground. The challenge was going from bright sunlight into a tunnel. There were tunnel lights, but that moment of temporary blindness is disconcerting. At one tunnel exit, we found there was a lane restriction just as we emerged into the sunlight. We had to brake hard, try to move into the open lane with a large car transporter not paying any attention to our situation. Luckily we made it OK, no scrapes or bangs, just an adrenalin high.

Next we found ourselves traveling along with a whole string of Ferrari's, which was fun. I am not sure what the collective term for a bunch of Ferrari's is, but "flock" seems a bit tame, maybe it's a "frenzy" or a "fury", or maybe even a "flash". I think I like "A Frenzy of Ferrari's" best of all.

Our apartment was about half a mile outside the walls of the city of Lucca. It was situated in a large old building that seemed to have several multi-storied houses all connected together. We learned that our hostess's grandmother lived in the apartment below us, was aged 92 and still lived on her own. The house next door was occupied by a 94 year old woman who was born there, and has lived in that house all of her life. We don't get to witness that much anymore!

The view from our living room window was this large garden, and every day the owner, who looked to be in his eighties, was out there either weeding or harvesting. We noticed many such gardens in the neighborhood.

Lucca is a walled city where the walls are very wide and planted with trees. The walls can be walked or biked, with a circumference of over 4km. Unfortunately, we only had one day in Lucca and decided not to spend the time on the walls as it was quite hot, (now we do have to return).

This might give a bit of an idea of just how big these walls are.

It is an old city with wonderful narrow streets opening into piazza's. Not too many tourists during our brief visit, as I think it was fairly early in the season, though we did encounter a couple of tour groups.

This is the cathedral, Duomo di San Martino. Quite a magnificent structure and hard to photograph.

Puccini's home was Lucca, so there were a number of statues of him, as well as a tour of his house, if you were so inclined. We opted for ice cream.

This was an interesting and quite busy "square" in that it was contained in a large circle of buildings.

A great place to have lunch across the square from the Ducal Palace.

Not as grand as I thought it might be!

There are always groups of folks putting the world to rights.  Love it!

 This is the best sign I have seen in a long time, I think this concept should be adopted everywhere!
 Our stay in Lucca was very short, there is a lot more to see, as well as other nearby cities such as Pisa.  Definitely on our "return to" list.

Next stop, Guardia Sanfromondi.

Saint Remy de Provence

We drove across southern France on May 25 to our next short stop in St Remy de Provence, which was a wonderful drive on French motorways, even with their tolls. We had some car issues which were speedily resolved, thank goodness, and we arrived at our AirBnB only a little later than expected. We managed to communicate with our host via the Internet by making several motorway stops to get wifi (or in French weefee). It is surprising how reliant we become on our electronic ways of communicating. Why the mobile phone was not used is another long story.
Our B&B was a little way out of the town, which was really good, as parking is always a challenge in town.

This was the house where we had our rooms. Breakfast was served on the terrace overlooking the pool and the view of the Alpilles in the background.

 The view from our room, with nice clear air as the mistral was blowing very hard, even the locals were complaining.

On our first walk to the village we came across the Church of St Martin which was quite impressive, although in some need of restoration. You can see in the above photograph, much of the lower part of the murals on the walls and columns has been worn off!

There are a number of shady squares where you can eat or have coffee and watch everyone as they pass by. We could get used to this.

Great local food and we did find a restaurant that was sheltered from the wind, so we could eat outside. These small fried fish were one of the specialties on the Tapas menu.

We were fortunate to be in St Remy on market day and this one was quite spectacular. Many stalls, from fresh fish, vegetables, cheese and olives, to arts and crafts and soap.

And even barbequed pork.

Vincent Van Gogh came to this village in 1889 and stayed for about a year in the local mental institution. During this time he produced over 200 paintings and drawings. There is a "Vincent" walk from the village up to the hospital where he stayed voluntarily and where art was a form of therapy.

The walk is punctuated by copies of Van Gogh's art, which are posted on the roadside as you walk towards the hospital.

Looking back to the hospital towards the rooms that Van Gogh occupied. It was quite remarkable to look out onto scenes that were the subjects and inspirations for his art.
There is a reconstruction of his bedroom and it is very interesting to look out of the barred windows today and see the landscape pretty much as he would have seen it.

The original tiled floor where van Gogh must have paced.

We were fortunate to have seen the original in Paris before we came to visit here.

We had been told of a hill town not far from St Remy called Le Baux de Provence and set off to find it. The car's GPS found a way there which took us along a wonderful mountain road, luckily with not too much traffic.

This was the best view where you can just see the castle and the town surrounding it. The houses have been built out of the local "tufa" stone and partially constructed underground.

The village was absolutely packed with tourists and nowhere to park, so we did not stay. Instead we went to visit the local Roman ruins!

There is much more to see, but we were a bit hot and tired and called it a day. I believe the Romans hung around here until about 400AD and then went home to take care of other business.


As we left St Remy, the mistral died down and it was most pleasant, but beginning to get hot.

Saying goodbye to our host Danielle.

I think he was saying "come back soon".

Onward to Italy.

Saint Emilion

Leaving the Loire area, we drove south towards Bordeaux where we had our next accommodation booked. The early part of the route was through a mostly agricultural area with good uncrowded roads, most of which were as straight as far as the eye could see.

The remainder of the trip ,which was about six hours of driving, was mostly easy with the motorways having only minor truck traffic, wonderful. Yes there are tolls on the motorways, but all of the roads we experienced were in beautiful condition, maybe some of the toll money actually goes towars road upkeep.
 We stopped for lunch at a motorway facility which was very modern.

This structure, plus further extensions were in the restaurant area, but we did not discover its purpose; maybe some kind gallery maybe.

Arriving in the town of St Emilion!

Our rental was this 13th century refurbished windmill or moulin. It was within walking distance of the town and, not surprisingly, on a small hill.

The view from our "front door" with the town in the distance. St Emilion is in the middle of the grape growing Bordeaux region and there are wineries everywhere.

Heavily planted in grapes.

These vines were next to the moulin and looked to be pretty old.

The town itself has quite steep streets which are mostly cobbled with much of the center pedestrian only, with some minor exceptions which we could never understand.

Just to give a little idea of the streets,

A pretty significant church built on a high part of town.

This was a fun "street", very steep and cobbled, I can imagine it it would be pretty treacherous in wet weather. It had restaurants and shops along it's length.

A view over the rooftops to the castle.

It gets to be a bit tiring going up and down the hills, so we took a leaf out of the local's book and took a break on some handy parts of the stone buildings.

Did I mention it's wine country!

We met Paddy O'Flynn of "The Wine Buff" who was a delight and gave us a great "tour" of the local wines. Paddy has lived in the area since 1988, speaks fluent French and also has a string of wine stores in Ireland. We spent several hours tasting and shooting the breeze and we did end up buying a few bottles. It is one of the few stores that offer tasting, which we found surprising.

Since we were close to Bordeaux we decided to take the train and spend half a day exploring.

The train stop in St Emilion, in fact, several kilometers out of town. No place to buy a ticket, you had to buy it from the Conductor on the train.
I was a bit disappointed with Bordeaux, just a big gritty city with some pedestrian shopping streets, mostly closed on our Sunday visit.

A fine old church which had a separate bell tower.  Built next to the church because it was feared that the vibrations from the bells would damage the church structure if it was an integral part of the church itself! I thought it significant that the bell tower was still standing,

I thought this restaurant sign was funny. We should have eaten here, the sushi we had in the city center was certainly the worst we had ever eaten.

Back to St Emilion where you can also buy a vine as well as you favourite vintage from the same shop.
I need to say what an experience it was staying in the moulin. There are four levels, basement is the bathroom, the entrance floor is the kitchen, next one up is the sitting room, with bedroom on the top floor. Access to all the floors is via a staircase that spirals around the inside walls.

The inside diameter of the structure was about 10ft, so you can imagine it was a bit of a tight squeeze.
The walls were about two feet thick and it was quite surprising that they had managed to put all of the plumbing and electrical wiring inside the stonework, quite a renovation feat.
We stayed in St Emilion for three nights and then drove to our next location across the south of France.
Stay tuned for St Remy des Provence.