Return to Travel?

An old windmill and landscape near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France

We've been hearing about the boom in travel, now that the pandemic restrictions have been (mostly) lifted. Pent up demand! Flights are full, prices are up… Seems that everyone wants to get out and start traveling. 

Well, we do too. In our case, though, traveling does not require a trans-oceanic flight; we’re already on the continent where we want to travel. Plus, now we have a car. 

And, spring is here! The trees are leafing out; while there are many evergreens in this area, the view from the window is very much greener now that it was even a month ago. The trees behind us are finally showing their leaves, providing some privacy for the birds that have been checking out the property for the last few months. We expect some serious nest building to begin soon.

View from our balcony; in full summer we won't see the houses behind us.

So what have we been doing? Well, we’re still staying home, mostly, although we did go to a rather fabulous concert recently. The local symphony orchestra and a 40-member choir gathered at the new opera house, the Corum (as distinct from the 19^th-century opera house, Opéra de la Comédie). They did the musical parts of Miloš Forman’s 1984 movie “Amadeus” while the movie itself played on a big screen behind them. 

It was very well done! The dialog was intact, in English (with French subtitles), while the live orchestra and chorus were perfectly synchronized with the images. This didn’t improve the story line (or the depiction of Mozart’s irritating wife), but the movie was always about the music anyway. And that part was great! 

The opera house-cum-movie house, with full orchestra.

It was a fun evening, classy (we went to the opera!), yet down home at the same time (it was a movie… and an old one!). It’s a great way to engage people who normally wouldn’t come to an opera, particularly young folks. It certainly filled the opera house.

 

(On a technical note, there is a company—in Japan, I think—that provided the video track and the synchronized orchestral scores. I can’t imagine too many movies would work well with this technique, but they do have several more, including the 1979 sci-fi hit “Alien.” An unlikely candidate, I would think, but there you are. I’d love to see “Gladiator” with live music, but so far it’s not in the catalog.)

 

         Saint-Rémy-de Provence

We’ve visited this town before, but this time we arrived in our own car. Yes, we bought a car, at the end of February. Over the next two months we put about 100 miles on it—not much! Which made this our first big auto outing. We were five in all: the two of us plus our traveling companion Kate, along with American friends Debra and Adrianne . It started as a day trip, but we ended doing an overnight: there was just too much to do in one day. 

The car did very well, even fully loaded as we were; we did really well, too! First stop was the Carrières des Lumières, the fabulous underground light show, with images projected on the walls, ceiling, and floor of a former quarry.

 

We had been here before, twice, for the amazing Van Gogh show. This time the subject was Venice, with images and art from that fabled city. It was well done, as always, although we all liked the Van Gogh show better.

 

After an hour underground we climbed up to the medieval town of Les Baux. We skipped the ancient castle part, with the displays of siege engines (trebuchets and what not); we’d seen it before. Instead we climbed up the steep, narrow path between the ancient buildings that now house cafes and restaurants, stores selling cutesy clothing and those displaying local specialties to eat, wear, and/or hang on the wall. In other words, all the usual tourist shops. But nicely done, and fun to look at.

 

The narrow streets of Les Baux, overlooked by the remains of its 13th century fortress.

We made it! The five of us on the Les Baux plateau.

Another view of that 13th-century fortress.

Back down in the lower village, the irresistible charms of the tourist shops!

Next it was back down to the car, and the slow drive up through the Val d’Enfer (the Valley of Hell: bit of a misnomer, actually. It really wasn’t much of a valley.) After crawling through some pretty insane switchbacks the road smoothed out, and lead us to the town of San-Rémy and our hotel for the night, with its tall, 19^th century iron gates.

 

Our hotel. Endlessly cute!

 After a wonderful meal that night we wandered the darkened streets of the city’s old town. Not for too long, though, because the next day was market day, and we had much to explore. 

Odd, a shop called "A Sunday in San Rémy" that's closed on Sunday!

      

Whimsical and colorful even at night.

Those blue shutters of Provence... it's a very cute town!

An artist at the market discusses his inspiration.

            Vincent

A must-do thing in Saint-Rémy is to walk the mile from the center of town to the Saint-Paul asylum, where Vincent Van Gogh resided in 1889. Spaced along the way are signs depicting some of the 150 paintings Van Gogh did during his year at Saint Paul’s, with excerpts from his letters to his brother Theo and to his mother.

 

Poppies among the olive trees, a timeless scene.

While perhaps the most striking, poppies aren't the only flowers out!

This is a route Van Gogh must have walked often, and while modern buildings now crowd much of the route, there are views of fields that have changed little in the last 130 years. Walking where he walked, seeing what he saw, reading what he wrote—and studying what he painted—gave a deeper sense of who he was and the inner issues he faced. It gave me a finer appreciation of Vincent’s life, and how he struggled simply to keep on moving.

 

An olive grove near Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole, where Van Gogh spent a year.

 

         Poppies

Spring time. Poppy season! Around this time of year we see bright red poppies scattered along the side of the road, and, occasionally, whole fields of poppies. The walk to Saint Paul’s was punctuated by poppies—and other wild flowers—along the road, and in the fields. What we really wanted, though, was a solid field of those audacious red poppies!

 

A patch of poppies.

We did find it, sort of, just outside Saint Rémy. We pulled off the road onto a private drive, and then walked up to the field. Signs revealed that this was an experimental almond farm. A pleasant woman drove up and explained that they were trying different plants among the tress to attract pollinating insects, and it was important that we not enter the field.

Two flowers: Kate's exquisite poppy, and my less dramatic but no less complex dandelion.

Poppies amongst the almonds.

Well, we weren’t going to anyway, but we sure wanted to! After taking lots of photos we moved on a ways down the road to another field. Last year this field had provided a real poppy bonanza. But this year, nothing. A vast field with not one red spot to break the unyielding bright green. Ah well! Different year, different hot spot.

 

Windmills

On the way home, at the end of our poppy explorations, we made one more stop, to visit a windmill famous in French literature. These windmills were used to grind grain into flour, an important function in the times before electricity.

The windmill we visited is known as the Daudet mill in honor of the French writer Alphonse Daudet, who published a collection of short stories in 1869, Lettres de mon moulin (Letters from my Mill). Life in Provence is often the subject of his stories, so his works are still quite popular in this area. The mill last turned in the 1930’s, but is preserved as a memorial to M Daudet and his works.

 

And we, at last, turned home, very gratified with our first automotive outing. There will be more!

Up Next:  This weekend we're heading for a family's reunion in the Loire Valley. Stay tuned!