This Blog Post Brought To You By…

July 14, 2012

… tous les sponsors officiels de la Tour de France 2012. Vittel, Carrefour, Bic, Nesquik, Haribo, Le Journal de Mickey, Aujourd’hui en France.. Just to name a few…

We discovered a few weeks ago that the great race of France was going to have a stage quite close to us on all days, Bastielle Day 2012. The easiest place to see it was the near-by town of Uzès where the activities would start around 11:30am or so. Uzès also has a good market on Saturdays making it that much more of a call for us. Of course other blogs on this said stay away, the combination of the race and market would lead to a packed town. Not being deterred I got Kim and Syd up early (8:00am much to Kim and Syd’s happiness) and we beat it over to the town  ahead of the crowds. And you know what it was not that bad. The market itself was was great all things (it seems) were for sale. The food was excellent and boy, what a picnic you could put together!

Then there was the race itself, the cyclists were lead by a parade of vehicles decorated by the race sponsors who were throwing trinkets, samples, hats and the like into the crowd All I can say is thank got the Vittel water people had the sense to drive slowly had hand the bottles over rather than lob them at the masses… The came the cyclists in two groups, zoom zoom zoom, over in a few minutes. But the energy was fantastic, the crowd was in a great mood and we could not have enjoyed it more.

After the race we declared the afternoon off and crashed back at the hotel for some swims and rest, not that I had a choice, everyone was worn out. But it was a good way to wrap down the day and all were happy.

Happy birthday Mrs. Halaby, where ever you are.

Filed under Castillon-du-Gard, France, Tour de France, Uzès Tagged with , ,

Vendredi en France

July 13, 2012

Today Arles and Saint-Rémy-de-Provence floated to the top, not so far away as yesterday, we could do both in an easy drive.

First up was Arles, another city that was founded in the Roman days and has the world heritage sites to prove it. The main stop was the Roman Arena in the center of town, for those fans of the movie Ronin this was the site of the gun battle in the arena where Robert De Niro’s character was injured. Known as the Arles Amphitheatre it has been around since about 90 AD and is currently still in use. Currently there are Bull Fights going on (the bull is only killed on Easter we were told) and when Sydney saw a man wetting down the central arena for dust control Kim and I (and another man) spent a few minutes telling her that they were rinsing the bull blood from the sand. Poor kid… After the arena we visited the Cloister at St. Trophime Church. The cloister has been around since the 12th century and is an important example of Romanesque architecture. Or so we were told, there was much remodeling going on so only part of the Cloister was visitable. Oh well, that is life on the road 🙂

Van Gough lived in Arles for awhile so we tried to see what we could on his inspiration, then tiring of the heat we bolted for Saint-Rémy…. Ahhh screw it, we had had enough of sightseeing and decided to head back to our quiet hill top town for a swim, enough already. Only our town was not so quiet anymore, the weekend has come and a holiday weekend to boot. Much busier and the hotel was fuller. Not enough to stop us from slowing down though…

Filed under Arles, Castillon-du-Gard, France Tagged with ,

East of Avignon

July 12, 2012

With so many places to see in this part of France picking someplace to go can be a bit madding so we came with a list and decided to pick destinations on the fly as each day came on. Today L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue  floated to the top so we decided to see it and whatever we could in the area around it L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue was noted in its time for its mills but now is more of a tourist town with many antique shops and cafés. We are not big shopping but enough old style ambiance and that je-ne-sais-quoi of the area made it a very nice visit.

After we were done we took off to see some of the noted Lavender fields located near by. The fields we targeted were at the Sénanque Abbey near the hill village of Gordes. As the pictures show this area deserves its reputation. Since the Lavender fields are at an abbey quiet was requested which was mostly observed… Syd was great, other visitors not so true. But when it was silent combined with the sight and aromas one could see why the monks find this location so special.

Filed under Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque, France, Gordes, L'Isle sur la Sorgue Tagged with , , ,

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