Noodles & Weinies: My Toussaint Break Provence Road Trip

So this has to be the longest I’ve waited to write a blog, I’m about to recount my Provence road trip from the beginning of November … but better late than never! As you’re about to see, I took A LOT of photos on this trip, which of course added to the delay of this publication.

Before I get to all of that, I’ll bring everyone to date. I just went back to work this week from my third vacation of the year. I spent the first week trying to do all the things I promised myself I would do in Paris if I got to go back to France for a second year and then the second week found me and my friend Christine in Amsterdam. My second vacation (Christmas) was spent very enjoyably with almost all of the Damico family in Roanoke and then partly in Virginia Beach for my college roommate Maris’ wedding. (I’ll confess I think I’m starting to lose my ability to speak English, in the little bit that I’ve written I’ve already had to double check myself for weird French grammar constructions.)

As for this third vacation, I’ll save the most of it for my next blog, but will relay one of the funnier parts of week one. I went for a night at the opera in Paris on Wednesday with my friend Sarah Raymond whom I played softball with at UVA and who will be working in Paris for the next three months - we saw Orpheus and Eurydice in German - quite possibly one of the most bizarre performances I’ve ever seen. Despite rather extensive internet research I did on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice before going, I was at no point able to determine which part of the story was actually being depicted in front of me. An essential part of this story would be our seating arrangement at the Opera. I had read online that the opera offered discounted youth seats available 15 minutes before the start of the show. Sarah and I lined up with the other “youths” to see if we’d get lucky enough to get a seat, but all that was left were two 7€ seats, so we gladly took those and ran to find our seats. When I glanced at the ticket to see where exactly our seats were, I noticed in the bottom left corner “Sans visibilité” a.k.a. the NOSE BLEED SEATS of the French Opera. We were on the fourth level to the right of the stage; so far to the right that we could only ¼ of the stage and the ¼ of everything I did see was weird enough I don’t know if I would have wanted to see the rest. I’ll explain with an excerpt of a conversation I had with Sarah:

“Why do you think the naked man is doing that sleepwalker, zombie dance?”
“I was actually wondering why she’s running around with the giant, baked potato prop myself…”

Now for Toussaint Vacation - as part of the “taking advantage of my second year in France” mentality that I’m trying to maintain this year I felt obligated to take a trip to the South of France - the land of the impressionist painters, outdoor cafés and sun - and what better way to see the sights than a road trip. Unfortunately, you have to be 25 to drive a rental vehicle so my French friend Christine was kind enough to volunteer her services and head south with us. The other two members of this road trip party were Deborah and her friend Lacey (who had recently become enamored with a French colleague and thus filled the ride with Fabian love stories.) To my surprise, Christine was a seasoned road tripper and came prepared with rations and camping supplies packed in the back of the French equivalent of a mini-van on that cold, cloudy Monday morning. From Chartres we headed southeast through Puy-de-Dome, past the tallest viaduct in Europe and the city of Clermont-Ferrand, to our destination for the night of Montpellier. You can consult the map I included to get a better idea of our route. As Christine explained to us, Puy-de-Dome is a volcanic mountain range with a large lava dome and one of the youngest volcanoes in southern France. At the bottom, the temperature was around 15ºC (60ºF) and by the time we reached the top it was snowing! Unfortunately a fast moving cloud/snow/wind storm moved in right after we arrived at the town, so we didn’t get much of a view unfortunately. We only stopped at an overlook of Clermont-Ferrand so we had spent quite a while at Puy-de-Dome, but if you look carefully you can still see the blackened cathedral, black because it’s built from the volcanic rock found in the area.

We arrived in Montpellier later that evening and it’s because of this very special night spent in the road-side budget hotel that my blog is named as such. As Christine is the only one of us to have a car, she had done the grocery shopping and had chosen a dinner of hot dogs and pasta for our dinner. As none of the rest of us a.k.a. the Americans had ever thought to eat noodles and weenies together like that, no spaghetti sauce, no hot dog buns or condiments, we got quite a kick out of it - but the French are the ones known for their gourmet cooking, so go figure. The night ended with Deborah washing the dishes in the bathroom sink - we definitely deserve credit for being resourceful on this trip. After dinner we took a walk around the town; it definitely had a fun, student feel to it, much different from Chartres and aside from the excitement of our dinner, probably the most notable part of the evening was when Christine was approached by a roaring, yes roaring like “I’m a monster” homeless man - never a dull moment.

Hit the road the next morning and drove right along the coast of the Mediterranean stopping at each coastal village to take a little tour. The area we drove through, la Camargue, is actually a marshy plain with “brine lagoons” and is naturally inhabited by wild horses, bulls, black bears and flamingoes - pretty crazy mix huh? The flat road is littered with old abbeys and wineries amongst all the wildlife.

Tuesday night we arrived at Arles, the capital of the Camargue and spent a good part of Wednesday walking around the city. Van Gogh painted some 300 paintings during his year there. We saw the café made famous by his Café Terrace at Night painting and a public garden he did a painting of. I bought a typical “provincial tablecloth” with a black olive print here for when I one day have a real table (not a fold out one in a moldy apartment in Chartres). 

The next destination was Marseille with a stop along in the way at Les Baux-de-Provence, voted one of the most beautiful cities in France, it’s a city built into the cliffs of the Alpilles. It definitely deserves a place as one of the most beautiful in my opinion; once you make it up the steep entrance to the city, there are tons of little shops and cafes to visit that were actually built into the mountain.

Marseille had quite a different feel to it in comparison with Les Baux. The windy, country roads quickly turned into a four lane highway filled with road-raged Marseillais. We spent Thursday morning touring France’s third largest metropolitan area, starting with a free boat ride across le Vieux Port and ending with a visit to the beloved Notre Dame-de-la-Garde Cathedral overlooking the city. We headed east Thursday afternoon to the beach town of Cassis, upon the recommendation of Pascal from judo in Roanoke. A pretty beach front town, packed with tourists. We spent the good part of our visit sitting on the beach enjoying the last of the warm, sunny weather we’d be seeing until next spring. All this sitting around naturally led to picture taking and once the sun started to set, we started taking action shots against the sunset - hence all the jumping/cartwheel photos.

We said our goodbyes to Marseille and on Friday went north to Aix-en-Provence, the city of a thousand fountains - definitely my favorite city of our trip. A city with on average 300 sunny days a year (see not all of France is grey and dreary Tim ), we were lucky to visit on one of these days, therefore all of the outdoor cafes and plazas were filled with people. Another fun part of visiting was getting to sample the calissons, “lozenge-shaped confections made from almond and crystallized melon.” As Wikipedia informs me, there’s even a mass held annually in Aix to bless the calissons.

We sadly left Aix that night for Avignon, the last stop on our road trip. I had been to Avignon the year before with my Italian cousin Roberto on our road trip from Milan to Pais Vasco, so I didn’t take too many pictures this go round, but I did take a video. Before leaving on vacation, Deborah and I had been goofing around one night on YouTube and stumbled across a guy who in his worldly travels, decided to sing and dance a different song in front of various monuments. Appropriately he had one for Avignon in which he does a little song and dance number to the tune of Sur le Pont d’Avignon (On the Avignon Bridge). This song inspired Deborah to make a video of her own; she wanted me to participate in it as well, but I recognize that despite how much I like to sing, I don’t sing well and it’s bad enough that I have to sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes” in front of my students, that I’m not going to subject the internet community to it as well; I was therefore proud to be the camerawoman instead. 

Here’s Deborah’s version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRjtLK5iuCU
…and the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OXTPo8bnc
(If I haven’t kept you from work long enough and you’re in need of even more distraction, check out the other videos this guy made, they’re pretty entertaining.)

Vacation was just about over at this point and an eight hour drive awaited us. On the way back up, we made a stop in Montélimar - the land of nougat. Until my visit to the “Fabrique et Musée de Nougat” I was not aware that nougat came in flavors other than the traditional pistachio and almond. My eyes were opened to such variations as fig, chestnut, white nougat with candied orange, chocolate nougat with candied orange and even milk chocolate cinnamon nougat. The very generous girls working at the counter gave us lots of free samples of all the above.

Voila - as the French so often say - there you have my Toussaint vacation blog! I hope you weren’t too overwhelmed by all the photos; I took about 900, so I had quite a job narrowing down which ones to include. I promise the next blog won’t take as long to publish - the Christmas market (yeah I know I’m really behind) and Amsterdam blogs are not far behind. I should have several other fun ones coming in the near future as well - my parents are coming for my next vacation for two weeks in April, we’re putting together our plans now, but it looks like a trip to the castles in the nearby Loire Valley and to some WWI battle sites will be in the itinerary. Then my sister Christine and her best friend Andy are coming in May and as she wants to spend her 20th birthday in Italy, I’ll be there at least for a long weekend. Finally, my best friend from high school Jessica will be coming for a week in June and after school ends I’m off to Greece for 10 days.
It’s way past my bedtime, but I wanted to get this finished tonight, so I’ll end it here. I hope this blog finds you well and I would love to hear from you - comments, emails, or even letters would be great.

Much love,
Lisa

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