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Published: August 6th 2007
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Yes. I was joking. We loved Venice and our tongues were poking right out the sides of our cheeks. Even Richard enjoyed it! That brings us to France.
After two exhausting days in Interlaken, followed by an overnight train to Venice, we arrived in Italy completely exhausted. Venice kept us awake for another 48 hours. How could we sleep only metres from the San Marco Piazza with only two days to enjoy it? Richard had to drag me away from the music in the Piazza at 9pm so that we didn't miss our next overnight train to France. By the time we arrived in Nice, our shabby hotel room looked fantastic. The bed didn't move and the view from the tiny window stayed relatively still. We set our alarm for late afternoon and after a quick walk to see the 'beach,' we set off for the 40min train ride to Cannes. We had arrived in the midst of the frenzy of the famous film festival.
Something was happening but it was difficult to tell what. There were plenty of photographers looking excited and running after pretty girls that we didn't recognise. There were lots of men in black suits
French Flowers
Street decorations to mark the festival with bow ties. The streets by the sea were closed with gendarmes directing traffic. There were also hundreds of smug looking people casually sporting plastic identity tags on coloured rope around their necks. After a casual conversation with an American press rep outside a public lavatory, we discovered that these tags allowed the members to access most areas of the festival. The general public were kept at a safe distance. We were going to stay to see a film on a portable cyclorama they had set up for the beach but the sun didn't go down till very late and we decided to give up at 9.30 and go home to bed. Such was the beautiful Cote d'Azur.
The next morning we set off on an early TGV (very fast train) for Arles. Unfortunately, the film festival had impacted on the availability of accomodation in Southern France and we were lucky to get rooms. When we arrived in Avignon en route to Arles, we hastily booked a room with a tourist office with only two minutes to spare before our bus left. As we ran out the door, the tourism officer called out "Don't worry, it's easy to find."
This turned out to be a complete fabrication.
Thankfully, the stereotype of the rude, unhelpful French people is also a complete fabrication. We stopped in at a newsagent to beg for directions in English and the proprietor felt so sorry for us that she left the shop (and her valuable parking space) and drove us right to the door of our hotel in her beat-up old car. She also refused to take any money for her effort. What a gem.
Arles was difficult to appreciate because we were still feeling jet lagged after our overnight train trips. We managed to see something of the old Roman city and began to appreciate the wonders of the French Boulangerie (Bread shop) and Patisserie. We contacted our friend Nellie (of Westfields fame) who lives part time in the region of the Dordogne and confirmed our plans to visit. We figured it would only take a couple of days to drive across to her side of France. What we had seen in the south had been largely uninspiring and we were keen to see something of the French countryside.
It didn't take long for us to realise that the countryside
Crooked Houses
Character homes in Florac is infinitely more beautiful than all the beautiful people of the coast. As the towns grew successively smaller, they got successively more interesting. I found myself taking pictures through the car window as I had done in Greece because we couldn't afford to stop at every bend in the road for a photography break.
We had picked the town of Rodez as the mid-point between Arle and the 'house of Nellie,' but we soon decided that we were clearly travelling through one of the most beautiful regions in France and that we had better take advantage of it by stopping early to appreciate the landscape. The town of Florac was our revised destination.
When we arrived in Florac, we found an old walled medieval town with quaint crooked buildings and plenty of stone walls and roses. It seemed to be the quintessential country village we had been searching for. Posters on the walls of the hotel showed pictures of a spectacular gorge, the 'Gorge de Tarn' which had incredible spires of rock rising from the tops of the gorge walls. Some of these spires were visible from the town. We quickly decided that a canoe trip through the
Jardin de Stones
The river running through the centre of Florac with stone spires in the background Gorge was a 'must-do' activity en route in the morning.
The next day involved a slight detour (actually a more direct route on the map, but nevertheless, a detour from the main road). This took us through the gorge and it was thoroughly spectacular. Along the river Tarn, there were a series of mediaeval villages and tunnels cut directly through rock. We stopped at a beautiful town called St Enimie and walked along a maze of old cobblestones. We found a delightful little church with mediaeval frescoes that appeared to be unchanged for a thousand years or more. We continued to La Malene where we boarded a canoe and rode the rapids through the gorge. Stunning.
By the time we emerged from the river, we realised that we were significantly behind on our schedule so we hightailed it out of there and headed for Nellie's house. But that's another story.
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Cheryl
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Another to the list
Hi guys, I must say France was never really on my list of places to see until now. I guess it was because I had never really heard or seen much of what the countryside had to offer. I tend to think of Paris only when I think of France. I'm really going to have to save my pennies now so I can see all this through my own eyes. Still it is much cheaper and more relaxing watching you do all the hard work! Keep it up I'm enjoying my holiday.