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Published: June 17th 2008
First off, a public announcement. I regret to inform you that the 2008 Sponge Bath tour is being cut short due to creative differences (April ate too much Biscotti and became beligerent). I would like to give a big shout out to Paula, Aprils mom, for helping to sort out loose ends as british airways decided that there wasnt any conceivable reason to have their offices open on weekends. I mean nobody flies on weekends but philistines and blasphemers, do they?
Anyhow our day in Castellane, a pretty little village town surrounded by mountains. At some point in the night I received a bug bite and thought nothing of it. It was an interesting little place and we did some shopping in the market the next morning, got a giant melange bag of olives for supercheap, and some fresh goat cheese, and a real leather belt from a cattle rancher. There was actually a festival on the Sunday morning and kids walked down the main street dressed as shepherds while 100s of sheep followed them, so much so that on the way back to our car we had to dodge the byproducts of traditional valley culture the road had been
covered in.
Next we left for our most anticipated region, the cote d azure, or the French Mediterrannean, which as it turns out is way to overdeveloped. My bug bite slowly began to spread across my belly in response to my disgust. We found a somewhat dilappidated campsite which cost double our usual, cars were backed up on the roads even though it had been raining for the past 3 days. So we dipped ourselves in the Ocean in the morning, just to say that we had swam in the mediterranean then did what any self respecting hermits would do, and headed for the hills.
Once we escaped the cote d azure everything improved, even the rain got heavier, and my stomach evolved to a plague like area of redness from the bug bite. April told me on many occasions not to itch it, but she was ignored as usual. But driving on hilly mountain roads is pretty cool, and old french towns dotted the small valleys as fog encircled them. We decided to use our "get out of camping free" card and stayed in a 13th century castle that had been restored in the 18th century as
swimming med
i am wearing my new bathing suit and its tiny (european)a maison. When we pulled up it was pouring and a quirky little door was open. We entered but nobody was there. We were about to leave, but we hit a little button next to the door and a little old woman poked her out of the staircase. Here I attempted to use my dilappidated french to bargain for room prices, she said "soixante quinze" I said "cinquante?" she proceeded to turn and walk back up the staircase shaking her head so we can safely say that was unsuccessful. We rang the bell again after short discussion and paid the full amount to stay in the hotel from the shining except smaller and with stone stairs. April made scary faces and it made me cry. But I survived the night.
Now we are winding our way through more attractive hilly towns on the way to the dordogne. Millau is a really nice town. Its not too smalll and not too large. This is reflected in the cost of parking which is something like 0.5 centimes for 3 hours and free after 6. I figure that you could probably make an algorithm that judges the niceness of cities based on
the amount you pay for parking, but that is for another time cuz April is calling me a geek. Anyways we are going to spend the night here and watch italy v france, the knockout match with some french people. Should be well fun.
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Danorama
Daniel Straker
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we return to vancouver on june 24, so if anyone would like to welcome us with cheese or baguettes to ease our culture shock that would be well appreciated, or just a ride.