What you thinking?

Barcelona.... (apologies to SS)

Well we’ve been in Spain for nearly two weeks. The first week was spent in Barcelona and we’re currently in Madrid. It’s a challenge not being able to speak a word of Spanish other than what we can read out from the phrase book (i.e. practically nothing). It is also a change being a tourist again. Going to the language school meant that we didn’t feel quite like tourists because so much of the day was typically dedicated to being at the school and then doing homework. It sounds wanky but we felt like we were just going about normal daily life in Aix.

Barcelona seemed like a very nice city. It reminded me of Melbourne because it had all the amenities you’d need, was very well laid out and has nice suburbs. By the same token it wasn’t necessarily uber exciting for the tourist – not unlike Melbourne I suspect. We stayed in an inner suburb called L’Eixample (which also has the nickname Gaixample). It was developed about 100 years ago when Barcelona started to expand and as a result it is laid out in a grid and has lots of interesting ‘modernista’ architecture. We ended up being upgraded to a fantastic large apartment for the same price as the smaller one we’d booked. A similar thing has happened here in Madrid. The hotel we’d reserved has given us an apartment around the corner for just a little extra. Perhaps now is a good time to come to Spain, particularly with the Australian dollar recovering against the Euro. Fruit, vegetables, groceries and meat all seem to be cheaper here than in France although restaurants are just as expensive.

Typical tile and balcony facades in L'Eixample

The weather was very warm in Barcelona so we seized the opportunity to head down to Sitges 3 afternoons to swim and sunbake. Sitges has lotsssss of gay bars and restaurants so it was also fun to sit around and have a kir royale or a beer, after the beach, and do some people watching.

In Barcelona we loved wandering around Montjuic and Park Guell. Montjuic is where the Olympic stadium is and, most importantly, the Olympic diving pool. I’ve always remembered those amazing images of the divers on the platforms, and in flight, with wonderful views of Barcelona in the background. I loved the live view every bit as much.

We dedicated one day to Gaudi by wandering around La Sagrada Familia and Park Guell (thankyou A & K). There is a good gallery dedicated to Joan Miro, but there are better examples of his work in Madrid at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (see below).

The southern set of towers are almost complete

The sculputures on the Southern towers are less rococco and more abstract like this

At Park Guell; love all the tiling

Madrid is amazing. I think it has the most concentrated and non-stop night life that I’ve ever seen. Dale feels that the nearest place he can think of is Soho (London), but Chueca, the suburb we are staying in, just seems to be so much larger. There are lots of gay bars, nightclubs, fancy restaurants and really basic eating places. Furthermore, at midnight the bars are all full but so are the restaurants, with many people still in the middle of their main course.

You seem to just end up slipping into this lifestyle of being up late and getting up late, particularly since there are so many daylight hours at the moment. We find ourselves cooking dinner at about 7.30-8, having dinner between 8-9, then watching a DVD (in French for practice) until about 11, then going out for a drink or 2 (sometimes just cola if we’ve already had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner). This means that you’re never in before about 12.30. It doesn’t seem to matter much if you’re up a bit late because nothing opens before 10 and all the main museums and galleries are staying open until at least 7 and many until 8 or 9. The other interesting feature is the way everything closes between 2 and 4 in the afternoon. In France we were in awe of the way everything stopped like clockwork between 12.30 and 2 – but that is at least a lunch hour that makes sense to us. The lovely man at our hotel/apartment reception said that you just have to get used to everything being 2 hours later in Spain.

Whilst on the Madrid lifestyle theme, I just keep being reminded of Almodovar movies, particularly by some of the women you see around. And I don’t mean that they all look like Penelope Cruz. It’s the sassy girlfriend, the plain neighbour and the battle axe (often a drag queen) characters that you see around. We were on the metro the other morning and there was a shortish skinny woman with short black hair, wearing a green nurses uniform and runners and just a little lipstick and eye liner. We both immediately remarked that she would be the nurse in the hospital, because there are always hospital scenes in Almodovar movies, and she would be the tough no nonsense but caring type. Then the following morning we were walking quietly along Gran Via when we saw the drag queen character ahead of us, although she was more of the sassy girl friend, drag queen combo rather than the battle axe, drag queen combo. Anyway Dale whipped his camera out and here is the photo below.

We spent one day “doing” lots of art. We visited the Prado (PF - that’s Prado not Prada) and the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. We liked the latter more than the former. The Prado seems to be rated in the top few art galleries in Europe but there is a LOT of dark religious art that we don’t find all that exciting. There are lots of works by Reubens – which Dale dismissed as all cherubs and naked women!! There were a lot of works by Goya and I did like the 2 that commemorated the Spanish uprising against the French and the general futility of war. There was one piece by Caravaggio which was amazing but there are more in London.

The Reina Sofia gallery focuses on modern art and there were some superb masterpieces by Picasso, Dali and Miro – much more interesting to us. They have an early Dali painting of girl looking out a window that I’ve always liked. It’s quite realistic unlike most of his later surrealist work that I also like.

A Miro statue from the Miro Foundation in Barcelona

I think that’s just about enough of our uninformed art criticism, although it will hopefully be amusing for JK. My last word on the subject is that I’m not looking forward to the number of El Greco paintings that I’ve clearly yet to see.

We have also run and walked around the beautiful Parque del Buen Retiro in the middle of Madrid. It has a running track around the outside that reminds us of the Tan in Melbourne, and is about the same distance. There is a beautiful lake in the middle of the park but, unlike another friend of ours, we weren’t able to find any colourful characters to take us for a row.

No spanish film stars here :-)

We have also been to Segovia but it was a little disappointing given that it started to rain heavily just as we got to the top of the Alcazar, which is a beautiful palace that Disney used as the model for Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Nevertheless we got some good photos, which is what it’s all about. There were some magnificent ceilings inside the palace that were also a highlight. There is also an impressive Roman aqueduct that was built without using any mortar to hold the stones together.

Romulus and Remus suckling in front of the aquaduct

Alcazar in Segovia

From the top of the front tower

We are in Madrid until Friday, when we head off to Cordoba for a couple of nights before meeting up with Julia and Dominie in Seville next Monday.

PS from Dale – Thanks to those of our friends who should have but did not tell us Liza Minelli is coming to Melbourne in October. Thanks to the internet we now have tickets regardless.

Monokinis and the Tapis Rouge

On Saturday 23/6 we went to Cannes and it was the second last day of the film festival. We went on a bus organised by ''George'' who runs a tour agency and is associated with the language school. George seems to have a pretty easy life as far as we can see. We paid 25 Euro for a return bus trip to Cannes. We had expected that George might lead some sort of basic tour around Cannes but instead we got about 5 minutes of useful factoids, before arriving in Cannes, and were then told that we had 7 hours in Cannes and to make sure that we were back at the bus by 9pm sharp.


Manuela, Dale and I hung out together with Alice, an English lass/girl/woman in our class. We wandered around a bit and went up to a hill above the town where we found great views of Cannes and it’s harbour, which was full of magnificent yachts.







We sat around and had lunch, ice creams and coffees from various places while we waited for 6pm to arrive with all the attendant excitement on the tapis rouge (red carpet). While we were eating our ice creams we had another distressing experience with the French and their treatment of animals. Manuela was the first to notice that an older woman was feeding rice to the pigeons. Now I don’t like pigeons but this is just cruel. She knew exactly what she was doing and glared defiantly at us when she realised that we had noticed. She also has a younger guy with her who was laughing at the entire scene. Dale and Manuela called her a murderess and asked why she was doing it. She shot back that she didn’t care what tourists thought and that we ruin Cannes. Alice sat there seething while doing everything possible to stay in control and to stop herself from shoving the rice down the woman’s throat. I began rehearsing the explanation that would prevent us from ending up in jail and/or causing an international incident. We complained to a local council worker, who was cleaning the park, but he just shrugged his shoulders and said that there was nothing he could do. He also explained that she did this every day. All in all there was nothing that we could realistically do which made the whole situation even more upsetting.




Just before 6pm we made it to the tapis rouge – well about 50 metres back behind a barrier. I got the binoculars out while Dale, Alice and Manuela clicked away with their cameras. We think that the Taiwanese/French film ‘’Visage’’ was screening since we only recognised Fanny Ardant, who was in 8 Femmes. Michelle Yeo was also there as a guest. As we were so far back it was difficult to get any really decent photos. One of the other girls in our language class did manage to get a spot very close – courtesy of flirting with journalists – but she didn’t know who Fanny Ardant was so she didn’t get any good photos of her either. All in all it was one of those experiences that you say you are glad you did but would not bother with again (short of Brad Pitt being there).

Michelle Yeoh - and all the other non-entity guests (you can pick them out; they're the ones taking photos of each other on the tapis rouge)


My best shot of someone famous and I’ve no idea who it is – first correct answer wins a prize

Fanny centre (no not you PF) – who needs surgery with photos this blurry?

After the excitement of the tapis rouge we just had to have some pizza. Then we finished the evening by wandering around the harbour peeking at glamorous yachts and the film festival parties being held on some of them.

David, Alice and Manuela

Party on yacht (our invites got lost in the mail)

The weather on Sunday was glorious and after lunch Manuela proposed that we visit a beach near Marseilles for the afternoon. Naturally we agreed and we went to Susset-les-pins. This was our first real swim in the Mediterranean and we loved it. There wasn’t any sand, which was fine up to a point because I prefer laying on fine pebbles to sand, which seems to get into everything. On the other hand I much prefer sand on the bottom when I’m swimming. Moss covered rocks just don’t quite do it for me.

At the beach we were struck by the amount of topless bathing. Women of all ages and sizes were letting it all hang out. We later discovered that the French refer to this as ‘faire de monokini’, which literally means doing the monokini. We’ve heard of the bikini and even the mankini but not the monokini. Interestingly ‘’Microsoft Word’’ seems to have a problem with the word mankini but not with monokini so we're obviously very out of touch. Anyway, I think that the concept of a monokini is quite ridiculous. In order to have the suffix ‘kini’ attached to a piece of clothing I think that it needs to cover a modest portion of the body, whether it is one or two pieces. I also think that if the monokini can exits then why aren’t budgie smugglers called monokinis, particularly since the advent of the mankini? My mankini was quite a hit on the beach – just joking – that would have caused an international vomiting pandemic.

Spot the sunsmart Aussie

I am also faintly amused that the French have decided to use the verb ‘’faire’’ (to do) rather than “porter” (to wear). They seem to use ‘’porter’’ in relation to other items of clothing but clearly the monokini is not so much a piece of clothing as it is an event or an activity.

Perhaps some of the women can also help me out in terms of understanding whether the monokini is purchased as a distinct item of clothing or whether it is always part of a bikini and the soutien gorge (bras) is left at home or tossed aside at the beach.

Now Dale decided to bring this topic up during a private class he and I had at the language school on the following Monday. The school gave us this lesson free as part compensation for recommending that we rent an apartment next to a disco. Anyway, this is how we found out about ‘’faire de monokini’’. Dale could not leave the discussion here, he had to go further and note the contrast between the fact that a lot of French women ‘’faire de monokini’’ but French men are too modest to shower naked at the swimming pool. Our delightful teacher, Christine, refused to discuss this issue, giggled about modesty, and moved the lesson on to safer ground. The question therefore remains unanswered. Perhaps this is the real French paradox not all that nonsense about them eating too much fat, drinking too much alcohol and smoking yet still living longer than anyone else.

Our last week in Aix was fairly quiet. We did another big hike at Mont St Victoire. The day started in mist and rain but ended with glorious blue skies. The first hour and a half was tough going as we clambered up to a small former priory at the end of the ridge that is effectively the summit of Mont St Victoire. As we moved away down the mountain the sky cleared and we got glorious views of the dam that supplies Aix with its water. The dam was built in the late 40s and early 50s under the Marshall Plan.

Lake with Mont St Victoire in background which we had just ascended and descended

On Monday night we cooked dinner for Manuela and Alice and polished off our remaining bottle of wine from Bandol. We decided to do things Aussie style by eating cheese before dinner. Manuela and Alice were very obliging and played along with this culinary outrage. We tried another 4 cheeses from the Aix Fromagerie and this time the Pont Leveque was the stand out. The Roquefort blue we tried this time (cow rather than sheep milk) was a little too sharp and salty.

On our final night in Aix we went to Manuela’s place for dinner. She is renting a room, with access to a kitchen, in a large house in one of the inner suburbs south of Aix. The house has a large garden, so we sat outside to eat our tapas style dinner. The landlady was charming and insisted on making us some Moroccan tea to have with dinner. Manuela has had issues with this lady because she is sweet and charming one minute and nasty the next, so we were glad that we saw the charming side. She is separated from her husband who still spends a lot of time at the house doing chores. Manuela thinks that the guests become part of the games that are played between the husband and wife to annoy one another. Sounds like ‘’Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe’’! When Manuela first arrived she went out to the main terrace in the garden to eat her breakfast and was told by the lady to get back to the little spot just outside her kitchen. Later on she asked the husband about this and he said that she was welcome to sit wherever she liked in the garden. Anyway, after a couple of weeks the landlady seems totally enamoured with Manuela (who wouldn’t be?) and has even started confiding in her.

We left Aix on Friday morning and trained across to Montpellier via Marseilles. We finally met our landlady before leaving and had the difficult conversation about how noisy the disco is. She was charming and feigned concern, "mais malheureusement c’est habiter en centre ville" (but unfortunately that is living in the centre of town). Despite Dale pointing out that the disco goes from midnight until 6am 5 days a week, she insisted on pointing out how much worse things could be if we were near the restaurant around the corner that plays music outside. True, except that this doesn’t happen 5 nights a week and is generally finished by midnight. We were however complementary about the apartment itself, which was spacious and had a good kitchen. Our discussion with our landlady was entirely in French so we think that the language school must have helped somewhat. Dale thought that we had done amazingly well with this conversation. I was rapt with how much I understood but felt that I sounded like a mumbling idiot. Normally I have difficulty understanding but can also talk under water in French.

Aix was a great place to live and is worthy of many return visits in the future. Here are a few parting images.

View across Aix with Mont St Victoire in the background

Say Quoi?

Coby (see entry 10 May) had invited us and Manuela out to the country house she is living in this year with a promise of lunch and a swim in the pool. It’s in a little town (isn’t everything) called Tavernes about an hour’s drive east of Aix. Lunch was set for 12:30 so we decided to use the morning as a sightseeing opportunity. Michael (Suisse) had recommended visiting the Gorges du Verdon, and by our tour guide’s reckoning we had time to do a nice loop drive. Unfortunately all those squiggly little lines on the map equate to road speeds of 20-50km/h so we had a much abridged visit. At one end of the Gorges there is a picturesque town called Moustiers Ste-Marie which we visited briefly. There is a lot of spontaneously interesting art amongst the tourist shops.

An old Vespa covered in tiles

From there we headed to the first view point up the gorge. This gave us great views of Lac de Ste-Croix along the way, and a lovely view up the first part of the gorge.

Needless to say we ended up being late to Coby’s, and the phone number she gave seemed to belong to someone else (we later discovered that we were missing the Dutch country code) who taught me how to say you’ve called the wrong number in French – tu as faite une erreur (literally ‘’you’ve made a mistake’’ for anyone who can’t work it out). We followed the instructions to what we assumed would be Coby’s house, but in fact was just the start of a long street. After some driving back and forward and asking people along the way, Coby appeared and flagged us down: disaster averted.

Coby and her husband Roelof have retired and are spending the year living in Provence. They want to see how they enjoy living in the region and are considering buying une petite maison. In the meantime they are living in this wonderful house with a pool and three terraces that are perfect for eating outdoors during summer. From each of these terraces you get lovely views of the Provencale country side. Next door is a small plantation of olive trees and there are also a number of olive trees in their garden. Coby and Roelof are eagerly awaiting next January when their olives will be picked and taken into the village to be miraculously converted into olive oil (like water into wine) by the local cooperative. They are doing a wonderful job of looking after the impressive garden, which has a number of plants that are not really suited to the region.

Coby, Manuela, Roelof and David at the sencond course table

We stayed for a number of hours and Dale and I swam twice, once before lunch and once after. Manuela swam before lunch and slept by the pool after lunch – the petite suisse!!! Coby and Roelof are very good cooks. Entree included a wheel of camembert wrapped in pastry and herbs. Bad for my arteries but DELICIOUS. For main course we enjoyed a Thai beef salad based on a recipe that Coby was given by a friend of her son’s in Melbourne. Naturally all the food was accompanied by some glorious Provencale rose.

This is how to spend a year in Provence


We’d missed having Coby on our class for the 2nd fortnight so it was lovely to catch up with her and to meet Roelof. He recommended a scenic route for our drive back to Aix. It certainly was scenic and we stopped to take staxxx of photos of poppies by the road at dusk. We arrived back in Aix quite late, exhausted by an eventful day (including getting to Tavernes) and good food and company.

Our last day at the language school was a little bit of an anti climax as our normal teacher had to stay at home with her sick child. We had a replacement teacher who was very nice but we really wanted to spend our final lesson with one of the teachers that we’d spent a lot of time with.
On Friday night we went to see a movie with Sandra (also see entry 10 May) and her partner Susan, who arrived for Sandra’s final week in Aix. We went to see an English language film with French sub-titles. Surprisingly, you can easily read the French sub titles as well if the film is in your mother tongue. Manuela also went to see the film and she said that she could only really focus on the English since her mother tongue is Swiss German. The film was Un Marriage du Reve (Easy Virtue) and was an enjoyable bit of fluff.

Now – I’m going to divert on to the topic of seeing films in French – but I will come back to Sandra and Susan. Un marriage du Reve was actually the only movie we saw in English. There are kinda funny stories associated with the other 3 films. The first one was with Manuela and at her suggestion. It all started with a text from her that read “Je vais voir un film avec Un Autre Homme. Avez vouz envie?” Now the text came to me so Dale is placing all blame on me for the subsequent course of events. Manuela’s text read to me in English as “I’m going to see a film with Another Man. Are you jealous?” Now Manuela was being cheeky because the name of the film was Un Autre Homme – and to be fair she did capitalise it in the SMS. But secondly I did not know what ‘’envie’’ meant and because English and French are pretty closely related I assumed that it meant envy or jealousy. But, as the French say, it is a faux amis (a false friend) and it actually means interest. Dale then texted back a response – which is why I think his blame is a little unfairly placed – saying that it depended on who the man was. Anyway you had to be there but we were all very amused when we realised what had happened. The film is a Swiss French film so it was entirely in French and I could not understand anything. I was a little depressed about this except for the fact that the film was CRAP and we all had difficulty understanding what was going on. Manuela understood the most spoken French but Dale seemed to be able to piece more of the film together between his understanding of the French and the visual clues. Needless to say it made for interesting conversation afterwards over a few glasses of red wine.


For our next French movie we selected the latest Star Trek movie. I like Star Trek and Dale loves everything about every version that has ever been created – so we naively thought that this might help our comprehension. As you might guess, it didn’t. We did understand more than Un Autre Homme and I did get the odd phrase here and there (like ‘Cherchez les mondes nouveaux’’, ‘’Allez ou ne personne est alle avant’’ and ‘’longue vie et prosper’’) and I was a little more familiar with the form but I really didn’t understand that much. As result of these experiences we decided to buy some DVDs in French that at least have French sub titles. We find that we can read better than we can hear. We’ve watched a couple and it’s still hard work but it is achievable. I’ve never felt so exhausted after one half hour episode of Weeds.


But wait there’s more. Manuela told us that she’d been to see the latest Pedro Almodovar movie in Spanish with French sub titles. So we thought that would be worth a try since it had French sub titles except that we went to the wrong cinema and got the version dubbed in French. Does anyone still dub movies? Yes the French do and they do it a lot so we should have known better. The positive side of this story is that we both understood substantially more than we had of the previous movies. We even think that between us we’ve understood the plot but we REALLY REALLY want to see it in Spanish with English sub titles to work out exactly what was going on.


Now back to our Friday night out with Sandra and Susan. After the movie Sandra took us out for a couple of Bellinis at Cafe L’Unic. Sandra and Susan told us the distressing story about hearing some kittens miaowing while they were having breakfast and thinking that this was very sweet. However they then realised that the kittens were actually howling and they discovered that one of the neighbours was throwing 3 kittens over the fence into their yard. They had managed to scramble back under the fence and were thrown over again. Sandra and Susan rescued the kittens and fed them. Fortunately they were OK. One was limping a little but was alright by the next morning. The mother also followed the kittens into their yard.
Sandra’s land lady was away so they couldn’t talk to her about looking after the kittens in the longer term. They spoke to another neighbour who said that kittens were quite cute but that she didn’t like cats and wasn’t interested in looking after them. They also tried calling local animal shelters but without a car they couldn’t actually get them to the shelters. Susan also felt that the French animal shelters were very dog focussed. Sandra has emailed us that on their last day they gave the kittens a big breakfast of yoghurt and that the landlady was returning the following day so hopefully they have survived. Without Sandra and Susan they probably wouldn’t have any chance.


That said, we do come across lots of content looking cats here in France. Here’s the current favourite photo taken at Vauvernagues