Rome

Ok...another diversion.  We went to Rome this weekend for our 29th wedding anniversary (Jane and I met in the Rome train station 30 years ago).  Rome was beautiful.  The italians were er...ebullient?  After 6 months of toning down our american noise level it was fun to be amongst the vivacious.  The French are serious.  The Italians are more relaxed.

Rome photos

Parlez-vous anglais?

Not surprisingly a good deal of my time in France is spent improving my French.  Most days I get together with friends to do a "language exchange".   The idea is that you and and another individual get together and speak each other's language.  A typical meeting is a couple of hours with one hour in french and the other in English.  I love these.  It's a great way for me to get concentrated time with somebody who is in a similar place.  My language partner understands that I WANT to be corrected and is usually very patient with my American accent.  The conversations, of course, are whatever we want to chat about although they have a tendency to become Q&A on various cultural questions that each party is curious about.  I cannot believe how much I have learned about the french way of life from these fun talks.

What surprised me about language exchanges was how poorly equipped I was.  I don't mean my French. I mean my English. When I first started studying French it was quickly apparent to me that I had lost all consciousness of the English language.  Yes, I speak English but do I understand anything about it?   I had forgotten what an article was, much less had any concept of what the verb tenses were in English.  I understood NOTHING about English.  Thus, my concept of language got better rapidly when I started studying french.  In fact, it was one of the things that I found interesting about language study (most of learning a language is simply a brute force battle to convince your brain that the foreign words are worthy to use memory space).

So...I can tell you when to use the plus que parfait and on good days understand the strange rules for the subjonctif. But English? That’s another matter. I remember my first exchange rather well. My friend almost immediately said he was struggling with “when to use any vs. some” in English. Ha I said, this will be easy! Finally I’m a master at something here! However, I was almost immediately stumped. Um...”would you like some peanuts”...um...“Would you like any peanuts”...What IS the rule? I realized I did not have a clue. I am not equipped to teach somebody English. I could probably teach French much better than I could teach English.

Humbled...again.

London

Ok…so this is supposed to be a blog about France adventures but we took a side trip (an adventure from our adventure?) the previous  weekend to London to see Jane's family.  It was a lot of fun.  We spent a couple of days re-discovering London (it had been 30 years) and a day visiting with Jane's aunt and cousins (a great crew…lots of fun).  We stayed in a fun neighborhood at the northwest corner of Hyde Park, close to Notting Hill.

It was very different to be back in an English speaking locale.  I was feeling the usual anxiety (will I understand them?) every time I talked to a stranger.  But surprise!  They talked English! That said, I was surprised that I sometimes struggled to understand the British accent.

London was, generally, very expensive. As an example, the metro cost $6 for a short one-way ride.  Wow!  We found ourselves planning our day to avoid transportation.  This was OK because we really love to walk in grand cities.  Paris, New York, London….we can spend all day just walking.  We discovered some fantastic markets too.  Probably the most fun was a street called Portobello Road that we visited on Saturday morning.  A packed market of sort of bohemian/international stuff.  Every language imaginable.  Very cool.  We also enjoyed the Borough market and the neighborhood around it on the south bank.  Another highlight was Speaker's Corner.  I love that concept.

Harkening back to my memories of London, we saw some great entertainment.  My sister, who is in a Sweet Adeline  group, would be proud of us for watching a comedy group that was also a barbershop quartet.  They were hilarious.  Again, a little hard to catch everything at the beginning of the performance but by mid-show we were on track.  

The rest of London was fun but the best time was definitely the time with Jane's aunt and cousins.  So great to have family here.

Skiing in the Alps

We finally got to take "le train des neiges" to the Alps for a day of skiing. This is quite an amazing service.  The train picks us up a few blocks from our apartment and then takes us to a variety of resorts near Gap in the southern Alps. On arrival to the closest town, they provide a shuttle bus to the resort. This only costs 15 euros for everything, round-trip.

The skiing in the southern alps is very warm. The French from these parts aren't very excited about skiing in the "north" in the grand resorts like Chamonix. They prefer their sun. Not surprisingly, with this kind of warmth it suffers the same problems as Whistler in America: rain and thaws in the middle of the season. it rained 2 days before we arrived so the snow wasn't very good. They are actually having problems keeping things open right now because of the lack of snow (it's been extra warm here for a couple of weeks).

We picked the resort of Puy Saint Vincent.   The resort is relatively low (4200 feet at the base and 8100 feet at the summit) so we didn't suffer any altitude issues.  The slopes were mostly intermediate but there were a few more challenging runs as well.  The lifts were simliar to what we have in the U.S. with chairlifts and "tire-fesse" (literally "butt pull").  There was a "snowboard cross" race the day we were there.  Very cool.

There are many, many resorts here but they are generally smaller than the U.S. The price of a ticket is cheap (25 euros with our "train des neiges" discount). Renting skies seemed comparable to U.S. prices.

We're hoping to ski some more. There are several resorts that offer x-country skiing, mostly groomed for skating.

Quelle belle vie

OK...I've been TERRIBLE at updating the blog the last month.  We've been very, very busy (more on that in the next post).   Things have calmed down now and today is absolutely awesome.  It's about 15 degrees (60F) although it feels even warmer. The sky is as blue as it gets.   I had a 2 1/2 hour ride this morning through mountains and vineyards.  Now we are relaxing on the balcony of our apartment.  Here is a peek of life on Rue Cardinale.

Des choses routieres

I love to drive in France.   The french are particularly good at transportation.   The rail system is amazing and the road system is also enviable.  The autoroute system (equivalent to the U.S. interstate system) has beautiful surfaces and is designed for speeds well in excess of the 130 km/hr limit. Most of the french system is funded by tolls (curiously, the French would consider the U.S. very socialist in the manner that Americans fund their interstate). The guy who uses it pays for it. And the tolls are not cheap. Their beautiful roads are expensive.

Buy what I really love about the french road system is the “D” highway system that goes everywhere the autoroute does not.  These roads, usually through beautiful scenery and often windey are really fun to drive.  The french “rond-points” make sure that you almost never need to stop and the signage is pretty amazing at getting you from little town to little town without a lot of fussing over maps.

Unlike Paris, it is really helpful to have a car in southern France.    The public transport is very good here but it is very time consuming to sightsee by bus and train.  We agonized over the right approach to getting a car: buy a used one? overseas delivery of an Audi? lease?  In the end, we decided to just do occasional rentals.  The price of rentals is very low since we are here in the off-season.  We can rent a car for a 3-day weekend for 70 euros.  This includes insurance of course.  So we just rent a car every other weekend.  Its kind of a hassle to learn a new car every other weekend but its also kind of fun to experience so many european cars.

The cars are, of course, quite different here.  The size of the average french street makes it completely impractical to drive U.S. size cars here.   Even the U.S. manufacturers produce different cars in this market. I’ve rented a Ford and a Chevy here that I have never seen in the U.S. Japanese cars are rarely seen here. It’s kind of amazing. The argument is that you can’t get service for them. Still? I remember a similiar attitude in the U.S....about 25 years ago. Am I in a timewarp? Why haven’t the Japanese been more successful in creating a service infrastructure here? Most of the cars on the road are Renault and Peugeot-Citroen. French chauvinism?

The car itself is not a revered thing in France.  Probably a good thing as they are ALL beat-up.   When I rent a car it is always necessary to do a little inventory of the scratches and bumps.  In the U.S. this is mostly the rental company proving to you that nothing is wrong.  In France this is to make sure both parties agree to all of the previous dents.  One car I rented had FIVE dents in various places.  And no wonder: there simply isn’t enough room in the little villages to drive.  It’s like playing bumper cars.  I’m really glad I did NOT buy the Audi over here.  I can’t imagine how I would have been able to keep it in good shape before bringing it home.

This week we visited Saint-Tropez.  The city on the mediterannean is located on the southern edge of le Massif des Maures.  Saint-Tropez was just so-so.  However on the way there, by absolute luck (I missed a turn), we happened upon the most beautiful mountain road I have ever been on.  For a hour+ we went up and down a tiny, forrested, winding path through the Massif des Maures from north to south.  It was spectacular (and a little scary).    Gratefully we only saw a handful of cars (I discovered the real meaning of “blind corner” on this path).

How to get there:
Start on the A57 at Gonfaron (north-northeast of Hyeres).  Head south on D39 toward Collobrières.  Take the D14 over to D39 and continue until you hit N98 (St. Tropez) or end on the mediteranean at Bormes-les-Mimosas.
Google maps: http://tinyurl.com/27eqfmp

Mauvaise nouvelle de nouveau

Jane's Dad died this past weekend after a long illness.   His suffering is over. It was hard but Jane was able to have some great talks with him in his last days.  Thank goodness that we live in an age where communication is so amazing.

Ralph was a role model for expatriates.  He was born and raised in England, brought his young family to Canada when he was a young engineer (Jane was 2), and then moved down to the states in the 80s.  He had jobs in Italy, Turkey and Chile as well.  Everywhere he went he had many, many friends.  We know we are making him proud these days.

A bientôt Ralph.  Tu nous manqueras.