First few updates from France
Apr. 18th, 2011 03:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteLong delay between entries, as I've been crazy-busy up until recently. Here, without further ado, our first entries from France (photos to follow eventually):
Today was our big travel day, flying to France from Montreal. Mom took us to the airport (thanks Mom!), since she was already visiting friends near us and didn’t have to go out of her way. Nothing major to report, other than that we got through Dorval (Trudeau) airport with no hassle, and were so quickly rubber-stamped by the French customs agent at Charles De Gaulle airport we barely had time to say bonjour. He didn’t say a word, not even to return our greetings. Good thing for the French republic that Canadians never, ever smuggle anything.
Our first challenge of the trip was to get to Avignon in southern Provence, which would be our base for the first half of our trip. Neither of us sleeps well on airplanes, so we usually arrive quite buzzed and figured we’d rather let someone else do the driving the first day instead of making a ca. 8-hour drive on our own. (Plus, car rental prices are outrageous, and gas only slightly less so. It was actually cheaper to take the train than to rent a car for several days.) Wise choice, since we both did credible zombie impressions for the rest of the day. Instead of trying out the Paris metro (a simple and efficient system when you’re not a zombie), we took the Air France shuttle bus to Gare de Lyon, the station where we would catch the TGV* and head south. The shuttle is highly recommended because it’s simple and direct. The Paris metro also goes there, but you don’t save much money, it takes longer, and the complexity is higher (you need to change lines), particularly when you’re as tired as we were. We’ll do all our Paris travel by metro when we return.
* Train de Grand Vitesse, nominally capable of cruising at 320 km/hour or about 180 mph.
Because of the time of year, we’d left plenty of time between arriving and catching the train just in case our flight from Canada was delayed by weather. As it happened, we were delayed something like 40 minutes because a connecting flight from Vancouver was delayed. We still made it to the Gare de Lyons with more than an hour to spare, and decided to walk around until closer to departure time. There’s no checked baggage any more because of terrorism fears, so we had to carry our stuff with us. Fortunately, we both have great backpacks, so it wasn’t a terrible burden, and after sitting for ca. 8 hours, it was nice to be able to stretch our legs. We scoped out the neighborhood around the station, as it’s conveniently close to the place where we’ll be staying when we return to Paris in a bit more than a week. On our way back to the station, we found a nice local bakery and picked up a couple mini-quiches for lunch, plus a nice tuna-veggie sandwich on a fresh baguette.
We still had some time before our train, so we found a nice spot far from the madding crowd and enjoyed our lunch. Gare de Lyons is an enormous open space, like so many train stations, and very pleasant on the whole. Most unusual point (at least for a Canadian) was the three French army soliders who came strolling through the terminal with assault rifles, looking for suspicious characters. Nobody else seemed to give them so much as a glance, which says something of the current state of affairs in France. Second most unusual point was the number of small dogs on leashes; Parisians apparently love their dogs. (Several even carried them in small travel cages disguised as handbags.)
The TGV was a pleasant experience: fast (easily outdistancing cars on the highway) and so smooth it was hard to tell how fast we were going. A bit of a gentle swaying, but not so you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. We both dozed on and off, catching up on sleep. Once you’re out of the region surrounding Paris, the scenery for much of the way resembles upstate Vermont, mutatis mutandis (e.g., lower mountains and different trees). Also, huge fields of a crop with brilliant yellow flowers, which I assume was canola. By the time we made it into Provence things were much different: still nice mountains and valleys, but now more forests interspersed with the crops, and large patches of exposed limestone. A pleasant introduction to France so far, and we arrived in late afternoon, with plenty of sunshine remaining. From the TGV station, it’s a 10-minute shuttle bus ride to Avignon.
In Avignon, we did our usual thing: check in where we’re staying, and get out into the sunshine asap so we could walk around and get ourselves in tune with the local daytime. We’re staying at the Hotel Boquier, a 2-minute walk from the Porte de la Republique gate on the southern end of the city; the local (non-TGV) train station is right outside the city walls, just past the bus dropoff, so local trains are located less than 5 minutes from the hotel. That makes Avignon a convenient base of operations for us, because we can get to many of the local areas of interest in less than half an hour by train, instead of having to worry about driving or finding somewhere to park (a particular challenge in medieval cities, which weren't designed for cars). Boquier is one of those small (12 rooms) family-run hotels that makes for a nice compromise between a B&B and a big hotel. It’s simple and basic, but clean and with friendly owners. Each room is funky in a different way. We chose the garrett room, right under the roof, with foot-thick beams dangling down to intercept the unwary cranium (no major encounters thus far, but several close calls). Our windows only give a view of the roof, but it’s bright and airy because we have a nice skylight. Wouldn’t want to live here long-term, but it’s pleasant and comfortable.
On our first day (actually, first few hours before sunset) we walked from the southern end of town up most of the way north, mostly getting a feel for the city and figuring out where things were that we’d want to see the following day. Avignon inside the walls is smallish, a brisk walk of about half an hour to get from the southern wall to the Rhone in the north. We didn’t do any photography, figuring that this would wait until the next day when we were more alert and the light was better. So we had a simple ramble through the new and the old parts of town, and particularly enjoyed one of the older parts (details later). Navigation is easy with one of the small pocket versions of the town map; like most medieval cities, the streets tend to wind and change names, which encourages exploration if you’ve got a map to bail you out if you lose track of where you are. Once it started getting dark, we headed home for showers and to change out of travel clothes.
When we checked in, our hostess recommended several restaurants, and we walked past most of them during our walk to check the menus and figure out when they were open. (Hours of operations are fairly idiosyncratic.) The French also like to dine late, so most places don’t even open for dinner before 7 PM. We finally settled on “Fou de Fafa”, a pleasant little (as in “only 6 tables”) bistro for our first French restaurant meal. Shoshanna had “lamb cake”, basically savory shredded lamb enclosed in roasted eggplant, and I had the steak in red wine sauce; she had a local Provencal red wine, and I had Kronenbourg, a nice Alsation pale ale. Of course, we share everything, so we had a good helping of each other’s choices. Pistachio panacotta (basically pudding) with chocolate sauce for dessert. Staggered home pleasantly full, collapsed into bed, and slept the sleep of the nominally innocent until 7 the next morning.
The standard continental breakfast doesn’t look like much compared to a typical North American restaurant breakfast, with its rashers of bacon and three-egg omelettes, but it’s by no means calorie-impoverished. Our hotel offers a nice and inexpensive breakfast, with large cups of coffee instead of the tiny espresso-shot cups that seem to be most common in cafés and restaurants. (If you want an American style coffee, you need to ask for “allongé” or a carafe.) Also, both croissants and small whole-wheat bread loaves, muslix, yogurt, and fresh fruit. It’s filling and tasty, with homemade apricot jam and full-fat butter for accents. Our battle with the evil croissant began well: us 2, croissants 0. But the battle will continue; the enemy is numerous and subtle and despite our easy victory, they were worthy foes. Sign of a good croissant: butter would be an insult. These were really good croissants.
Today was to be our first official touring day, with plans to revisit some of the nicer areas we’d sauntered through in a haze the previous day, visit the main museums, sit and do some people watching, and generally get our France legs under us by getting fully onto European daylight hours. We started out with a visit to the morning market at Les Halles, what seems to be an ancient old building (the northeast wall is crumbling rock clad in ivy and other opportunistic plants) melded with modern metal-cladding and signage. This is fairly typical: Avignon is the kind of fascinating mixture you’d expect when a medieval city is brought into the modern era over the centuries by building new things over, in, and around the old structures. All cities carry their history with them; in European cities that survived World War II, the evidence of that baggage is simply more overt.
Les Halles is the kind of market every city should have, and that only some do. (Our Atwater Market in Montreal tries but fails.) It’s full of permanent stalls packed with vendors of cheeses, really amazing olive oils, fresh fruits and vegetables, wines, meat products (including the “lapin peu agile”*) and other miscellany such as tapinades and tartinades (spreads of various kinds, including sundried tomato, hummus, olive stuff, and many different pestos). Though clearly benefiting from the tourist trade, they’re also a major resource for the locals. I saw many people stocking up on the week’s cheese supply and groceries, and I suspect that many of the local restaurants gather their daily fare this way rather than having food delivered to them in a large truck (we haven’t seen any food delivery trucks during our long rambles). I was planning on hitting boulangeries artisanales (specialty bakeries that provide bread, quiches, and miscellaneous sweet or savory stuff) for most of my snacks, but Shoshanna wanted to forage and create her own meals, so she picked up some good soft chèvre and planned to get a baguette later.
* “Au Lapin Agile” in Paris, famed in story and song, is apparently a phonetic misquote of “lapin de Gilles” (the rabbit of Gilles). [Update: It's actually "A. Gill", a cartoonist and artist.--GH] So it’s usually taken to mean a quick little bunny, when in fact it was just a painting the eponymous Gilles happened to like and kept chez lui. All of which to say that the lapins who aren’t quite so quick end up on the dinner table.
After shopping, we wandered down into one of the older parts of the city, around Rue des Teinturiers (dyers and printers). I think this is my favorite part of Avignon because it’s both old and in good repair, with a shady sycamore-lined street and a small stream running through it to drive an old water wheel (no longer connected to its original gearing). Lots of small artist studios and a surprising number of theaters. The street names are lovely (my favorites: Tache d’Encre = ink spot or stain, Puits de Tarasquin = the Tarasquin wells or possibly pits), it’s not very crowded, there are cobblestones, and it’s basically a nice break from the hubbub of the rest of the city.
From there, we wended our way north through the main pedestrian thoroughfares, mostly closed to traffic and topped at the north end by Place de l’Horloge, which is flanked by wall-to-wall cafés and restos and souvenir shops designed to separate tourists from their dollars as rapidly as possible. (The guidebooks and our hosts generally agree: the food isn’t bad, just not in any way memorable. You can do better, for less money, the farther you get from the touristed areas—which is common wisdom for most tourist cities.) It’s a nicely designed area, with many old buildings renovated into good condition, a broad mall, and many trees. There’s even an antique two-story carousel in front of the Hotel de Ville (town hall) and opera house, very popular with the kids. (I took a picture of one toddler standing there, gobsmacked, gazing up at it in awe.) By then, we’d wandered around until nearly noon, when many museums close, so instead of trying to get in right before they closed, we chose a leisurely walk up to the high point of town, the gardens above the Palais des Papes (palace of the popes). The gardens are shady (they’re full of huge trees), are stocked with ponds and waterfall grottos, and offer wonderful views of the areas north, west, and east of the city and surrounds, including the famous Pont d’Avignon (actually the “Pont Bénezet”), which has collapsed part-way across the Rhône towards Île de la Barthelasse. It’s lovely, but it’s such a popular spot for school groups, daycares, and tourists that it’s not as peaceful as it could be. Highlight of the visit was that the ducklings were in full bloom. (You know that fuzzy, not quite in focus look they have when they’re freshly hatched? That look.)
We’d been told the Palais des Papes wasn’t much to look at inside, so we gave it a miss, but it’s an impressive structure seen from outside, tall enough to loom over the whole city and be seen pretty much anywhere you have a clear view towards the center north part of the city. My favorite part, though, was a funky statue of an elephant doing a headstand, supported only by its trunk. Very cute, and a popular spot for tourists to pose. (We resisted the temptation.) No idea what it’s doing there (no explanatory signs).
Our main goal was the Musée du Petit Palais, which has a huge collection of religious art. In one sense, it’s all of a muchness: once you’ve seen one image of the Crucifixion, the Last Supper, or the Annunciation, you’ve seen them all. But the range of styles and approaches to the subject matter is huge, and if you know a bit of the iconography (something Shoshanna knew a little bit about) and if you can parse church Latin (something we can both do, and can do better when we combine our lore), the amount of detail embedded in these paintings can be quite astonishing. All in all, we spent a couple hours here, happily iconographing, looking for symbols, and deciphering often-cryptic Latin inscriptions.
On the way out from the museum, I happened to spot a small door in the side of the Palais, and noticed that it was the palace archives. Needless to say, we were drawn to that like moths to a tasty old scrap of parchment the other moths had missed. The archivists had put together a clever display, with lots of information on the many things that damage old materials (including careless archivists who interleave pages from different manuscripts or who spill coffee on a millennium-old scroll), and on their restoration efforts. Europe is this mind-bogglingly enormous treasure trove of written materials people never bothered to throw away, not to mention stuff they deliberately chose to keep, so there’s an endless supply of archival material to collect, preserve, and someday read. Of the making of books there is no end; of the archiving of the endless books and manuscripts, there is even less of an end.
We finished our day with a trip north to the Rhône and attempt at circumnavigation of the western walls. The walking path by the Rhône runs between a busy highway and the river, so there aren’t many places to cross. We ended up having to backtrack a fair distance, having erroneously assumed we’d be able to continue east once we reached the southern side of the city and be able to return via one of the southern gates. Not so much; one would have to be a very agile lapin indeed to make it across the traffic. By the time we made it back, we’d spent nearly 8 hours walking, and it was a relief to return to the hotel and put our feet up.
Dinner that night was at another tiny restaurant (maybe eight tables) called “Le Chat Touilleur” (the stirring cat), complete with iconic image of a cat stirring a large marmiton (stewpot) with a spoon. Much cat kitsch (kit catsch?) throughout the restaurant. Shoshanna had asparagus ravioli in a cream sauce, and I had lamb and eggplant baked into a small ceramic dish. Savory and yummy. Chocolate brownie and ice cream for dessert. Yum too! Home to bed, the ritual rubbing of Shoshanna’s feet, and a good night’s sleep.
April 13/14
Today was our big travel day, flying to France from Montreal. Mom took us to the airport (thanks Mom!), since she was already visiting friends near us and didn’t have to go out of her way. Nothing major to report, other than that we got through Dorval (Trudeau) airport with no hassle, and were so quickly rubber-stamped by the French customs agent at Charles De Gaulle airport we barely had time to say bonjour. He didn’t say a word, not even to return our greetings. Good thing for the French republic that Canadians never, ever smuggle anything.
Our first challenge of the trip was to get to Avignon in southern Provence, which would be our base for the first half of our trip. Neither of us sleeps well on airplanes, so we usually arrive quite buzzed and figured we’d rather let someone else do the driving the first day instead of making a ca. 8-hour drive on our own. (Plus, car rental prices are outrageous, and gas only slightly less so. It was actually cheaper to take the train than to rent a car for several days.) Wise choice, since we both did credible zombie impressions for the rest of the day. Instead of trying out the Paris metro (a simple and efficient system when you’re not a zombie), we took the Air France shuttle bus to Gare de Lyon, the station where we would catch the TGV* and head south. The shuttle is highly recommended because it’s simple and direct. The Paris metro also goes there, but you don’t save much money, it takes longer, and the complexity is higher (you need to change lines), particularly when you’re as tired as we were. We’ll do all our Paris travel by metro when we return.
* Train de Grand Vitesse, nominally capable of cruising at 320 km/hour or about 180 mph.
Because of the time of year, we’d left plenty of time between arriving and catching the train just in case our flight from Canada was delayed by weather. As it happened, we were delayed something like 40 minutes because a connecting flight from Vancouver was delayed. We still made it to the Gare de Lyons with more than an hour to spare, and decided to walk around until closer to departure time. There’s no checked baggage any more because of terrorism fears, so we had to carry our stuff with us. Fortunately, we both have great backpacks, so it wasn’t a terrible burden, and after sitting for ca. 8 hours, it was nice to be able to stretch our legs. We scoped out the neighborhood around the station, as it’s conveniently close to the place where we’ll be staying when we return to Paris in a bit more than a week. On our way back to the station, we found a nice local bakery and picked up a couple mini-quiches for lunch, plus a nice tuna-veggie sandwich on a fresh baguette.
We still had some time before our train, so we found a nice spot far from the madding crowd and enjoyed our lunch. Gare de Lyons is an enormous open space, like so many train stations, and very pleasant on the whole. Most unusual point (at least for a Canadian) was the three French army soliders who came strolling through the terminal with assault rifles, looking for suspicious characters. Nobody else seemed to give them so much as a glance, which says something of the current state of affairs in France. Second most unusual point was the number of small dogs on leashes; Parisians apparently love their dogs. (Several even carried them in small travel cages disguised as handbags.)
The TGV was a pleasant experience: fast (easily outdistancing cars on the highway) and so smooth it was hard to tell how fast we were going. A bit of a gentle swaying, but not so you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. We both dozed on and off, catching up on sleep. Once you’re out of the region surrounding Paris, the scenery for much of the way resembles upstate Vermont, mutatis mutandis (e.g., lower mountains and different trees). Also, huge fields of a crop with brilliant yellow flowers, which I assume was canola. By the time we made it into Provence things were much different: still nice mountains and valleys, but now more forests interspersed with the crops, and large patches of exposed limestone. A pleasant introduction to France so far, and we arrived in late afternoon, with plenty of sunshine remaining. From the TGV station, it’s a 10-minute shuttle bus ride to Avignon.
In Avignon, we did our usual thing: check in where we’re staying, and get out into the sunshine asap so we could walk around and get ourselves in tune with the local daytime. We’re staying at the Hotel Boquier, a 2-minute walk from the Porte de la Republique gate on the southern end of the city; the local (non-TGV) train station is right outside the city walls, just past the bus dropoff, so local trains are located less than 5 minutes from the hotel. That makes Avignon a convenient base of operations for us, because we can get to many of the local areas of interest in less than half an hour by train, instead of having to worry about driving or finding somewhere to park (a particular challenge in medieval cities, which weren't designed for cars). Boquier is one of those small (12 rooms) family-run hotels that makes for a nice compromise between a B&B and a big hotel. It’s simple and basic, but clean and with friendly owners. Each room is funky in a different way. We chose the garrett room, right under the roof, with foot-thick beams dangling down to intercept the unwary cranium (no major encounters thus far, but several close calls). Our windows only give a view of the roof, but it’s bright and airy because we have a nice skylight. Wouldn’t want to live here long-term, but it’s pleasant and comfortable.
On our first day (actually, first few hours before sunset) we walked from the southern end of town up most of the way north, mostly getting a feel for the city and figuring out where things were that we’d want to see the following day. Avignon inside the walls is smallish, a brisk walk of about half an hour to get from the southern wall to the Rhone in the north. We didn’t do any photography, figuring that this would wait until the next day when we were more alert and the light was better. So we had a simple ramble through the new and the old parts of town, and particularly enjoyed one of the older parts (details later). Navigation is easy with one of the small pocket versions of the town map; like most medieval cities, the streets tend to wind and change names, which encourages exploration if you’ve got a map to bail you out if you lose track of where you are. Once it started getting dark, we headed home for showers and to change out of travel clothes.
When we checked in, our hostess recommended several restaurants, and we walked past most of them during our walk to check the menus and figure out when they were open. (Hours of operations are fairly idiosyncratic.) The French also like to dine late, so most places don’t even open for dinner before 7 PM. We finally settled on “Fou de Fafa”, a pleasant little (as in “only 6 tables”) bistro for our first French restaurant meal. Shoshanna had “lamb cake”, basically savory shredded lamb enclosed in roasted eggplant, and I had the steak in red wine sauce; she had a local Provencal red wine, and I had Kronenbourg, a nice Alsation pale ale. Of course, we share everything, so we had a good helping of each other’s choices. Pistachio panacotta (basically pudding) with chocolate sauce for dessert. Staggered home pleasantly full, collapsed into bed, and slept the sleep of the nominally innocent until 7 the next morning.
April 15: Avignon
The standard continental breakfast doesn’t look like much compared to a typical North American restaurant breakfast, with its rashers of bacon and three-egg omelettes, but it’s by no means calorie-impoverished. Our hotel offers a nice and inexpensive breakfast, with large cups of coffee instead of the tiny espresso-shot cups that seem to be most common in cafés and restaurants. (If you want an American style coffee, you need to ask for “allongé” or a carafe.) Also, both croissants and small whole-wheat bread loaves, muslix, yogurt, and fresh fruit. It’s filling and tasty, with homemade apricot jam and full-fat butter for accents. Our battle with the evil croissant began well: us 2, croissants 0. But the battle will continue; the enemy is numerous and subtle and despite our easy victory, they were worthy foes. Sign of a good croissant: butter would be an insult. These were really good croissants.
Today was to be our first official touring day, with plans to revisit some of the nicer areas we’d sauntered through in a haze the previous day, visit the main museums, sit and do some people watching, and generally get our France legs under us by getting fully onto European daylight hours. We started out with a visit to the morning market at Les Halles, what seems to be an ancient old building (the northeast wall is crumbling rock clad in ivy and other opportunistic plants) melded with modern metal-cladding and signage. This is fairly typical: Avignon is the kind of fascinating mixture you’d expect when a medieval city is brought into the modern era over the centuries by building new things over, in, and around the old structures. All cities carry their history with them; in European cities that survived World War II, the evidence of that baggage is simply more overt.
Les Halles is the kind of market every city should have, and that only some do. (Our Atwater Market in Montreal tries but fails.) It’s full of permanent stalls packed with vendors of cheeses, really amazing olive oils, fresh fruits and vegetables, wines, meat products (including the “lapin peu agile”*) and other miscellany such as tapinades and tartinades (spreads of various kinds, including sundried tomato, hummus, olive stuff, and many different pestos). Though clearly benefiting from the tourist trade, they’re also a major resource for the locals. I saw many people stocking up on the week’s cheese supply and groceries, and I suspect that many of the local restaurants gather their daily fare this way rather than having food delivered to them in a large truck (we haven’t seen any food delivery trucks during our long rambles). I was planning on hitting boulangeries artisanales (specialty bakeries that provide bread, quiches, and miscellaneous sweet or savory stuff) for most of my snacks, but Shoshanna wanted to forage and create her own meals, so she picked up some good soft chèvre and planned to get a baguette later.
* “Au Lapin Agile” in Paris, famed in story and song, is apparently a phonetic misquote of “lapin de Gilles” (the rabbit of Gilles). [Update: It's actually "A. Gill", a cartoonist and artist.--GH] So it’s usually taken to mean a quick little bunny, when in fact it was just a painting the eponymous Gilles happened to like and kept chez lui. All of which to say that the lapins who aren’t quite so quick end up on the dinner table.
After shopping, we wandered down into one of the older parts of the city, around Rue des Teinturiers (dyers and printers). I think this is my favorite part of Avignon because it’s both old and in good repair, with a shady sycamore-lined street and a small stream running through it to drive an old water wheel (no longer connected to its original gearing). Lots of small artist studios and a surprising number of theaters. The street names are lovely (my favorites: Tache d’Encre = ink spot or stain, Puits de Tarasquin = the Tarasquin wells or possibly pits), it’s not very crowded, there are cobblestones, and it’s basically a nice break from the hubbub of the rest of the city.
From there, we wended our way north through the main pedestrian thoroughfares, mostly closed to traffic and topped at the north end by Place de l’Horloge, which is flanked by wall-to-wall cafés and restos and souvenir shops designed to separate tourists from their dollars as rapidly as possible. (The guidebooks and our hosts generally agree: the food isn’t bad, just not in any way memorable. You can do better, for less money, the farther you get from the touristed areas—which is common wisdom for most tourist cities.) It’s a nicely designed area, with many old buildings renovated into good condition, a broad mall, and many trees. There’s even an antique two-story carousel in front of the Hotel de Ville (town hall) and opera house, very popular with the kids. (I took a picture of one toddler standing there, gobsmacked, gazing up at it in awe.) By then, we’d wandered around until nearly noon, when many museums close, so instead of trying to get in right before they closed, we chose a leisurely walk up to the high point of town, the gardens above the Palais des Papes (palace of the popes). The gardens are shady (they’re full of huge trees), are stocked with ponds and waterfall grottos, and offer wonderful views of the areas north, west, and east of the city and surrounds, including the famous Pont d’Avignon (actually the “Pont Bénezet”), which has collapsed part-way across the Rhône towards Île de la Barthelasse. It’s lovely, but it’s such a popular spot for school groups, daycares, and tourists that it’s not as peaceful as it could be. Highlight of the visit was that the ducklings were in full bloom. (You know that fuzzy, not quite in focus look they have when they’re freshly hatched? That look.)
We’d been told the Palais des Papes wasn’t much to look at inside, so we gave it a miss, but it’s an impressive structure seen from outside, tall enough to loom over the whole city and be seen pretty much anywhere you have a clear view towards the center north part of the city. My favorite part, though, was a funky statue of an elephant doing a headstand, supported only by its trunk. Very cute, and a popular spot for tourists to pose. (We resisted the temptation.) No idea what it’s doing there (no explanatory signs).
Our main goal was the Musée du Petit Palais, which has a huge collection of religious art. In one sense, it’s all of a muchness: once you’ve seen one image of the Crucifixion, the Last Supper, or the Annunciation, you’ve seen them all. But the range of styles and approaches to the subject matter is huge, and if you know a bit of the iconography (something Shoshanna knew a little bit about) and if you can parse church Latin (something we can both do, and can do better when we combine our lore), the amount of detail embedded in these paintings can be quite astonishing. All in all, we spent a couple hours here, happily iconographing, looking for symbols, and deciphering often-cryptic Latin inscriptions.
On the way out from the museum, I happened to spot a small door in the side of the Palais, and noticed that it was the palace archives. Needless to say, we were drawn to that like moths to a tasty old scrap of parchment the other moths had missed. The archivists had put together a clever display, with lots of information on the many things that damage old materials (including careless archivists who interleave pages from different manuscripts or who spill coffee on a millennium-old scroll), and on their restoration efforts. Europe is this mind-bogglingly enormous treasure trove of written materials people never bothered to throw away, not to mention stuff they deliberately chose to keep, so there’s an endless supply of archival material to collect, preserve, and someday read. Of the making of books there is no end; of the archiving of the endless books and manuscripts, there is even less of an end.
We finished our day with a trip north to the Rhône and attempt at circumnavigation of the western walls. The walking path by the Rhône runs between a busy highway and the river, so there aren’t many places to cross. We ended up having to backtrack a fair distance, having erroneously assumed we’d be able to continue east once we reached the southern side of the city and be able to return via one of the southern gates. Not so much; one would have to be a very agile lapin indeed to make it across the traffic. By the time we made it back, we’d spent nearly 8 hours walking, and it was a relief to return to the hotel and put our feet up.
Dinner that night was at another tiny restaurant (maybe eight tables) called “Le Chat Touilleur” (the stirring cat), complete with iconic image of a cat stirring a large marmiton (stewpot) with a spoon. Much cat kitsch (kit catsch?) throughout the restaurant. Shoshanna had asparagus ravioli in a cream sauce, and I had lamb and eggplant baked into a small ceramic dish. Savory and yummy. Chocolate brownie and ice cream for dessert. Yum too! Home to bed, the ritual rubbing of Shoshanna’s feet, and a good night’s sleep.