Traveling Johns

John and I both woke up early this morning, and we set out to find some coffee. This gave us an excuse to wander about the neighborhood. Brentford has a reputation today as being a bit of a down-at-the-heels neighborhood in an unfashionable borough. This is certainly an understandable response to a stroll down Brentford High Street or a visit to the Beehive pub, but there are a number of interesting and sometimes quite affluent neighborhoods here, and there is an astonishing amount of history. 

Brentford is situated on towards the eastern end of the Borough of Hounslow when the River Brent meets the River Thames. Brentford is a Celtic word and it means “a place where the River Brent can be crossed.” Yet that definition is rather misleading as the Brent is a fairly small tributary of the Thames and it could be far more easily crossed a little further north in Hanwell. So what was fordable here was not the Brent so as the Thames. Brentford was the first spot, about 80 miles west of the open sea, where the Thames could be forded by cattle or horses. And this is quite historically important. Brentford is the most likely spot for the battle between Julius Caesar and the British tribal king Cassivellaunus in 54 BC. A bit of history here: after conquering Gaul, Caesar demanded the submission of the British tribes. Not surprisingly, they refused and Roman legions invaded Britain, landing at the mouth of the Thames and moving west along the south side of the river. At Brentford, Caesar moved his forces successfully across the Thames even though the north side of the river was apparently well-protected with sharp oak stakes. The British tribal forces were beaten by the better-armed Roman legions, and Cassivellaunus fled. This woodcut image is how a nineteenth century illustrator imaged the battle.

Cassivellaunus’s location was later disclosed to Caesar by rival British tribes and he surrendered to the Roman leader. Although many have questioned Caesar’s accounts of his own successes, this one appears to be fairly accurate. When the Brentford Dock, right by Vicki and Jerry’s house, was built in the middle of the nineteenth century, the ancient remnants of the sharp oak stakes were unearthed. 

Another important battle was fought here in 1016, this one with a better outcome for the English. Canute, the Danish King, invaded Britain, one of many Norse incursions into the British Isles, and his forces were repelled here at Brentford by the English King Edmond Ironside. This was one of Edmond’s few victories, and what was left of his kingdom fell into Danish control after his death. Ultimately the Danish victory was somewhat short-lived as the Norman would invade England and take control of the country in 1066. 

Oddly enough, Brentford is not mentioned in the Domesday book though nearby Hanwell to the north is. Possibly this area was considered part of Hanwell at the time, and the land is that part of Middlesex County was owned by the monks of Westminster Abbey. The first known building in Brentford was the establishment of Saint Lawrence’s church in the twelfth century. It is not easy to get a good picture of this building, so I took this one from Wikipedia (consider that attribution). 

The stone tower dates from the 15th century, while the rest of the church was rebuilt in 1764 in brick. The parish was closed by the Diocese of London in 1959, and the building has been vacant ever since. In the redevelopment of the high street planned by an Irish firm, this building will be saved but converted into something, possibly a fitness center. Given the historical significance of the spot, it seems like it deserves more than that even if it is an ugly building. 

Other than a minor battle in the Civil War, not much happened in Brentford until the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Grand Union Canal was built to link Birmingham and other Midland industrial centers with the port city of London. Portions of the River Brent were incorporated into the canal route, and the Thames was dredged at this time to make it deeper and more accessible to shipping. In the middle of the century, a train line was built to link the Brentford Docks with the Great Western Railway. Like much of Middlesex County, Brentford changed from a fairly bucolic farming area to a largely urban and somewhat industrial one. Much of the work was to build the railways and canals was done by Irish laborers, and a good bit of cheap housing was built for them. The area was largely spared the devastation of the Blitz, though several bombs were dropped on the docks just south of Brentford High Street. 

Today, Brentford is being slowly changed into a high-end residential neighborhood. The factories that once lined the Great West Road on the north of Brentford have now been replaced with skyscrapers housing major firms like GlaxoSmithKline and Sky. The Hounslow Council has approved demolishing most of the structures between Brentford High Street and the Thames for a mixed commercial and residential use. I suspect we will see the same kind of tall apartment building with a river view here that now line much of the rest of the Thames. The old canal is now becoming a natural area, and as two centuries of industrial contamination is clean up, fish and birds are now returning to the area as the following canal-side plaque describes. 

But enough history, even if it is one of my obsessions. Our big adventure for the day was a trip to Bristol to see Zöe and her husband Arden. Zöe and Sandra, as you may recall from previous entries, were our two new best friends on the barge trip. Zöe helped us arrange our plane tickets to London, and invited us, probably not expecting we would accept, to visit her in her hometown of Bristol. But she was delighted when we let her know a couple days ago that we were coming out for lunch and some sightseeing.

With some minor problems, we took the train from Paddington Station. While not exactly a bullet train, the express from London toward Bristol made remarkably good time getting us nearly from one side of the country to the other in about two hours. We disembarked at Bristol Temple Meads Station. Zöe met us there and introduced us to Arden.

Zöe explained that the neo-Gothic station was the work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the man responsible for the Great Western Railroad itself. While I had never heard of Brunel, I learned later, thanks, of course, to the internet, that he is absolutely revered in the United Kingdom and placed second, ahead of William Shakespeare, in a BBC poll of the 100 greatest Britons. I will grant Brunel’s engineering genius, but the station is as ugly as anything build during the nineteenth century as far as I am concerned. 

Zöe is an indefatigable booster of her hometown, and I like that about her. Britons today generally lack that sense of what Italians call “campanilismo,” the enthusiastic love of where you were born and raised. But such reverence for your roots, without that absurd sense of chauvinism one sometimes finds along the Pacific coast, is the heart of a truly authentic local culture. Zöe pointed out to us that one of the many creative people who has made Bristol their home is Nick Park, the creator of Wallace and Gromit. To honor his contributions, Bristol has placed many statues of the laconic inventor and his faithful dog around the city. Different individuals and companies have decorated them. We found one just as we entered the harbor area looking for lunch. 

We had a lovely tapas lunch at a restaurant overlooking the harbor. We could see a reproduction from there of the ship that John Cabot sailed from Bristol to Newfoundland. Cabot, whose real name was Giovanni Caboto, was a Venetian navigatorand explorer whose 1497 discovery of the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England was the first European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse expeditions of the eleventh century. 

After dropping off Arden, an talented saxophonist for a rehearsal, we went on to the look at some of the landmarks of the city. Bristol was very badly damaged during the Second World War because it was the home of the the Rolls Royce aircraft factories, and Germany was intent on destroying Britain’s industrial capabilities. Many important buildings were destroyed in the bombing, but quite a number survived. One of them is the church of Saint Mary Redcliffe, a building Queen Elizabeth I once called “the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England.” And who am I to disagree with the Virgin Queen herself? It is a large parish church, almost as large as some cathedrals, and it is a magnificent example of perpendicular gothic. Take, for example, the ceiling of the bell tower.

The nave is astonishingly lovely.

The stained glass windows, unfortunately, we destroyed during the Civil War by Cromwell’s forces, and the tile on the floor is an unfortunate bit of Victorian “restoration.” Otherwise, though, it is just about perfect. 

Since it is a landmark, Saint Mary needed its own Gromit statue as well. 

After our visit to the church, we were all ready for some ice cream. Zöe is an ice cream connoisseur. She took us to a place down the street from the University of Bristol which had some pretty cool flavors. John tried Charcoal Vanilla. He said tasted just like regular vanilla, but it did look like something that they use to patch potholes. Arden joined us as we were eating. Apparently it was a really short rehearsal. They took us over to see one of the first pieces done by the guerrilla artist called Banksy. 

Zoe was clear that she had a pretty good idea who Banksy is and that he was a resident of Bristol. Checking this out a little more online, I discovered that she is probably right about that, and that a local artist named Robin Gunningham is most frequently identified as Bristol. Cunningham was a student at the cathedral school here. And speaking of the cathedral, that was our next stop. 

Bristol was not one of the medieval cathedral cities, and the building that is today Bristol Cathedral was an Augustinian abbey until the Reformation. The building was still unfinished at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries until King Henry VIII, and the nave of the church was not built until the middle of the nineteenth century. The most historically important section of the church is the old chapter hall which dates from the Norman Era. Somehow, I did not get pictures of this. A few snapshots, though, of the choir

and some details of the stone work.

Zöe and Arden invited us to see their house. It is modern and not dissimilar to Vicki and Jerry’s house. They have the most darling dog, a poodle and spaniel mix. She’s about nine, but zipped about like she was barely two. 

They also have a horse in the back yard.

Not a real one, obviously. We had some coffee and chatted a bit. But it was finally time for us to try to catch the train back to London in order to try to see if we could get some last minute theater tickets. They drove us back to Bristol Temple Meads Station. Along the way, we stopped to admire Brunel’s famed bridge over the Avon River. It looked pretty enough from where we all posed,

but it was only later when I did a bit of research on it that I finally understood why it was a big deal. This is the angle I wished I had seen the bridge from.

This bridge predates the Brooklyn Bridge by about a decade.

The trip back to London was pretty crowded at first. We did not get a seat until after a large number of passengers disembarked at Bath and even then we did not have seats together until near Reading. Our efforts to get theater tickets for the night were ultimately fruitless, but we did get tickets to the the Tina Turner musical for July 4. 

 

 

 

 

This was a pretty pleasant day all in all … at least for me. John had some issues.

I had some coffee in the morning and looked out at the swans in the river by Jerry and Vicki’s house. 

They live on the River Brent, a small tributary of the Thames that was incorporated in the late eighteenth century into a part of the Grand Union Canal, an artificial waterway that connected London and Birmingham. At one point, the canal carried most of the goods in between the capital and the country’s largest manufacturing center. Brentford was not only one of many locks on the canal, but it was a particularly important one as taxes were levied here on the goods carried. There is a plaque near our friends’ house that explains this system and how gauging locks worked.  

I had not been to church in a couple weeks, so I decided to head into central London to hear one of the city’s most famous church choirs, the men and boys choir of Westminster Cathedral. This is the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster, and probably the most important Catholic churches constructed in Britain since the Reformation. It is constructed in a supposedly neo-Byzantine style, though it really just looks Victorian. 

The inside is dominated by the high altar with its baldacchino. It was not easy to get a picture on Sunday morning, so I nicked this one from the internet. 

The service this day celebrated the dedication of the church 108 years earlier. The service was largely a novo ordo mass in English, but odd parts of it were in Latin. The choir was obviously really good, but the acoustics were pretty bad even sitting pretty close to the front. I am glad I went, but doubt that I will be back. 

Things did not go so well for John. He decided to go to a meeting in Richmond, not all that far from Brentford. He usually uses Lyft at home when he needs a ride, but only Uber is available in London. He did have the app on his phone, and it worked fine to get him to the meeting despite the usual wretched London traffic. But when it was over, the app stopped working for him. I figured out later that it had an old AMEX card as the payment method, so I am not sure why it worked the first time. He kept calling me trying to get me to fix it, but that was not easy to do over the phone. Fortunately, he sent a picture of himself sitting in front of the Mortlake Cemetery to Vicki and Jerry came and picked him up. 

I had some time to pass before meeting up with John. I had a bowl of pretty bad Ramen near Victoria Station. I walked along the Embankment towards Trafalgar Square, thinking I might stop in at the National Gallery. But when I go there, the area around Nelson’s monument was jammed with a crowd waiting for a free performance, so I just decided to keep walking. I walked up Charing Cross towards Leicester Square, but it was almost as insanely crowded as Trafalgar Square had been. There was a Soho neighborhood fair in the old Saint Anne’s churchyard, the burial spot of William Hazlitt among others, and briefly looked in at that. I continued on towards Piccadilly. Regent Street had been completely shut down for a street fair. It was mildly interesting. I noticed with some dismay that all the shops there are exactly the same ones that you would find in any high-end shopping mall just about anywhere in the world. How sad to come so far just to find J. Crew and Ralph Lauren! 

About this time, John called to let me know that they were at the theater. We had tickets for Brief Encounter. I had read about how this theatrical adaptation of David Lean’s cinematic adaptation of Noel Coward’s play mixed live action, including music, and film, and I was interested to see how it all worked. Although a production of the Old Vic, It was playing at the Empire Cinema, itself a vaudeville house that had been converted into a cinema. When we entered there were a group of people singing on the stairs.

What we did not fully appreciate then was that all these “ushers” were actually members of the cast. Brief Encounter was great, though I cannot imagine it working so well outside of this setting. At first I could not quite out what exactly was going on in the play as it seemed to be just a campy sendup of the Lean film. But as I watched I had a better sense of what Emma Rice, the writer and director, was trying to do. Basically, Rice is using most of the text of the Lean film in order to deconstructed it much as Jacques Derrida and his disciples did with other classic texts. The film version is a powerful endorsement of middle-class values. The two main characters Laura and Alec fall in deeply in love after a brief encounter in a railway station. Unfortunately, both are both married and although powerfully attracted to each other, they resist the temptation to consummate the affair. Both Lean and Coward seems to suggest that the pair are partly tragic but also heroic for refusing to compromise their marriage vows. As deconstructionist approaches generally do, Rice’s version rather turns this on its head and the pair are more or less shown as absurd for their unwillingness to engage in a sexual encounter. Rice expands the text of the film to include much more about the minor characters who work at the station, all working class people. The people, the manager of the cafe and her assistant, and a love interest of each one of them, are depicted as full of healthy and well-expressed sexual energy in contrast to the repressed middle class. They become the de facto protagonists of the story. 

Yet, as Andy Warhol famously said, “Nothing is more bourgeois than to be afraid to look bourgeois.” Despite Rice’s attempt to rebel against Lean’s middle-class values, her lower-class characters are flat projections of the bourgeois rejection of bourgeois values. Just as D. H. Lawrence was fundamentally unable to see the working classes as anything other than projections of his fantasies about an ideal unrepressed sexuality, Rice never gives her characters a true life of their own. 

I tried to talk about all this after the play. After the word “deconstructionism” people stopped listening to me. That’s why I keep a blog. 

After the play, Jerry drove us to Chiswick. He has a new Mercedes convertible, and it was wonderful to drive through Kensington with the roof down. We had a somewhat disappointing meal at a brasseries there. 

Tomorrow, we’re off for an adventure in Bristol!

 

 

 

We left the boat pretty early this morning. Antonella had arranged a cab to take us to the airport in Montpellier. Still, even though many people were not up yet, the staff wished us a happy onward voyage.

We followed the usual recommendation to be there two hours early, but we should not have bothered. I waited endlessly for Easy Jet to open the counter for the flight to London Luton. And the flight was delayed about an hour as well because all the airlines were anticipating yet another one-day strike by French air traffic controllers, a job action that the union cancelled at the last minute. But by the time that decision had been announced, many flights had already been cancelled or rerouted. 

As we waited to get on the airport, we saw a truly weird sight. There was a group of young men who all seemed to be helping a blindfolded friend.

We decided later that this must have been some kind of bachelor party thing and he was being taken to a surprise location. But where did they find that suit?

We had a pleasant enough flight to the United Kingdom, and Easy Jet proved to be a lot like Spirit or Jet Blue in the United States. We had to wait a while to get our luggage, but we made it quickly through immigration and customs. British immigration agents always appear to be very friendly, but I have observed that it is really an act designed to make you potentially reveal as much as possible about who you are and what your plans in the country are. It is an effective tactic, I think. 

Luton Airport is clearly too small for the amount of traffic it handles, and there is construction going around everywhere. John and I found a bus that would take us to the train station. At the station, a helpful agent helped me get a ticket from there to Gunnersbury Station in Chiswick. We had to transfer in West Hampstead, but that seemed easy enough. However, by the time the train reached Hampstead, John was feeling a little weak and I knew he just had not had enough food for the day. We had to take a short walk on the high street to get from the British Rail to the Overground station, so we looked at what was available. John decided, oddly enough, that he wanted to go to a pub. 

We ordered some of the usual “pub grub” and I had a lager, too. But shortly after our food arrived, the placed started to fill up. We figured it out quickly. We are in the middle of the World Cup playoffs, and this afternoon France played Argentina. 

The crowd was definitely pro-French. 

The young boy on the left kept calling out, “Allez bleu!” I somehow doubt that Hampstead was a center of Brexit fervor. 

We took an Uber from Gunnersbury to Brentford. Vicki and Jerry met us at the gate. It was great to see both of them, and retirement certainly seems to agree with Jerry!

We had a wonderful barbecue dinner outside. I watched the ducks and the swans. It’s an early bed tonight, as we have a full day planned for tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

This was the day I had been waiting for the entire trip, the day we would ride through the Camargue. When I first booked this trip, I knew that Avignon was where the papacy had been headquartered, as it were, for part of the Middle Ages and that there were flamingos in this great marshy area by the Mediterranean. And strangely for me, it was actually the second of these two things that excited me the most. 

Once again, we knew it was going to be a hot day, so we left well before breakfast, about two hours or so before the other folks. I have pretty much figured out how to follow those direction on the little flip book they give us, but I wish I had been as smart as Zöe and had brought along my Garmin bike computer. That would have made it even easier to navigate. I could use my cell phone for this, but it runs out of battery power too quickly for a day of cycling. And I have discovered that it is just not a good idea to be somewhere with no charge in your phone!

As we rode along in the early morning, we went through some lovely farming areas. Yet what we saw most often in the fields were black cattle. The Camargue is a rich agricultural area, and frankly I think just about anything will grow in this alluvial soil. So it seemed odd to me that raising cattle, something that in the United States is often reserved for agriculturally marginal areas, seems to be the most important activity here. 

The other thing we saw as we rode through the area were the famous white horses.

I had already read a bit about these horses. The Camargue horse is one of the oldest breeds in the world, and they appear to be indigenous to this region. They are born brown, but turn their hair turns white as they grow older. They generally live outdoors; indeed, to be properly registered as a Camargue horse, the foal must be born in a pasture, not in a barn. 

We came continued on into the village of Le Cailar. Just about every street in this town was being torn up, and it was difficult to follow the directions here. John and I became separated at some point here. I found my way to the center of town, but he was having incredible trouble getting there following Google Maps on his phone. We had a number of phone calls back and forth until he finally made it. I was so relieved. I bought a couple pastries from a nearby boulangerie, and we ordered a couple of coffees at the Cafè de l’Avenir just by the old parish church and the Mairie. We could not believe how French these people were! They were all kissing each other on the cheek and I think every last one of them was smoking.

We rode on a bit more through the countryside. After a few kilometers, we came to the town of Marsillargues. This was a little bigger than Le Cailar and not quite as cute. We parked our bikes for a bit by the police station and this church 

and walked about. I was a bit surprised to see this street sign

and wondered if this town was a stronghold of the French Socialist Party. John was taken with a flower arrangement.

There really was not all that much of interest in this town, so we pushed on fairly quickly. On the way, we saw lots and lots of lavender.

John could not resist becoming part of the Van Gogh scene

until he noticed all the bees that were buzzing about!

Our next stop by the town of Saint-Laurent-d’Aigouze. I’ll just call it Saint Laurent for short. It is the main town of this part of the countryside, and it unlike Marsillargues it was humming with activity.  The was a charming town center with several cafes and a medieval parish church. We would have been interested in taking some pictures of the church, but there was a funeral taking place and that would hardly have been appropriate. Right next to the church, strangely enough, was a bullring. 

We saw some interpretive material by the arena in Saint Laurent that told us a little more about the cattle we have been seeing and why they are so important in this part of the world. Camargue cattle are best known by their name in Provençal, this historic language of this part of France, as Raço di Biòu. Although the beef is prized in this part of Europe, the cattle are actually raised for the Course Camarguaise, a bloodless bull fighting that has been practiced in Provence and Languedoc for centuries. 

It begins with the bulls running through the streets of the town while the young men of the town try to outrun them. After the bulls have been herded in this way into an arena, the course begins. The bulls have had a rosette placed on their foreheads prior to entering the ring. The raseteurs, as the men are called, with try to pull the rosette off the bull’s horns. This proves their bravery.

Now while the bull is not harmed in anyway during this spot, the animal is clearly not happy about humans lunging at him. So the danger to the raseteur can be equal to that faced by a Spanish matador. 

We could have stayed longer in Saint Laurent, but it was becoming hot and we wanted to get back to the ship before the temperature was well into the triple digits. 

We encountered the marshes of the Camargue for the first time as we were leaving Saint Laurent. 

The wetland were filled with herons and egrets. 

There was a long causeway through the marsh, and in the middle of the road was this enormous medieval tower.

This is the Tour Carbonnière. We learned that it was built in the fourteenth century to assess tolls on goods shipped between Saint Laurent and Aigues Mortes. John hates heights, so I climbed up to the top for him.

From here it was a fairly short trip back to the canal mostly retracing the route we had taken earlier along the canal. 

We decided to explore the city a bit. Aigues Morte is one of the few cities where the ancient walls and other fortifications are still almost completely intact. Most of the streets are blocked off to traffic. The buildings have all been meticulously restored. And yet … there is no town left here. There are only restaurants and tchotchke shops catering mostly to fairly affluent tourists. You have at least a half dozen choices of places to buy gelato. There is not a single place where you could buy a screwdriver. John was determined to find someplace cool and quiet lunch, and we walked every street in the town. 

We kept returning to the village square. This is dominated by a huge statue of Saint King Louis.

There is also a small medieval church there dedicated to the saint. It has been restored recently and now has a fairly pleasing combination of old and new furnishings.

In the end, we did not really find the kind of place John wanted for lunch, and we had some mediocre fare at a small cafe.

Later in the afternoon, we decided to head towards the beach. It was not so much that I wanted to go to the beach, but that I heard that midway to the Mediterranean coast I could see a flock of flamingos. I had felt cheated that so far I had not seen the most famous residents of the Camargue, so off we went. Jill joined us on this part of the adventure. After we had followed the main highway for a couple of kilometers I spotted them. 

It looked like a small island in this shallow salt pond served as a nesting area.

I was totally thrilled and would happily have spent the rest of the day there. But I figured having come this far I should make it all the way to the Mediterranean. Just before you come to the beach, there is another town right along the strand. I what the “Beautiful View of England” hotel was like and if it had ever been a stylist resort for English tourists. 

We finally made it to the beach. We did not bother to go swimming, but we all waded in about as far as our knees. The water was quite warm, and this is still early in the season. 

Back on the sand, some Welsh man actually tried to pick up Jill. She played along with him for fun until he told her that he was a big fan of Donald Trump. At that point, she just turned and jumped on her bike to get back to the ship as fast as possible!

This marks the end of our journey. Tomorrow we catch a flight to London. 

 

 

 

 

 

For me, the embankment on the Rhone River in Arles will be mostly connected with my abduction by cab. But for the rest of the world, the most important thing is that Vincent Van Gogh painted his famous Starry Night right here where our boat is docked. 

Maybe it is just a nineteenth century night, or maybe it is being a schizophrenic artistic genius, but it looks better in his picture than it does in real life. 

Today we are going with the group because we have a tour of Arles and then we will be riding only part of the way to our final destination. We will conclude our trip today by cruising down the river into the city of Aigues Mortes, our final destination. Zöe and Sandra are going to skip the tour and bike the whole distance, but they are made of stronger stuff than the rest of us. 

Tom Giles and I were definitely ready to go!

Our first stop was the a small square by the tourist office. We parked our bike here, and met our guide. She was a very pleasant woman who spoke excellent English. She gave us a brief overview there of the early history of the city. Arles had been settled by various people — Ligurians, Celts, and even Phoenicians — but it was the Romans who really made it important. The Romans took the area from the Phoenicians in 123 BCE, and named the settlement Arelate. During one of those many Roman Civil Wars of the first century BCE, the people here made a smart bet and sided with Caesar instead of Pompey. For their loyalty, this became the capital of the Gallia Narbonensis, the Roman name for Provence and Languedoc. 

Our first stop with our guide was the Place de la Republique. It seems like every town in France has to have a square with this name. 

And, like all Republic Squares, it has to be the home to the Mairie, the city hall. 

But that little bit of Beaux Arts municipal swagger is not historically or artistically important. The Church of Saint Trophime, a few yards away, is much more significant. 

There has been a church on this site ever since late Roman times, and we know that in the fifth century a basilica dedicated to Saint Stephen was erected on this site. T A new cathedral for this city was constructed in the twelfth century on the site of the old basilica. This church was dedicated to Trophimus, the first bishop of Arles. Or maybe it was the Trophimus who accompanied Paul on his third journey according to the Acts of the Apostles. Local people apparently tended to confuse these two. The church was build in the Romanesque style. The choir and nave of the church were rebuilt in the fifteenth century in the Gothic style, but the west portal, seen in the picture above, was not changed. This was quite fortunate for later generations, as the tympanum above the doors is considered one of the masterpieces of Romanesque art. 

Our next stop was at the Espace Van Gogh, the Van Gogh center. Some background, as usual:  Vincent Van Gogh moved to Arles in early 1888. Though he had been in contact with Paul Gaugin and some of the avant-garde painters in Paris, his work up to this point had few of the distinctive elements of his later style. Southern France with its bright light and vivid colors seemed to inspire the Dutch artist, and his works from his time in Arles are among his most  beloved compositions. Unfortunately, his mental health, always somewhat fragile, began to break down a few months after his arrival in this city. In December of 1888, he had a fight with Gaugin and cut off part of his left ear. He was taken to the hospital in Arles for observation and treatment. He painted the courtyard of the hospital. 

And it still looks much the same today. 

We continued on from here to another famous spot, the Café Terrace. This is one of Van Gogh’s most beloved paintings. As he himself pointed out, 

“In the past they used to draw, and paint the picture from the drawing in the daytime. But I find that it suits me to paint the thing straightaway. It’s quite true that I may take a blue for a green in the dark, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since you can’t make out the nature of the tone clearly. But it’s the only way of getting away from the conventional black night with a poor, pallid and whitish light, while in fact a mere candle by itself gives us the richest yellows and oranges.”

Today, by day or night, the place is crowded with tourists who want to take a picture from the same spot where he artist made his painting. 

I found all this interesting, but I was just as taken by the other buildings on the Place du Forum. 

From here, we went on to explore the various Roman ruins, the other great attraction of Arles. We went first to the Roman theater. John and Jill were really excited to see this. Unfortunately, they were readying it to use it for a performance, so we had to sit outside the fence and really could not get a good look at it. I had to go online to really get a sense of why it is such an important remnant of this era. 

This city still has an amphitheater and it is used for the Course Camargue, the bloodless bullfighting typical of this area. John had me pose here.

And he had Antonella and Sylvia do the same. 

Our tour ended here, and we were given a couple of hours to have lunch and wander about. John and I found a pleasant shady park with a bust of Van Gogh. 

It was already too hot for John, so he wanted a place where we could have a big bottle of water. Close by the tourist office, we found the Julius Caesar hotel. There was a pretty garden in the back and we had a couple bottles of overpriced Perrier. 

We met up with Sherry and Giles and had lunch at a small cafe. Sherry changed tables at least three times before it was time to order. John lost his phone at least once. It was a completely ordinary day at a restaurant! The food was pretty good, though, and not particularly expensive.

By early afternoon, it was time to ride on to meet the boat. John snapped this picture and it is one of my favorites of this trip. He has such a good eye for framing things. 

It did not take us long to make it to the spot where the boat was waiting for us. As usual, they had drinks and some snacks waiting for us. But I went straight for my room where I cranked the air conditioner up and took a brief nap. 

We spent the afternoon cruising towards Aigues Mortes and the Mediterranean. Somewhat to my disappointment, we were not going down the main route of the Rhone but down a canal. Looking at a map, I figured out that the River emptied out in the middle of the national park, about halfway between Montpellier and Marseilles. I wish could have sailed through this area, but I realize that this is not a good spot to begin or end a tour. It was pleasant enough spending the late afternoon on the boat, but the scenery was not particularly interesting and other than the occasional egret we did not see any wildlife. 

About dinner time we arrived at our final destination. 

Stefania is our steward. But on this trip, with our all-female crew, she has been learning some of the skills of sailing and docking the boat. I think she may want to be a captain some day. 

In the evening we just enjoyed the sight of Aigues Mortes from a distance. We will explore it some more tomorrow. 

John and I left quite early this morning from Vallabregues, the small town where our boat is moored. We had read the weather forecasts and knew that this was going to be the possibly the hottest day of the trip with temperatures of near 100 degrees. We also knew that this was the longest and hardest day of cycling on the trip with a particularly difficult two mile ascent. So we decided we would leave about two hours before the rest of the group to do as much of this as we could in the cool of the morning. It was a good choice. 

The start of the trip was magical. We cycled along quiet country paths. There were endless fields of sunflowers. 

I am not sure what exactly the French do with all these sunflowers. The market for seeds cannot be that big. I suppose they probably make cooking oil out of them. 

After cycling for a bit further we came to Tarascon. There are some wonderful legends associated with this small city. Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, supposedly left Judea to come to southern France. She stopped at Tarascon because a great dragon was destroying the ships headed up the Rhone River. She befriended and tamed the beast, but the unforgiving townspeople slew the dragon anyhow. There is a church dedicated to her and it supposedly contains her relics. Alas, one of the downsides of arriving early in a town is that everything is closed, so I did not get a chance to see her crypt. 

The castle is impossible to miss, however. King Louis II of Anjou began construction on it in 1401; his son, King René of Naples finished it in 1449. It is an impressive edifice. 

I wondered if the gargoyles on the palace were supposed to be the dragon that Mary had tamed.

We had fun riding through the town which still has most of its walls and its gates.

Leaving Tarascon, we went through more countryside until we reached the village of St Etienne du Gres. This looked like it might be an interesting place to stop, but like a number of other towns in Provence, just about every street was torn up and being replaced. So we pushed on. We went through the foothills of Les Alpilles. This small mountain range — its highest peak is only about 1600 feet — is nevertheless quite dramatic. Van Gogh made it famous in a number of paintings, most notably Les Alpilles.

We stopped in the small city of St Remy-de-Provence. It was market day there. We parked our bikes and walked around. As we had not had breakfast this morning, the food looked pretty good. John bought some fruit and I bought a pork sausage sandwich. We shared them, seated on the steps of a church.

Before leaving, we looked into the church. It was in pretty bad shape inside, but the organ was obviously old and famous. It was in great shape.

We walked a bit more about the town. John bought some sunglasses. I took pictures.

We walked back through the market. I was delighted by some of the things I saw. What could be more French than a few baguettes in the back of your bicycle?

I was a bit taken startled, however, by some of the items for sale in one of the stalls.

I think that might cause a small riot at an American flea market!

From here we began a long, climb towards Les Baux. We had been warned here that the road had a relentless climb over four kilometers of nearly a thousand meters. I did have an electric bike, but it my battery by this point was showing only about a 40 percent charge and we were not even close to halfway through our daily journey. E-bikes are much heavier than conventional bikes, and they are punishingly difficult to ride without the motor. I decided to keep the bike in its lowest possible setting. By this time the temperature was also closing in on 100 degrees. I wished we had not spent so much time in Saint Remy. 

I somehow made it to the top. There were amazing views of the Alpilles and its characteristic rock formations.

I caught sight of a small village just ahead of us.

John and I had become separated on the climb, and while I was waiting for him, I played with different settings on my camera trying to get a better close up. I did something weird here that created sort of instant impressionist painting. 

Zoe and Sandra rode passed, and also John finally showed up. We rode on towards the village of Les Bains. 

Before entering the village, we went to the Carrières des Lumières. This is an old limestone quarry that has been turned into a strange kind of multimedia exhibition space. Images, more slide show than film, are shown on the stone walls while music plays. When we entered they started to play an homage of sorts to the late 1960s. As the images change, you walk around and there are different images on different walls. 

Like this young woman, John was entranced.

After spending about 40 minutes in the cool, underground cavern, we emerged into the heat and continued on into Les Baux. I am sure that there was once a charming a beautiful town here,

but everything in the town has been turned into a shop or a restaurant aimed at affluent tourists.

Both of us were ready for the day’s ride to be over by this point, but we still had about 30 kilometers left to go. 

Fortunately, the next few kilometers were completely downhill. But the heat kept going up. We rode on for about another 10 kilometers. By this time, John not feeling well. We stopped into a hotel and ordered a big bottle of Perrier Blu. I helped a bit, but John still said he did not feel well. We had somehow not followed the route on our cycling guide, and we had missed the turn off to the Roman aqueduct. Had it just been me, I think I might have gone back and tried to join the route. But I really wanted to get John to someplace cool and dark. l still had some charge in my phone, so I used Google Maps to guide us into Arles. From my adventure the night before, I figured that the boat would be parked right by the train station. My impression of Arles did not improve as we rode down ugly commercial streets to the center. As it turned our, my instinct were right and we found the boat parked on the quay. I went into the room and lay under the air-conditioner. I fell asleep right away. 

After yesterday’s ride, John and I decided that maybe we should try heading off on our own and getting as much of the ride finished before the heat became too intense. It was a great idea, but we still could not quite beat the triple digit temperatures and the mistral wind. 

We started the day early, about 6:30 in the morning. Connie, our captain, was up already and helped us get our bikes off the boat and to the dock at Vallabregues. We did a quick circuit through this town and headed out into the countryside. I was more than a little nervous about riding on our own. Two years ago, when John and I did a bike ride through southern Italy, we had been provided with a bike GPS. But today all I had was a little flip book attached to my handle bars with directions and a few simple maps. Still, as we rode, I began to figure out just how the bike navigation could work even without GPS. The book had a long list of directions for the ride, many of them fairly unhelpful like “Turn left on the unmarked road once you have crossed the bridge.” I despaired of following things like that! However, once I started to pay close attention to the cycling odometer on my handlebars, all of this was far easier because each of these directions was at a particular kilometer mark on the trip.  It was not always perfect. Sometimes the bridge was at 6,8 and not at 6,7 as the directions indicated. But they were close enough for me to lead the two of us over the planned route without getting lost. 

We rode for about fifteen kilometer through flat farmland. The routes provided did a good job of keeping us off main roads and away from traffic. The farm fields looked pretty in the early morning light, and there was still a bit of mist in the air. Our first stop was at the village of Barbentane. We found a cute little square with a few cafes and a post office, none of them open at this time in the morning. The directions called for us to go under and arch and up a steep street to find the medieval center of town. Here the directions were not particularly helpful, and we never did quite find the turn off to the medieval fortifications and the Romaneque church. Instead, we found ourselves at the edge of town by the cemetery. 

We decided to just push on. After a while in France, one set of ramparts looks pretty much like another, and I am sure we will see more walled towns as we continue our trip. The directions then send us towards the Moulin de Bretoule, an eighteenth century windmill. John and I were certain we had follow the directions perfectly here, but failed to see any windmill. I was starting to get really annoyed until I turned around. We had been standing in front of it for five minutes puzzling over the flip book!

John cannot see an old wooden door without doing his Holman Hunt knock on the door. 

By this time it was barely ten o’clock, but the heat was already getting intense. We pushed on towards our next destination, the Abbey of Saint Michel de Frigolet.

There has been a monastic presence on this site for well over a thousand years. Benedictines established the first monastery here. About a hundred years later, it became the home of a community of Norbertines, a semi-monastic order of priests who live in community but work in parishes, schools, and hospitals. The Norbertine community disbanded there after about three hundred years, and the monastery more or less fell into ruin. A few other groups took control of the property and attempted with limited success to reestablish monastic life in this isolated and somewhat harsh environment. The French Revolution put an end to all religious orders in the country, and the Abbey of Saint Michel was seized by the state and sold. The property passed through a variety of secular owners for sixty years until a priest named Edmund Boulbon purchased it in 1856. Boulbon had initially sought to become a Trappist monk, but his superiors felt that he was not suited to their community and suggested that he might wish to become a Norbertine. He apparently readily accepted this suggestion, and he convinced Pope Pius IX to let him reestablish Saint Michel as a Norbertine community. The abbey was rebuilt during this time, and the buildings that visitors see today are basically nineteenth century construction on medieval foundations. 

The interior is dark but colorful, a hallmark of that period. 

Every surface that could be painted was painted with sappy pictures of the saints.

Various historical styles were mixed together without any sense of either their artistic integrity or what mixing them together might look like. In this small chapel the neo-medieval is combined with elements of Byzantine and Rococo art. 

Still, at points even an art snob like me found a bit of spiritual inspiration in the abbey.

We did not stay too long. The flip book suggested having lunch here, and there appeared to be some kind of restaurant, but it was not open. John purchased a drink and an ice cream, and I bought a little souvenir for my office at home. We left the abbey about the time that the group tour started to arrive. 

Our next stop was Boulbon, a charming medieval town. Just off the town square, at the Cafe du Commerce, we found our friends Zöe and Sandra having lunch. Sandara is wearing the bright green jersey and Zöe is wearing the purple one. John is sitting at the table next to them. I believe that they were the only three people in the restaurant who were not smoking. I have heard that smoking rates have fallen dramatically across France, but so far on this trip I have seen little evidence of it. 

John and I were hungry and decided to have lunch there, too. I ordered the camambert salad. What finally arrived — French restaurants at noonday seem to assume you plan to spend at least two hours there — was a large round of cheese baked with honey. There were also a generous portion of pomme frites, several pieces of a prosciutto-like ham, and a handful of lettuce leaves with two cherry tomatoes. It was absolutely delicious, but it certainly stretched the definition of what constitutes a salad. 

The service had been so leisurely that by the time we had finally begged and pleaded for the check, the group from the boat were all there. Antonella told us that they had arranged a tour of the town with a local guide, and that we were more than welcome to join them. It had to be at least 105 in the shade when the tour departed from the town square. The guide spoke in French and Antonella translated into English. 

They discussed a late medieval statue of Saint Christopher and how a hospital had been established here.

I tried to pay attention. I mean, as readers of this blog know, this sort of stuff is what I love the most. But I just couldn’t follow what people were saying. We walked on to look at the castle and the battlements.

Again, the guide was full of information, but it was so hot I just didn’t care. I found myself taking random pictures of plants instead.

Around this time, John asked me if I really wanted to stay to listen to the rest of the tour. I honestly admitted that, no, I just wanted to get back to the boat and toss myself under the air-conditioner unit. So we took one last look around at the landscape

found our bikes, and went on our way. 

Today was our second day of cycling. During breakfast, the barge left Avignon and headed down the Rhone for a few kilometers. We docked not far from the village of Aramon. There is not much to see, however, where we are docked. John and I were ready to go!

As we were riding, we went through a number of small and generally not terribly interesting little towns. The old hill stop settlement of Fournès was by far the most arrestingly beautiful. 

We stopped briefly at an olive oil mill.

John and I have been to more than a few of these places over the years, and we feel like we could probably give the spiel. So I paid less attention to crushing the olives and more to the scenery around the area. Provence looks a lot like Southern California. 

But if you look more carefully, there are some important differences. California is largely composed of granite. Southern France, however, is mostly limestone and sandstone. This part of the world was obviously an prehistoric seabed that the pushed upward by the movement of the African Plate upon the Eurasian Plate. The chalky soil means that many plants will not grow all that well here. So the people of Provence have worked to identify plants, such as olive trees and lavender, that seem to tolerate the generally dry conditions and the more alkaline soils. 

We rode into what seemed like a small city. Antonella warned us that we needed to stay together and be careful as we rode. Maybe as if to put us all in a more cautious mood, she gave us a small stop by a French cemetery. All of us were struck by the ceramic flowers on the graves.

The highlight of the day was a visit to the Pont du Garde, the famous Roman aqueduct. We arrived here at lunch time, and John and I decided to have lunch before we went over to take a close look at the impressive ruin. But our lunch service was so leisurely that we actually never had a chance to go. Fortunately, we had the best table at the restaurant — I think they do this sort of thing to Americans because they know we are going to tip them — and we had a stunning view of it. 

It took absolutely forever for our food to arrive. I always think of Mexico as the home of the leisurely meal, but somehow France, at least here in the south of France, meals take even longer. John and I had ordered the usual three course menu du jour. The food was absolutely superb. John ordered the “crazy plate” as his dessert. There were enough sweets here for an entire family of twelve!

The rest of the day was a fairly quick but hot ride back to the barge. We stopped briefly in a little town along the way. 

I keep being surprised by how almost empty all these towns in Provence seem. Do people live here, but work elsewhere? Are these second homes used on weekends? Or are some of these houses more or less abandoned? I have read about how the French countryside has lost much of its population in recent years and the crisis facing French agriculture. 

This evening we worked on our plans for the end of the trip. We had left the last few days open, but finally decided that we will spend the last few days visiting our friends in London and I will be spending at least part of my birthday there!

Today was our first day of riding. It was a little confusing at first, but fun. John and I did a bit of group cycling when we were in Croatia, but there were not many roads and we usually just all went at our own pace and just met up with the rest of the group every now and then. This was much more organized, but after a while I figured out how it worked. We have two lovely young women, both Italians, as our guides. Antonella was the lead guide, and when we road she was always in front. Silvia was sort of the “shepherd,” the guide who was always at the rear taking care of the slower bikers and any problems that might have happened. The cyclist who followed Antonella was expected to stop and “flag” turns at any confusing intersections. 

After my adventures the previous evening, I had not slept as well as I hoped I would. So, feeling a little sorry for myself, when they announced that they had one extra e-bike available, for a small fee, of course, I decided to ask for it. It proved to be a good choice. I quickly fell into the routine of being the flag and then racing to catch up with Antonella as fast as I could. 

Our route took us in a circle around Avignon. I recognized a number of the views from the cab ride the day before. Unfortunately, while there were many opportunities to stop and drink water, the guides were not that concerned with stopping to let us take pictures. There were a couple magnificent views of the city and its famous bridge that I just missed. John did many to use his phone to catch one of me on my bike. 

Using the same technology, I just took random pictures of flowers and fruit. I am not sure why….

We stopped in a small town cafe to have a drink. There was a classic car show nearby. The Americans were struck to see that few of the cars were familiar to us and that none of them were made outside of Europe.

I was struck by how utterly deserted the village seemed. There were a handful of local people in the cafe, mostly older. But there was little life in the houses nearby. Most of them appeared closed and shuttered. This house actually looked like somebody might be living there. 

Along the way, we caught sight of some other towns. This one was high on a ridge and I think our group was relieved to learn that we would not have to ride our bikes up to it.

Here are some of the our companions. Jill,

and Ray,

and Sherry and Giles.

Our group was always pretty easy to spot because of the orange bicycles. This helps identify them as the property of Girolibero, “Ride Free,” the Italian company that runs this tour.

We stopped for lunch in Villeneuve Les Avignon, or “New Avignon.” Why a new Avignon? Well there is a lot of history in that name! In the Middle Ages Avignon was an fairly significant town because of its location on the Rhone River. But its importance really grew in the fourteenth century when seven popes resided in Avignon rather than Rome. King Phillip IV of France disliked the power of the Papacy and particularly Pope Boniface VIII. After that Pope’s death, the result of his being beaten by Phillip’s allies, the French king forced the election of Raymond de Goth, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to the see of Saint Peter. An ally of Phillip, de Goth, who took the name of Clement V, announced that Rome was too dangerous for him to live there and that he would reside instead in Avignon. Phillip ceded the area of Avignon itself to the Papacy, but established a new Avignon right across the river from the old one. This new Avignon was in French territory, and residences were built there for all the cardinals. Phillip knew that if the cardinals were living in French territory and supported by the French crown they would likely do whatever the French monarch wanted. It was an arrangement that lasted for nearly a century. Roman Catholics remember it as a particular low point in the history of the Papacy. 

The town of Villeneuve Les Avignon may not be as much of a tourist magnet as the older settlement on the other side of the river, but it is a charming city with a wonderful town square.

Before I settled down to have lunch there, I walked around a bit. One of the main attractions in town in an old charter house, a monastery of the Carthusian order. I decided to check it out. When you enter off the street you walk through an impressive gate

into a lovely courtyard.

I quickly figured out, however, that not much is really left of the original building other than its walls. Religious orders were violently suppressed during  the Revolution, and the tenuous peace later established by Napoleon between the Church and the French government, was not enough to restore any more than a handful of the old orders. 

Probably more interesting to me was a later establishment, the House of the “Grey Penitents.” one of many quasi-monastic religious communities from this period. This was an a nearly perfect site of complete disrepair. 

Even here, in a town that seemed quite prosperous, the streets seemed strangely empty.

John and I had a nice lunch. I decided that I had had enough of the foreign food and ordered “Le Burger.” But it arrived with a slab of gooey white cheese on it almost larger than the meat patty. Delicious! And while the frites were not as great as the ones I have had in Belgium, they were pretty darn good, too!

After lunch, John and I wandered around a bit. There was a small church nearby dedicated to Saint Mark. A baptism had apparently just taken place.

We had a chance to look around the medieval church for a few minutes before the priest closed it up.

Probably the most interested thing inside was a beautiful Renaissance painting of the pietà over a side altar.

We were a couple minutes late to rejoining the tour, and they were about to leave without us!

We had a quick ride back to the boat and the staff had cool fruit drinks and a few nibbles to welcome us back. 

In the afternoon we had a walking tour of Avignon. Our guide was good, and she spoke excellent English, but by this time the temperature was nearly 100 and I found it hard to follow what she was telling us. I do remember something about this clock tower, a symbol of Avignon, being all that was left of some archbishop’s residence. 

And she made sure we saw the castle that Clement V had built. 

The papal chapels, which you can see adjoining the castle on the left in the picture, was only moderately impressive despite extensive decoration and renovations. 

There is still a small bit of the original Gothic architecture left, seeming quite incongruous among the prevailing baroque decor.

As the tour wound down, the temperature rose higher and higher. I found it almost impossible to listen to the guide, and started to fantasize about finding a cold Coke Zero somewhere. John sat down on a parapet,

and at last I managed to take a picture, though not a particularly good one, of the famous Pont d’Avignon. 

We wandered slowly back to the ship and took quick showers. Tomorrow we leave Avignon start our trip down the Rhone. 

I need to be honest. This was not the easiest day of the trip. We drove from Lake Como to Avignon. We made it. We are still talking to each other. And I am still writing these posts. I thought for a bit today might have been the end of the Traveling Johns. But more on that later. 

We tried to pack the car more intelligently that we had in Milan. We managed to consolidate some of our stuff, and so we were able to use one seat in the back of the van. This was a huge improvement over the ride to Lake Como. Tom Giles did the driving and I navigated. We had a couple stops along the way. John wanted to stop in Turin to visit a famous coffeehouse there. Driving into the city and finding a place to park proved to be a bit difficult. People not given to a certain kind of British understatement might even call it a nightmare. Yet it was a fascinating detour into a city that few tourists ever visit. 

The scenery as we went through the Alps was extraordinarily beautiful, and it might have been nice to have had more time to savor it. But we were supposed to be in Avignon by 6:00. We made it there about 25 minutes late. The crew seemed happy to see us as we were the last to arrive. I had our group pull all of the luggage out of the van so Tom and I could get the van back to Hertz. We were supposed to have returned that 90 minutes before. I asked Antonella, the principal tour guide, for the address to give us the address so I could get a taxi from the train station. She thought it would be better if she arranged for a taxi to meet me there and bring me back to the ship. 

With some difficulty, the cabbie and I finally met up inside the train station. I tried to make some polite conversation with him in Spanish — his parents were Spaniards and he spoke that language quite fluently — but I was frankly pretty tired. I just looked out the window as the he drove off. And as I kept looking out the window, I began to wonder where exactly we were going. It seemed like we were headed in the wrong direction. I glanced at my phone and thought about checking Google Maps. I was down to less than 3 percent charge. I decided to use it as little as I could.

The cab kept on going. I wanted to ask him, “Are you sure you know where you’re going? Where exactly is the boat?” But I kept thinking, he’s the local, and Antonella told him where to go. Finally, we drove into Arles. At this point I knew we were in the wrong place. And my phone was down to about 1 percent charge. I somewhat melodramatically sent John one of those the-airplane-is-about-to-crash-but-I-want-you-to-know-I-love-you texts. The cabbie pulled up to the quay. “La barca no esta aqui. ¿Donde estan?” he demanded. “No se,” was the best I could mumble back. John must have shown the text to Antonella because she called him right then. They began arguing back in forth furiously in French. I understand French much better than I speak it, and I could largely follow the debate. He said that she told him to bring me to Arles. She said, no, she had told him specifically to Avignon. She insisted he bring me back. He refused to drive an additional 50 kilometers. He hung up on her. He began to tell me that she was “mentirosa,” a liar among other sobriquets. She called again and he refused to answer. I was desperate to get out. I asked him in Spanish if there was train service to Avignon. He drove the car around a square to the entry to the train station. “¿Cuanto le debo?” I asked. He demanded 60 euro. Fortunately, I had it in my wallet. I jumped out of the cab before he changed his mind. 

I checked my phone again. It was completely dead. And the Arles train station was virtually abandoned. The electric signboard showed a train in one hour and twenty minutes. I managed to buy a ticket from a machine. I wondered if I could find a charger somewhere in the city. The old part of town looked like it was only a few blocks away, so I started walking. Some sullen teenagers and a gypsy family stared at me. Entering the old town I realized that absolutely nothing was open. Some of the shops looked like they had not been open in years. Not all historic European cities have been restored, I guess. 

I went into the first hotel that looked like the rooms were not rented by the hour. I asked the clerk if she spoke English. She did. I started to explain the situation and asked if I could pay for a phone call. I figured I should call John to let him know that I was okay and that I would be coming back on the train later in the evening. Antonella must have grabbed the phone away from him. I explained about the train, but she told me that she was sending Marco, the bike repairman, one of the staff members, to pick me up. I agreed to meet him in front of the station. I pulled out my wallet and tried to pay the helpful hotel clerk. She refused. “I want to apologize on behalf of the entire nation of France,” she said. “French people don’t act like this.”

Riding back with Marco was interesting. He was born in Venice, but his real passion in life is skateboarding. There is obviously a problem with skateboarding in Venice! So he had lived in a half dozen places around the world in his life, including several sojourns in Southern California. He like Venice, California better than Venice, Italy! I suppose if I had the same interest in being a thrasher I would, too.

Everybody seemed relieved when I made it back to the boat. They insisted I eat a reheated dinner. It was pretty terrible, but I thought it would be rude to refuse. Tomorrow we have our first bike ride.