We've left the Provence. Tonight we are staying in a hotel in Cluny because it is rainy and we found one for not much more than the tent. Last night we were in the mountains of the Verdon River Gorge. Amazing scenery. Puts Colorado and even the Tetons to the test. We were camped along the river and it was very very cold last night. So we decided to do a little splurge on a hotel tonight so we didn't freeze two nights in a row.
Provence is almost more than I can tell. We did the normal stuff-- found a field of blooming, uncut lavendar despite all the locals' protests that it was all cut by mid-August. Most was cut, but we found our field. We saw the Mediteranean sea, though I didn't go in because we saw it from the tops of cliffs. We went next to it once but it was terribly crowded. So I have been next to, but not in, the Med. Sea. We saw olive trees, and the sun-blanched grasses. There were beautiful cyprus trees and large trees planted eons ago lining the roads. We saw the most complete Roman Arena, an Aqueduct that looks like it was built 20 years ago, but is really dating in the thousands. There were ninety-nine million roundabouts. We always meant to count them, but got tired after an hour when we were about at 20. All that driving around roundabouts was excellent practice, however, for Tabea for driving on the Verdon River Gorge highways. First, to say it is a highway comes with the caveat that sometimes there will be a stop light and you will sit and wait for oncoming traffic to come through so you can go through a space not bigger across than a king sized bed. And that's through the cities and villages of local cream-colored stone. The actual driving in the canyon was much worse. In some places, the rocks are cut away just enough so a car can pass under, on one side, and the other is unfenced with no shoulder to a monstrous drop. Then there are French drivers. . . needless to say, I could have done without my fear of heights those days we did that drive. It's also interesting to note that there really isn't enough room for two cars to go side by side in some places and there is no visibility. Many of the French would just honk as they went around each curve, and that meant something like the tempo of the 1812 Overture because there were blind curves every 50 feet. But apparently we are just amatuers at this sort of mountain living because there was a bus we met around a curve once. Behind him and ahead of us were motorhomes. It was a hairpin turn. The Motorhome was just able to squeak by in front of us and Tabea had to actually go backwards to let the bus through. The bus was on the cliff side and I will never forget that as all of this is happening and Tabea and I and probably the other drivers are freaking out, the bus driver, full commercial touring bus, yawned. HE YAWNED!
Provence is a swirl of colors for me. The purple of lavendar which you can sometimes smell on the wind just as you drive by, maybe it is because they are cutting it then, maybe that's just how it is. The pale tired blue of the sky. The deep blue of the Mediteranean sea. The gold of dead grass. But not the brown dead of winter, a sort of too-hot-to-move bleached tired color-- lazy grass is what it looks like. And the silver of olive tree leaves. And the dark green of the cypruses. The turquoise water of the Verdon River-- the only other place with water like that is Banff-- some sort of chalk or lime in the water I guess. The local stone. Everywhere old houses and villages sitting on the sides of cliffs, citadels and church spires all from the local stone. Those are my memories of Provence.
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