So, this is a belated update about my trip back in February. Better late than never:
I’m back from my two week, mammoth trip round the south of France, of which I loved nearly every minute; it was the first time I saw the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean and also the first time I couchsurfed. Here follows a correspondingly long account of what I got up to which serves mainly as a crutch for my feeble memory. You are welcome to read it should you have lots of free time, but hearing about other people’s holidays is almost invariably dull, so feel free to skip it.
Saturday 6th February – arrival in Nice
We started the journey by going to the furthest city first and gradually working our way back westwards. It took us nine hours to get there via Paris, but we passed some stunning scenery – the Alps, cliff-top churches and rolling hills to Marseille followed by the azure Mediterranean and golden beaches! Once we had deposited things in the hostel and eaten, we went out to see a bit of Nice by night – all palms and orange trees – before finishing at the beach. We went to bed extremely happy about the two weeks we had left!
Sunday 7th February – Grasse
The beautiful weather from Saturday, glorious cloudless sunshine that made us grateful to be in the South, continued as we journeyed to Grasse on the local bus for the amazing sum of one euro! I love socialised transport almost as much as socialised medicine. Anyway, I was essentially dragged to Grasse by the Germans because it’s an incredibly important town for perfume, with loads of the stuff (as well as other cosmetics) being made there. We went to the International Museum of Perfumery, which was a lot more interesting than the name might suggest: it was very interactive with a variety of things to, er, smell. There was also a collection of perfume bottles from the past, the gollywog which made me giggle being the most memorable. Once we were out we ate and then went to a Perfumery which had been going for a couple of hundred years and gave free tours to tourists. I learnt the vital difference between eau de toilette, eau de parfum and perfume as well as how many rose petals it takes to make a litre of rose “essence” (3 tonnes worth). Again, it was far more interesting than I expected.
The rest of the town was somewhat less savoury. It was an interesting place – Marie, the German assistant from my school, compared it to an Italian hill town, all stairs and steep roads. While that aspect of it was nice enough, when we looked around we ended up in a gigantic ghetto full of Maghreb immigrants which was somewhat depressing.
Monday 8th February – Monaco
The wondrous 1€ bus took us to Monaco on Monday via dramatic roads with steep drops into the sea to one side and huge cliffs (with occasional narrow tunnels through them) on the other. When we got to Monaco we were initially quite disappointed – not only was it not entirely clear where we were or where we wanted to go, but it was full of ugly high-rise apartments. Even the weather wasn’t as good as previously.
We eventually found our way up to a rubbish palace, behind which the Old Town beckoned (every French city I have ever been to has an “Old Town”). The original site of Monaco before it sprawled into ugly apartments, the old city was a tiny place perched high up on a rock and, in my view, quite charming. The sun started to shine and we found a really cool “exotic garden” with all kinds of pretty plants therein. We had a quick look round the cathedral (modern and dreary) before heading down to the newer sections of town, walking along the port (which seemed to have a disproportionate number of yachts hailing from the Channel Islands) and then up to Monte Carlo casino, the latter being impressive but too expensive (20€) to enter on a whim. There was a man in a top hat and tails smoking a cigar out of the corner of his mouth just outside the casino (this made me laugh) as well as a fleet of, er, sexy cars. The joys of Monaco being fully exhausted, we made our way back to Nice.
That evening, by chance, several of our friends from Tours were in Nice; everybody, it seems, had had the same idea of escaping the Touraine winter by following the sun southwards. Marie, Hannah and I therefore met up with Diana, her sister from the US and Chandi (whose own friend from the US was too jetlagged to make an appearance) for a brief hot chocolate in a cafe, everybody being too knackered to dare a more alcoholic beverage or to stay too long. But it was nice seeing them there anyway, and Chandi even got me a little gift – a porcelain Gandalf medallion she had found in a market somewhere – which overjoyed me.
Tuesday 9th February morning and afternoon – Nice
We left ourselves only one day to actually look around Nice (having spent more time in Grasse and Monaco than anticipated). The girls being quite opposed to museums, we didn’t explore those than Nice had to offer, although we managed to see a lot of interesting things regardless – starting with the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. Apparently there was once a large enough Russian population in Nice to warrant the creation of such a building (just before the revolutions of 1917). It was quite exciting from the exterior with its ornate domes and colours. The inside, on the other hand, made me slightly ill. It was the first time I’d been in an Orthodox place of worship and, frankly, it was worse than Catholicism (from my atheistic but Protestant-sympathetic point of view). Not only was it ridiculously ornate with idols and images every which where, but the clergy seemed even more separate from the laity than in Catholicism, with separate doors to go into the communion area, for example.
Following this we went to the beach and then walked along the seafront, finally ascending a big old rock like that at Monaco on top of which were various things: beautiful views of the sea on one side, the Alps on the other, and the city stretching between them, monastic ruins, medieval towers, a bizarre Indiana Jonesesque artificial waterfall and the city’s cemetery. We went to the Jewish section of the latter because it existed and because we’re all quite interested in Jews. It was depressing, as cemeteries (and particularly the Jewish sections thereof) always are. On the way back Marie remarked how it was bizarre that the Jewish and Protestant cemeteries were kept separate from the Catholic section so we explained a bit of Catholic dogma to her. One of the other things I found out in the South is that, in French, the word “église” (church) isn’t usually applied if the church is protestant, these latter being referred to separately as “temples”. Grah!
On the way back to the hostel, we passed a gigantic war memorial carved into the rock of a cliff. Another thing I’ve become more aware of in journeying around France is the extent to which the two world wars scarred the nation – everywhere you turn there’s a memorial to the dead in general if not to such-and-such who was executed by the Nazis (or indeed by the Vichy government). It is quite depressing, I suppose, but I think I support the practice as a whole – it reminds the reader of the horror of war and reinforces our modern values. I wonder how much notice French people take of them though; perhaps for the Frenchman they are simply part of the background and go unread.
We also saw an (unexciting) chateau in which the Dukes of Savoy used to live, Nice being part of Savoy until the 1800s I believe, before leaving Nice for good.
Tuesday 9th February evening – Marseille
We arrived in Marseille, ever so slightly frightened, at 7pm. It was to be our first time couchsurfing and the host was going to pick us up at the train station, but we knew almost nothing about him except that he lived in Marseille and could host three people (the reason we chose him) and that his name was Guillaume. We didn’t know what to expect at all, but as soon as he appeared with his woven basket full of vegetables and his smiling friend Lucie we felt a lot more comfortable. He lived just around the corner from the train station in a HUGE apartment with two flatmates (Martin and the awkwardly attractive Adrien) to whom we were introduced. That night the three of them had Lucie and Adrien’s girlfriend Flore round as well as us, so we all ate together (a delicious gratin Guillaume made) and got to know each other. I think all three of us immediately settled in and felt at home because they were all so friendly and curious (it was Guillaume’s first time hosting as well!). Lucie, who was quite bohemian, started talking about how she loved Germans because everybody else shunned them, adding to their mystery, before claiming that “making love to a German is like making love to all Europe”. She later made me laugh by saying “ce sont que les français qui mangent systématiquement des desserts” – the French are the only people who systematically eat desserts with every meal (very true).
We went to bed content that night, sleeping in the nicely decorated living room – half really fancy (black and white classic photos and such) and half really studenty (a traffic cone, signs reading “no entry for the public” and a table made from a stolen “men at work” road sign). The girls slept on a sofa-bed and me in a little bed they had in a corner.
Wednesday 10th February – Marseille
Wednesday was freezing cold. Marseille is at the end of a valley that stretched up to Paris and consequently experiences a really strong wind, called the Mistral, which played havoc with my lips. Still, at least we escaped Nice in time – it snowed there as well as in more or less every other region of the South except Marseille. On the other hand, I wasn’t very well equipped to deal with minus degrees and ended up very cold.
Guillaume left us his key in the morning (which I think was amazingly trusting). We set out to discover Marseille, which was very clearly different to Nice; there was graffiti on practically every building (some of it quite witty). One edifice that escaped this fate was the Basilique St Victor, a fairly recent basilica which was nonetheless fascinating due to its Byzantine style. Wandering out of the old town (all of which seem quite similar, with small winding streets and high apartments, although the one in Marseille had a “Place de bises” which made me giggle), we made our way to an immigrant area in the middle of town full of markets, ethnic food and wares which made me think of Luton but fascinated the Germans. The food was good though: we got some cheap pizzas which were so delicious that we frequently went back for more during out time in Marseille.
That afternoon we trekked up to Notre Dame de la Garde, a cathedral on a cliff overlooking the city. The view over the bay was great from up there but it was so windy we were literally being blown away, so we didn’t stick around too long. The inside of the Cathedral was pretty in a garish catholic way.
That evening Guillaume and co were hosting a party so we stayed up late, drank lots and met lots of random Frenchmen (and one German girl). A lot of them seemed to want to speak English which exemplifies a broader cultural phenomenon I noticed, i.e. that one is soon as cool merely by virtue of being a native English speaker. The language carries such a cool factor that my boringness is overlooked and people are hugely keen to talk to me. Anyway, it was fun overall except when a really drunk guy (also called Guillaume) broke the bed I was sleeping on. I suppose I got let off lightly considering he puked in Adrien’s bedroom... We went to bed at 2pm, exhausted in a good way.
Thursday 11th February – Marseille, Calanques
On Thursday, after waking up later than normal, we took a bus to the Calanques, a famous rocky coast near Marseille where people usually go in summer to swim or surf in the calm lagoons. Although it was beautiful to see even in winter, I think the experience lacked a certain something. It was ridiculously windy again so that we feared being blown off the narrow rocky paths to our deaths. We linked hands on the way back to prevent ourselves being blown away. Also, it was so cold that there was even some snow. Given the weather we didn’t feel like going down to the sea (which is essentially the point of going), so we went back fairly soon. I’d like to go back in summer one day (although this applies to the whole of Nice and Marseille).
That afternoon we wanted to escape the horrible weather so we went to the cinema and watched The Lovely Bones in English (this is quite hard to do in France, so I was glad!). I don’t think it was a particularly good film but there were aspects of it that I liked and it kept us occupied.
In the evening Guillaume made soup and a chocolate cake (with our assistance) and we all sat around the table again (minus Adrien) and had a convivial French time, smelly cheese included. That evening Guillaume played the keyboard for us before bedtime!
Friday 12th February
It was to be Marie’s birthday on Monday so we separated on the pretext that I didn’t want to go shopping with her and Hannah, allowing me time to get her a present, card and chocolate cake. In the afternoon we met up to go to the last artisanal soap factory in Marseille, the town being famous for soap but most of it now being produced by machines. We took the metro and then the bus into the infamous banlieues where almost every face was brown or black and almost every building was a high-rise flat, which was quite depressing. The soap factory itself proved a bit of a disappointment – it was very small and none of the staff seemed to be doing any work. It reminded me of working at Vauxhall. Anyway, the soap itself was amazing and we all bought a lot because they make good gifts; I got a big bar of rose petals for my sister, little bars of patchouli for my family, milk for Judith and cinnamon and orange for Diana and Chandi.
Getting back, we bought lots of little presents for Guillaume and his flatmates, including lots of organic goodies (which he likes), jam from Tours, chocolate from Germany(ish) and crisps from England. He was so pleased that he gave me some bises (the French kiss-on-cheek thing which is normal between women and men, but only happens between men when they are close friends), which was the first time in my life that that happened. A little later we all gathered round the table (the three of us, three of them, Flore, Lucie and another friend of Flore’s I think) for croque-monsieurs made by Adrien and more smelly cheese, which was all delicious and awesome.
The French all went out to a bar that evening to celebrate the beginning of the holidays (they begin a week later in the South), but we didn’t go with them because we had to catch a train fairly early the next day. It was kind of sad that we didn’t get to say goodbye the next morning (they were all still asleep, but who can blame them?), but such is life I suppose. I think my time chez Guillaume was probably the best time I had couchsurfing because they were so lively, so welcoming and basically just wonderful people. It was sad to leave them.
Saturday 13th February – Arles, Nice
We got to Arles, but the less said about it the better. While it had all the trappings of a beautiful little town to visit, such as Roman baths and arenas and a generic pretty feel, we soon termed it a “Scheissstadt” due to there being nowhere to leave our luggage at all and not even a Mcdonalds. In the end, after a couple of hours of hopelessly traipsing around, we gave up on Arles and tried to go directly to Nîmes, although we had to wait ages for “Edgard” the yellow bus. Ahem.
We finally managed to escape from Arles and arrive in Nîmes in the afternoon, but before predicted. Our couchsurfing host, Victor, duly came and picked us up from the station and we chatted and walked back to his home with him. I found him fantastically interesting and also felt a kind of solidarity with him as I felt we were, in some ways, quite similar people. He’s a graduate in horticulture and clearly fantastically intelligent (definitely Oxbridge standard) but he has to live in a small town by himself for his work. He said he started hosting because he gets lonely, a sentiment I can emphasise with fully because a lot of my childhood was spent that way. Later, he introduced us to his friends, but I was never quite sure whether he truly loved them as individuals or if they were more friends of convenience.
In any case, we spent that afternoon looking around Nîmes, starting with the roman Arena/Amphitheatre thing which is one of the best preserved in Europe. It felt so strange being allowed to clamber over this structure built almost two thousand years ago, standing at the top and realising that Romans had been able to look down from the very same spot. Unfortunately the amphitheatre itself was marred by rows of wooden benches punched into the stone for modern audiences, but so it goes. After the amphitheatre we had a poke inside an impressive, half-standing Roman temple which felt like something out of Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones except with a far greater threat of pigeon guano landing on ones head. We finished off by looking at the “castellum” which is where the water from the famous nearby aqueduct came out in Roman times, although the modern site was thoroughly unimpressive, being little more than a large pit and a couple of pipes.
That evening we went to “The Oxbridge Pub” just opposite Victor’s flat, where I laughed at the decor and taught Victor and the Germans about English understatement and pints!
Sunday 14th February - Nîmes
Victor offered to drive us to the Pont du Gard, the famous Roman aqueduct a short way away from Nîmes, first thing on Sunday morning, pointing out things such as vineyards and the Mediterranean scrubland on the way. We got there before the crowds so we had it almost entirely to ourselves, and I think each of us had our breath taken away. I had the same feeling of awe at the Romans that I had had earlier in the Amphitheatre, but multiplied tenfold due to the sheer size, ingenuity and beauty of the aqueduct bridging the river gorge. Victor told us that several bridges built in the 19th and 20th centuries had collapsed because the Gard is apparently a difficult river to bridge, yet the Roman structure was still standing about 17 centuries down the line. It put me in a very contemplative mood, wondering what structures our civilisation would leave to be found in two millennia should it disappear tomorrow. Plastic bags, nuclear waste and rubble most likely.
We spent that afternoon with Victor’s friends. Nadège, a very lively personality, fed us all in her place as the consensus was that it was too cold for a picnic. Afterwards she finally convinced everyone to go for a walking expedition somewhere, although she was outvoted and we ended up going to part of the Gorge du Gardon (further up the same river the aqueduct crosses) rather than the Cevennes mountain range. By the time we got there, the weather had improved significantly; there was sunlight bouncing off the pristine turquoise stream and dappling the scrubland and cliffs on the way thereto. It was wonderful being out in such beautiful nature, chatting to Victor and his friends, then finally arriving at the river and sitting on the little sandy beach. It was the kind of experience you could only really have by knowing somebody in the area; for me, the whole thing was another vindication of the couchsurfing system.
Once we were satisfied, we went back to Nadège’s place and played blackjack for hours on end before heading to Montpellier in the evening.
Sunday 14th February evening to Monday 15th February - Montpellier
We arrived in Montpellier at 8pm. We were staying in a hostel for the first time since Nice and, although we were glad to be given a room to ourselves, we couldn’t help but think that the place was a bit of a shithole. There were no kitchens, the whole place was creaky and old, the showers were unpleasant and we had to leave the premises for five whole hours each afternoon. After the wonderful couchsurfing experiences, it was quite depressing. We went to a bar, had a few drinks and then went to bed.
Monday was Marie’s birthday. We surprised her at breakfast with the cake I had bought in Marseille, and then at second breakfast (McDonald’s) with the present (a French DVD). We then spent some time enjoying the sun, wandering around looking at unremarkable things such as the 19th century replica aqueduct as well as some more exciting things like the Medical Faculty of the university, one of the oldest and most respected in Europe with fancy medieval towers. The arc de triomphe was somewhat interesting, although comparison with the Parisian equivalent was inevitably unfavourable. The botanical gardens, once again among the oldest in Europe due to the medical faculty, were closed because France is illogical and closes things on weekdays. We ended up taking the bus to the beach in the afternoon even though it was getting a bit cooler. We saw wild flamingos on the way! The beach was much like any other beach and we messed around a lot, running around like little children. Marie and I dipped our feet in the Mediterranean, she because she is a hardcore German and doesn’t mind the cold and I out of a sense of obligation to touch the Mediterranean at least once. The crabs didn’t bite!
Back in town we went to a bar, followed by awkward times which I will recount later, followed by drinking Martini and listening to music late at night and adding a haiku to the already proliferate graffiti on the bed.
Tuesday 16th February – Montpellier
Tuesday was not the most exciting of days. We did little touristy stuff except going to a giant greenhouse, allegedly the biggest in France or something, where they had “recreated the Amazon”. I really enjoyed the experience: there was all the standard fare like caimans and turtles and tiny bright frogs in glass boxes, but my favourite part was the harmless birds which roamed freely inside the greenhouse – or ran, rather, around our legs! We then spent a very long time in McDonald’s until it was time to go to Cecile’s. Cecile was the couchsurfer we had found in Montpellier, but she could only host us for our last night. We got to her apartment and met her and she certainly seemed nice enough, but she declared that she had to leave that night to party with a friend from out of town and, as a consequence, would be spending almost no time with us. She basically handed over her (impressive for only one inhabitant) flat to us! We spent the rainy evening watching Aladdin and just relaxing, taking a break from the stressful life of tourists!
Wednesday 17th February – Carcassonne and arrival in Toulouse
We took the train to Carcassonne in the morning. Now, we had worried that we would have the same problem in Carcassonne that we had had in Arles re: having nowhere to store luggage. We had been talking about this in Nîmes to Victor and his friends when one of them, Anne, said that her parents lived in Carcassonne and she could organise them picking up her luggage for us. This was marvellously kind of her considering how tenuously we knew one another but we took up the offer and duly met the parents and foisted our luggage upon them while we looked around the town. The main draw was the gigantic, well preserved medieval citadel to which Anne’s parents dropped us. Once again, looking around the site gave a real impression of the length of time this place had been inhabited. There were still some Roman towers standing, but they were now integrated into the double-layer of walls and towers surrounding the hilltop. From that height, I also saw the Pyrenees for the first time!
We arrived in Toulouse, our final destination, at 5pm, shortly whereafter Julie and Guillaume, our last couchsurfing hosts, came and picked us up from the station. They were a very lively young couple who were really into the whole couchsurfing project – along with us, they also had three American girls (also language assistants) staying over! It rained the whole afternoon so we just hung around talking, making cake, eating and talking some more until bedtime.
Thursday 18th February – Toulouse
Thursday was a beautiful day where the thermometer hit 16 degrees, bathing the city in warmth. Toulouse has no major sights but is renowned as being a beautiful city to wander around due to the river and the architecture – the French call it the Pink City because all the buildings are made of redbrick. Being British, it just looked rather Victorian to me, albeit prettier thanks to the proliferation of arches. We went to a pretty Japanese garden and found a road called “Road of the Three Foxes” under which we took a photo (German injoke). While Hannah went to a bank, Marie and I had a coffee outside (because we could) and were only slightly disturbed by the beggar who came along in a wheelchair, drank people’s beer and then went and pissed (upright, mind you) in the side street like a Little Britain sketch.
That evening, Julie and her sister met up with us and we went to a little bar specialising in beer, rare for France, where we met up with all of their friends. It was another of those “only by couchsurfing” experiences and we all got somewhat drunk. Drunken conversations in French are fantastic, by the way! We managed to somehow stagger back home late at night, so all was well for us three – we didn’t have work the next morning unlike Julie and Guillaume!
Friday 19th February
We woke up quite late and did very little the whole day other than popping into a few shops and buying a present for Julie and Guillaume – a little game since they love board games (I didn’t get to play with them, quel domage!). We didn’t get to properly say goodbye to either Julie or Guillaume, which was a shame, but they liked us so much that Julie and her sister came to see us in March!
Then we jumped on the train for the six hour journey through bland countryside with a strange Dutch man sitting near us, spilling coffee on my books and the suchlike. We insulted him in German before we realised he was Dutch, but he didn’t seem to take any notice, so it was possibly okay. We got back to Tours late at night and exhausted but glad to have made the trip!
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