Provence 2018

Camping le Vallond des Cigales €19


French people like to bring their pets to the camping site.


 

45 min. walk to Istres for lunch. Even the giraffes here have that particular French style.


 

Be yourself! What a motto for our holiday!

 
Beautiful 4km walk to Baux-de-Provence.


 


 


 
The coolest place to be when it‘s 26 degrees outside.
Carrières de Lumieres Baux-de-Provence

https://youtu.be/n0mDuLFdIi8

 
Interesting film about Jean Cocteau’s life and work.


 
The village has some nice restaurants for lunch.

Camping-les-cedres €15


A song and dance on leaving Avignon

Apt cathedral – we never did find the entrance

Today we visited Alexandra David-Néel’s home in Digne-les-Bains

But first of all we walked to a park with some Andy Goldsworthy cairns, a butterfly sanctuary and some water-based art installations.

Our camp site’s valley

Digne-les-Bains on quite a hot April day

Musée Promenade
A cool artwork with practical value.

An Asian artist made this which reminds us of a restaurant in Rosenthalerstr. in Berlin.

Alexandra David-Néel sang operas, was a feminist activist like Emily Pankhurst, was the first western woman to visit Lhasa in Tibet and drank tea with yak butter which I thought smelled quite yukky, not yakky (although none of the French sniffers in our guided tour group seemed put off).
wikipedia Alexandra David-Néel.
This portrait of the great lady is supposed to be made of yak butter.

More yak butter work. If it melts in the sun that’s fine, nothing is eternal in Buddhism.

Alexandra was quite a pretty teenager, dressed up here for some unspecified performance.

The simple house where she lived after returning from her travels, until an age of almost 101. Free guided tour in French.

Guardian article

The scholar and opera singer who sneaked into Tibet in the 1920s was also an anarchist, ran a casino and adopted a Buddhist monk

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/jun/14/explorer-alexandra-david-neel-first-western-woman-lhasa-tibet

Turn subtitles on and switch to English.

Today we were up early enough to be practically first through the door at Fondation Maeght

 
Look carefully and you can see a bird nesting on her head.


 

 
Groovy architecture!


 

The Korean artist Lee Bae did some nice things with charcoal youtube link (French), which are almost impossible to photograph nicely.

On the way home we stopped off in Tourrettes-sur-loup, which is very pretty. We took a free book from their book-sharing cabinet – Cold Water by Gwendoline Riley.

In the evening, we enjoyed listening to Jazz Radio.

Today we ate at Badaboom, which was delicious and not too extortionate. Charming American waitress. The straws came from Costa Rica and are some sort of bamboo!


 

 
More public French philosophy. No need for translation, I think.


 
A super cool French chocolate rabbit.


 


 

 
The garden of the Marc Chagal museum in Nice. Nice size and good audio guide (despite pesky 120 dB schoolchildren)


 
The creation of man 1958


 

Swimming our way, heading for Nice.


 
Sentier du littoral


 


 

Villa Ephrussi-Rothschild – the creation of one of the richest women on the planet, at the time.
Béatrice Ephrussi-Rothschild- 19 years old.


 


 
One little chair was for Beatrice’ dog, the other was for her mongoose! The lady in the pitch opposite to ours has one for her cat.


 


 


 

 
So much energy we did a second walk sentier du littoral.

The small island, l’isle d’or, behind Kim is a nice reddish colour (porphyry) and its tower is said to have been the inspiration for The Black Island in Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin.

In 1897 Léon Sergent bought the Isle of Gold from the French state in an auction for 280 francs. In 1905, Dr Auguste Lutaud won the island in a game of cards. He decided to build an 18m high tower. When it was finished in 1913, he proclaimed himself Auguste I, king of the Île d’Or and organized a sumptuous party. Stamps and coins were made, showing the Island. In 1961 the island was sold to François Bureau, a former naval officer, who renovated the tower and lived in it until his death in 1994 during one of his traditional early morning swims. The island still belongs to the same family and if a flag is flying, then the tower is inhabited, just like Buckingham Palace!🇬🇧

 

 
A nice round walk starting directly from the campsite.


 

Today we ate breakfast to the surprising sound of 1940’s music echoing charmingly through the trees. Thinking it might be a funfair we walked over to find that, amazingly, it was a Victory Europe (VE) day celebration with loads of carefully looked after military vehicles – even including a period BMW motorbike. A memorial site had been set up around a landing craft in which colonel R. D. Parker landed with 190 men at 8 o’clock in the morning on 15 August 1944 on the beach which we can see from our camper. Today is apparently a national holiday in France, known as ‘Victoire 1945’ or ‘La Fête de la Victoire’.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Camping les Ruisses


DIY sculptures in the front garden.


 
Looking for lunch

 
Lac de Sainte-Croix


 
This delicious fish and potatoe dish is called “marmite”, no not marmite , but marmite, French [maʁmit] for a large, covered earthenware or metal cooking pot. British Marmite was originally supplied in earthenware pots, but since the 1920s has been sold in glass jars shaped like the French cooking pot. You learn something new every day!

 


 
Everyone is welcome in Provence, whatever the shape of your camper.


 

 
First impressions of Aix – cheap and cheerful café for lunch


 
Back to the 18th century in Hotel de Caumont, un hôtel particulier.


 

18th century man holding up the roof


 

20th century Hitchcock holding up the local cinema


 
Chinese figure striking the hours


 

Busy day today, we had a guided tour through the quarry where Cezanne liked to paint, visited Fondation Vasarely and went to Pavilion Noir to see Akram Khan.


Bibémus quarry
This lovely, warm orange-brown iron oxide colour was what they liked for the buildings in Aix, so they quarried stone here until the mid 19th century. When it was closed Cezanne had himself taken up here on a horse-drawn cart to paint.


 
Cezanne


 
The original over 100 years later


 
Cezanne


 
Original


 
Fondation Vasarely


 

Each picture is the full height of the building – a group of hexagons like a honeycomb. Slightly different style to Cezanne.


 

 
Akram Khan – Chotto Desh

Château La Coste, a really beautiful location with some nice art, again paid for by a rich hotelier who dropped in via helicopter during our visit. The Villa La Costa hotel on the hill offers rooms at about €1000 per night.

 
Andy Goldsworthy again – an oak room.


 

 
Tracey Emin’s self portrait – a cat inside a hard oak barrel!


 
A drop!


 

https://youtu.be/09dQPWfcke0