TRAVEL TRAVAIL.

 

The French word for "work" is "travail", which is so like our English word "travel".  The similarity is fitting because often, no matter how hard you try to enjoy yourself when you take a trip, it feels like hard work.  It is also fair to make the comparison in this post because it is about my trip to that wonderfully egocentric, bloody-minded country of the Gauls.

My trip to France was in the late '90's, but don't think anything in France changes.  That's the beauty of the place.  In World War 2 the French had the Resistance.  They still resist almost everything.

I think that all the three and four star hotels my partner and I stayed at in France used "Fawlty Towers", John Cleese's television show of the '70's about a hotel in England, as a training video for their staff.

First I will describe the route we traveled on our three week journey.  We began with four days in Paris then hired a car and found our way to Versailles.  We then headed to the Loire district at a leisurely pace.   After exploring this area for a few days my partner began to head East.  I will explain why further on.  We went through the French Alps on the Route Napoleon until I was able to redirect him towards the south.

We stopped at Grasse for a day and then moved on to stay at St. Paul de Vence where we based ourselves for three days.  We moved on to Juan-les-Pins and from there explored Nice and made a quick trip to Monaco.  Later we discovered we could not leave the car in Nice and return to Paris by the TGV (Train Grand Vitesse) without paying a great deal more to the hire car company.  My partner drove up the Autoroute at speed for two days as France flitted past.  We spent the last three days in Paris.  Now, onto the trip.

Part of the exploring that you do when you travel to distant shores is into the personality of your partner.  You may discover that the person with whom you have lived for years is not Dr. Jekyll but Mr. Hyde.  This is a man who refuses to suffer from jet lag whether he is traveling from East to West or the other way around.

He can fall asleep in an air plane seat for the whole time it takes to travel half way around the globe and then will not sleep for the next three weeks at the times you need to, chiefly night time.

The same person will not eat dinner when you are hungry but insist on waiting until you find a hotel to stay the night, even if the kitchen has closed.  He was a boon to every pharmacy that we passed in France as he caused me such stomach spasms that I needed constant medication.  I don't know if the French still don't put Codeine in their over-the-counter analgesics but at that time, caffeine was used instead.  I love Codeine.  It is an upper far superior caffeine and I needed upping.

When our plane from Australia landed at Charles de Gaulle airport, Hyde's sister, who only spoke Polish and French, picked us up.  They hadn't seen each other for ten years.  If I thought Hyde was perverse, I hadn't taken into account the familial strain.  To be tactful his sister's arrangements went cockeyed at light speed.

As we whizzed past the Eiffel Tower, I excitedly pointed to it and asked if we could slow down.  She ignored me.  I suggested to Hyde that this was the kind of thing I had come to see.  I was admonished and reminded he hadn't seen his sister for years.  They continued yabbering away in Polish and ignoring me and she failed to point out any sights. Nothing about our trip was pre-booked.  We had decided to wing it.  That week we were meant to stay at an apartment his sister, who lives in Paris, had arranged free of charge. 

This accommodation wasn't yet available and she had placed us in a hotel that was at the intersection of five streets, not air-conditioned and incredibly noisy.  I lay down and attempted to sleep while they went somewhere.  When they returned they found me about to leave the hotel with luggage in hand.  I said I was going to find a quieter place where I could sleep.

Apparently this was terribly rude of me.  Like her brother she didn't understand the meaning of jet lag.  I didn't care.  I simply walked off and they trailed after me.  Soon we found a three star place in St. Germaine with a room available.  I asked for one at the back so it would be quiet.  There ensconced I again attempted sleep.

The Mr. Hyde part of my partner's character went into full swing.  He deserted me as I once again attempted to sleep off my jet lag.  We hadn't even been in Paris ten hours and he took off with the room's only key.  Still unable to fall asleep I had great need of some wine and, having arranged to get in and out of the room with the help of a porter, I bought a bottle and came back to find there was no way to open it.  The French aren't big on providing things and that includes bottle openers, glasses or cups.

I also didn't know the French word for corkscrew.  Having located my dictionary I looked it up and then made another excursion to the shops.  Luckily I managed to buy a '"tire-bouchon" but it was fairly basic .  So was the cork.  Back in the room as I attempted to pull it out, it broke into pieces.

Never has one person wanted a drink so much.  For over an hour I gouged at the cork.  I thought of breaking the bottle but I decided drinking from it might have resulted in disaster to my intestines.  I hadn't counted on my partner having the same effect as our trip continued.  Finally I broke through and drank straight from the bottle.  Needless to say my partner didn't receive the warmest welcome on his return.

We spent time with the sister in those first days but it was necessary for me to talk to her in French as she spoke no English, and I spoke no Polish.   After four days of this linguistic triangle, and trying to understand her Polish accented French, I was more jet lagged than when I had arrived.  She also insisted we walk 'a few metres' to a restaurant instead of taking a cab, for which I'd offered to pay.  Some three kilometres later and sick with jet lag and hunger, I burst into tears and went back to the hotel by cab.

A curious thing about the French is that they don't tell you anything in any language.  We took a cab to the Louvre on a Tuesday.  Not only did the driver dump us at the rear so that we had to walk a long distance to the front, when we reached it, we found it was closed.  It is always closed on Tuesdays as are many things in France as we later discovered.

We also went to the Eiffel Tower.  Do you think there is an obvious sign that shows in which of its four feet the entrance resides?  It may be better now but we weren't the only tourists wandering about trying to find it.  Once we got to the top the view was disappointing.  Paris is flat, the buildings not very tall and on this day it was hazy.  Well, it is still Paris and no one said it needed hills.  A tourist should have no expectations.

I am used to the view of Sydney Harbour and also, having lived in Hong Kong, its amazing views from the Peak and also those from the ferry when crossing Victoria Harbour.  Paris has other attributes and one of these is its history.

At last we hired a car and headed out of Paris alone.  The free apartment hadn't eventuated and maybe that was for the best.  We spent a few days in the Loire district seeing chateaux such as the magnificent Chateau Chenonceau and Chaumont-sur-Loire.  We based ourselves in a hotel in Charolais, a quaint old village in the Loire district.  There were lovely gardens and a little brook, however trucks roared through its narrow street during the daytime.  At night you could walk through the streets when it was quiet.  We stayed there twice, once on our way south and again on our way back to Paris.  This lovely village helped make our trip.

In the foyer of the hotel in Charolais, I had my first experience of sensor taps.  As soon as I entered the Ladies toilets on the ground floor of the hotel the faucets of all the three hand basins started flowing at once and I was nowhere near them.  I felt as if I was being applauded.

We drove eastwards again and found a  superb chateau that was now a hotel and the most beautiful place we stayed on our trip.  It wasn't the friendliest but it was magnificent.  We stayed two nights and on the second decided to eat in our room as we had eaten out the night before and wanted to save some money.

We asked for pate and toast to be sent to our room.  It is never easy to ask the French for such a thing.  They look at you as if you are a maggot crawling out of food.  The next morning we paid the bill.  I almost fell over when I saw the cost of the snack of the previous evening.  It came to AUD$100.  "Mais," I objected, "il etait pate seulement."

"Non," replied the chatelaine, "il etait foie gras."

In other words it was pate from zee liver of zee goose.  Well that cooked mine and our budget.  So beware of the beautiful chateau with la snooty chatelaine Francaise or yours will be too.

I knew about chateaux before I arrived in France but not about their wonderful gardens.  Surprises are the best thing about travel; the experiences you're not expecting that happen on foreign soil and make them even more exotic.

I really wanted to see the old parts of France; the villages, some ruins, the chateaux and finally Avignon and the south.  But all did not go as I had planned.  Mr. Hyde had seen all of Europe when he had lived in Poland and he drove our hire car as I wasn't used to driving on the right.  He tried to trick me and kept driving East.  I could have explored more of the Loire district before heading south, but that was not his evil plan.

We started to head across the French Alps.  He was attempting to get to Poland but kept denying it.  In my opinion, once you've seen one mountain, you've seen them all. Also it was chilly up there even in September.  Mr. Hyde hadn't brought a sweater with him so he wore one of mine.

Every half hour he would insist on opening his window and smoking a cigarette.  I would freeze but fortunately my body, already wracked by stomach spasms, couldn't handle getting pneumonia on top.

The Alps, however, did hold one or two surprises.  One was a place called Sisteron.  It is a natural pass through cliffs and the rock formations are amazing.  Atop one side high on a cliff perched the ruin of a building, either a monastery or a fortress.  As usual, there was no real information and it hadn't been mentioned in the various books I had studied before leaving.

The other surprise was a restaurant, the Hotel de la Poste Corps.  It was in a small village, on the Route Napoleon, Place de Mairie, that appeared as we rounded a corner.  There were two buses outside it.  We were in need of a coffee and a little something to eat so we went in.

It was full of very portly German tourists and they were there to feast.  A caravan of silver trays paraded past us to an area below where the Germans were seated.  The trays were so long that each was carried by four waiters.  The array of food on them was like nothing I have seen before or since.

It seemed a crime to ask for mere cake so we ordered a hot dessert of crepes in chocolate sauce which was magnificent.  We stayed for a while and watched the banquet below us.  Just as we decided to leave the Germans stood en masse and began to depart so we let them go ahead rather than be crushed.

The chef stood by the exit to bid everyone farewell.  When our turn came I thought he would know we were just stray tourists but he took me by both hands and kissed me on either cheek.  Nobody else had received this treatment and both Mr. Hyde and I were astonished.  Perhaps it was  because I was the only slim woman there.

It's those kind of things that really make a trip.  I often wonder if you should return to a place that has given you such enjoyment but I believe you shouldn't.  If you've had a terrific time and been surprised once, the next time can never live up to it again as the element of surprise has gone.

Later, having managed to re-route Mr. Hyde southward again, we arrived at a lovely town called St. Paul de Vence.  We spent two nights there and explored the surrounding areas. 

This town had the original fortress town within it.  The old town's buildings were constructed of stone and winding cobbled paths ran between them.  There were flowers on creeping vines everywhere and its buildings were full of art and craft galleries.  If I could have afforded any, these were the type of things I would have liked to buy, but I did have the pleasure of looking.

We went on to Monaco after St. Paul de Vence.  Approaching it from the winding roads above is one of the most stunning views I have ever seen and I would love to go back.  Every person there looked as if they had fallen out of the pages of a magazine.  There wasn't a woman over a size ten in the place.  We parked and walked around near the marina in the evening but I had traveled all day and looked like something the cat had dragged in.  I just wasn't going to be seen like that or eat out there.  We agreed we would return later when we were refreshed and had changed.  Due to a mix up with the hire car, we never did.

The next few nights we stayed at a villa hotel in St. Juan-les-Pins.  From there we did day trips, one to Nice which was lovely.  My stomach spasms, however, had increased to the point where we called the medical insurance company with which we had taken out cover for the trip; one that guaranteed an English speaking doctor in an emergency.  A female doctor arrived at our hotel and her grasp of English was non-existent.  I had to make do with my French and I had never learned anything to explain stomach spasms.  She got the drift and gave me some pills she had on her.  They were actually quite good.

We returned to St. Paul de Vence and the hotel we stayed at previously.  The only room available was an attic room and we took it.  We could only stand erect in one small section.  The rest of the time we stooped or lay on the bed.

We planned to go down to Monaco again but first phoned the hire car company to arrange to drop off the car so we could take the TGV back to Paris.  The chatelaine was an English woman married to the French proprietor.  She phoned on our behalf and discovered there was a penalty for not getting the car back to Paris.

We made it back there in time to return the car only stopping for on night to stay at the lovely hotel in Charolais again.  Once we reached Paris we stayed at the same hotel as before in St. Germaine.  On one our last nights we found a French, French restaurant nearby.  With my adequate French I ordered a lamb dish and specified that it must not have a cream sauce.

Naturally it arrived swimming in the stuff as if it was born in it.  I called the waiter who was the archetypal French kind, portly with black hair slicked down, a moustache and a sneer.  On informing him that I had asked for the dish without cream, he snorted, picked up the plate as if I had stolen it in the first place and stomped into the kitchen.  He stomped back some time later with the lamb "sans crème".  It was as if a lactose intolerant tourist had absolutely no right to be in France if she could not eat their magnificent food.

One thing the French do well is conserve power.  In many hotels the hallways are unlit.  You need to push a switch, when you can find it, that gives you about thirty seconds to find your room.  Notre Dame Cathedral is dim inside in the daytime and there is also no lighting until someone puts a coin in a slot.  The lighting doesn't stay on long so it's best to work in relay with other tourists so you can look around and take some photos.

There also isn't much lighting used in the Palace of Versailles and you are not permitted to take photos with a flash.  It is said bursts of bright light gradually damage the décor and artworks.  This is also true in the Louvre.

The gardens at Versailles aren't as beautiful, in my opinion, as those surrounding other lesser chateaux.  The worst part of Versailles, however, were the toilets that you pay to use.  French toilets are problematic at the best of times, but these catered to many tourists and were dirty, smelly and not the best memory of my trip.

Good and bad memories both make a trip and, had we traveled on a pre-arranged tour, there is a lot we would have missed.  Although doing it on your own can be stressful, it's more of an adventure and the unexpected really adds another dimension to the experience.

On the subject of shopping, I didn't find it any better in France than here in Australia.  I can hear you say, "Oh, you must be joking."  No, I'm not.  Not only that, Australian cafes were superior in their variety of food if not in their sense of superiority.  In fact frites (now I know why they are called French fries) were available in the cafes there which I found amazing.

I did try to shop for clothes and shoes and to find something different to what is on offer in Australia, but to no avail.  I went through department stores, along the boutiques of the Champs Elysees, past the couturiers and I looked in every shoe shop I passed.  In Nice I finally bought two pairs of shoes but in the end I didn't buy much at all.

Before leaving Paris I just had to buy something that would be a memento of the trip.  In a Limoges shop I found just the thing.  It was a candle holder made of  delicate, bisque white porcelain made by Bernardaud, an allied company of Limoges.  It was about ten centimetres in diameter and made up of a dome that sits on a small plate.  The plate holds a jasmine scented tea candle.  The dome had been engraved by laser with the great landmarks of Paris and, when lit from inside by the candle, they look three-dimensional.  The candle lights up the thin shell of the dome and it makes it glow.  It cost me AUD$110 and must have been one of the first of its kind.

A few years later in Australia I found just such a dome again, a number of them in fact, with different engravings.  The inside was glazed white but that was the only difference.  It was manufactured by the Japanese and cost AUD$12 but I still treasure the one I bought in France.  It also has "Limoges, Bernardaud, France", stamped underneath.

We had to move hotels on our last two nights in Paris as our room had been booked in advance for that time.  Fortunately we found an even nicer hotel nearby.  The last night in Paris, Hyde's sister came over when I was safely asleep.  I really didn't wish to see her again. They spent the entire night in the lobby smoking and talking.  Hyde didn't sleep at all.  The concierge at the desk for the night was probably treated to more smoke inhalation than he had ever had in his life up to that time.  Poles can really smoke.  Of course Hyde fell asleep on the journey home even though we were crammed into the plane like sardines.

Perhaps I should take up smoking too.  He seems to cope with things better than I do.

END.