Monday, April 19, 2010

LAST DAYS in PROVENCE ( Gordes, Senanques, Avignon)

El bailarín de Florida
y la percanta más bella,
bailan al son de la vida
por la Provence y Marsella.

"que todas las noches sean noches de bodas,
que todas las lunas sean lunas de miel" (JS)


Our last day in Provence was a perfect sunny spring day. Louise-Anne and Emmanuel decided to give us the the last ride through the countryside provancal and visit one of those famous village perché: GORDES.
The juicy grass with yellow spring flowers were a tempation to wallow in. Behind- a tipical provancal house- la bastille.
The nature was singing the spring song; only lavenda fields were not yet blooming ( come back in July one day is a must).
But yes, the cherry trees. Perfectly blue skies, white crowns of the trees and yellow-green carpet is a real joy for eyes.
Et voilà, le village de GORDES seen from above!
You can 't stop taking thousands of photos. Thanks God , the camera was in the reasonable hands of Louise-Anne!
Here are the best visual results of the excursion.
...with the models in front.
We ventured to explore the village, before the season and the tourist invasion.
We were all fit enough to walk up and down the roads.Kids were running and chasing each other.
The vineyards were still leavless, but picturesque.
This image gave us an idea for the lunch with views. Immediately we went to the car to fetch food provisions and had an idyllic lunch with magnificent views:
tortilla espanola, baguettes with all the different cheeses Louise-Anne bought to accompany our PERFECT FRENCH lunch on the green.


AND A BOTTLE OF RED WINE. All with Luberon landscape below....
Our next destination was the cistertian abbey of Senanques. Again, before the tourist invasion. Also before the lavenda flourishing.

WE had a guided tour of the monastery' s interior and a inside yard. Still 100 monks live, work and prey on the premises of this abbey.

I loved to listen to the beautiful well spoken French of the young guide.We made our our little tour around the gardens of the abbey complex. We discovered an old oak tree parted in two by the thunder. Pictoresque. And 6 of us could comfortably fit in. Just in case, since the rain storm was a clear warning...
Modern part of monastery, where the monks live with the vegetable gardens.

The medieval abbey is a pearl of architecture: surrounded by Luberon montains and carpeted by lavenda fields ( come back in July for the foto!)


The last glimps on the abbey and the lavenda fields and we drove away to L'isle sur la Sorgue, known as Venice of Provence. Emmanuel and Louise-Anna, who live in Provence for the last couple of years share with us the spirit of explorers ( ' they want to know all the ways/roads of their country' as they say in Corsica ' je connais tous le chemains dans mon pais⁾
The day was completed by a perfect sunset up above the house of our hosts, in Luyne.
I got nostalgic, obviously. Have to retain as much of Provence as possible to endure till our next year' s visit.
The last dinner: escargots, alhouette ( specialite provansale) avec sauce colombo and the choice of French cheeses with red wine! DELICIOUS, thank you very much Louise-Anne & Emmanuel ( the cook)!
BUT THE LAST of the LAST days in Provence was actually Sunday whene Louise-Anne and Emmanuel the braves took us by car to Avignon to say good bye.

The famous bridge in Avigon ( known in all the languages for the little song:
Sur le pont d'Avignon,
On y danse, on y danse,
Sur le pont d'Avignon,
On y danse tous en rond)

The bridge, actually only half a bridge can be much better appreciated from above ( the photo taken by Louise-Anne), as the walk on this historical bridge is a rip off! Thanks God we are not tourists and we have always had the advice and guidance of the locals, so we never fall in tourist traps!

The view on the bridge was my last wish as our Eurolines bus was to take us from Avignon to Lausanne, Switzerland. Was to, but the divine plans were contrary to our human plans.
The bus NEVER CAME.

The islandic volcano stopped all the air traffic, thus no place.
The strikes blooked all the railways in France for the last 10 days.
And Switzerland was waiting for us.....

NOUS a MARSEILLE!

VIVE la France! On est arrivee a Marseille and we are not just bloddy tourists. We are having a personalised visit of this incredible city with our guardian angel- Antoine, a real marseillais!
Even though we pop in to have a great view on Marseille from ultra turistic Notre Dame de la Guard, it 's beacause Antoine' s mother Marie Jose lives just beside, in the lovely and lively quarter Roucas Blanc. I could not resist to say hallo to the mother ( and meet a real marseillaise lady!)

She won't be photographed, so we only immortalized ourselves with Antoine in front of his family house, an old castle like residence with inmense garden gone wild. Impossible to imagine an 80 years old lady ( it' s a wild guess, as to my question about her aged she answered ' just turned 35!) as its only resident.
All of us could not resist the invitation for aperitive. In this marseillese house it was
gewurtztraminer, of alsasian origin. For non drinkers-grenadine and cakes.


The tour in Marseille would never be complete without another magical meeting. ANDRE, the brother of ANTOINE greeted us from the balcony of his house!This is how we met a luthier!
Andrè lives in a charming old house with breathtaking view down to the sea and the isle with a castle of Monte Cristo.

This is a view from the window of his loft.

Serendipity again: Andere and us have another thing in common. He is a tanguero too, a founder of the tango association Les trottoirs de Marseille! He drinks mate ( the picture above) and even speaks some Spanish! There must have been an Argentinean beauty influencing him, I guessed. Rightly so.

The two brothers are real characters, separeted for over 30 years by the oceans, since Antoine left at the age of 21 to Reunion and then to Australia, while Andre had been developing his lutier career.


As a consequence,Andre invited us to his luthier atelier, downtown. Very charming walk during which Antoine told us stories about his childood and youth in Marseille.


I hope to return to Marseille next year and pay an unexpected visit to Antoine' s mother and Andre in Roucas Blanc. That s why I took this photo.


The luthier's workshop was superb and full of magic! Our 3 cameras did not resist the excess of charm and collapsed- very soon we had either no batteries or full card. Only few fotos were taken, the rest in our heart's hard disc.

Andre expained each etape of the prodution of violin.


or other string instruments ( mandoline, celo etc)

This one was probably the only machine in the worskhop. Everything else is hand made!To make the indentation inside of violin requires days of carving in the wood.
In about 2 months an instrument is ready.
Besides the luthier's workhop there is a small concert hall, where Andre organises soiree musicale inviting different musicions and music groups. He himself is a musician. And hopefully he had not forgotten how to dance tango. Shall meet on the dance floor one day.



We left Andre to his work and our guided tour in Marseille continued with Antoine, Louise-Anne and the kids.
Roucas Blanc is a genuine quarter of Marseille, but you have to be really fit to walk around.Antoine actually runs around his own quarter. He uses to do the jogging crossing Perrier quarter down to Prado beach. Which he made us do with him...
The views are compensating the effort, though.

Notre Dame de la Garde is always somewhere emerging in between and above the city silhouette.







No pictures of Antoine' s ' secret passage ' to Prado. Our cameras were out of service so we only took mental pictures..... And great physical exercise, as we walked from Prado all the way up to Roucas Blanc to our car.....