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Still pooping

Provence is a province in southeast France.

Provence was a Roman area and did not come under the rule of France until about 500 years ago, thus it has a different vibe than Paris. We arrived in Avigon and rented a car to go to St. Remy where we were staying. We used this to drive to the surrounding area over the next 3 days.

The first night we went into the center town for dinner. I’ve discovered that we didn’t take pictures of St Remy itself other than this picture of a guy that is 1/4 French.

1/4 because to be true French you have to were a beret, a scarf, a stripped shirt, and be carrying a big French bread.

The next morning we took of for Les Baux Which is an old village and castle ruins set on one of the large hills in this area. Pronunciation.

This was on the other side of the hill range south of town and on the way over we stopped at the top for some pictures. While taking this we also found that snails tend to grow on bushes. Thea reminds me of the old joke where the punch line is “look at that S car go”

As we crested the hill we had a view of the village from the back side across the valley.

The next day we passed by from the other side below its view over the valley.

This site has evidence going back 6000 years. During the second century BC the Celts used it and on through the middle ages where it was a feudal lordship over 80 or so towns in the area. Those guys were kicked out in the 1300 and by the 1500 just a village with a castle. During the early 1600 it was the center of a Protestant revolt against some Cardinal guy that run the area and they lost and the castle walls torn down. This view through one of the few remaining wall opening looking south kind of shows why it was such a strategic location for more than a few years.

The village is mostly restaurants and small shops as the whole village is devoted to tourism.

Finally for Les Baux a view from the very top of the castle ruins.

After spending the day here it was back to St Remy and another dinner in the village.
The next day was market day in Fontvielle so we were off in the morning to get to that. We only have one picture of the market.

They had the usual market stuff, just more French like. This town had a street and a church.

As it got to be noon we partook in the, as required by French law, noon to 2 lunch in a restaurant on the square.

On our return trip to St Remy we stopped at the Roman ruins of Glanum. This was a fortified city founded in the 6 century BC by Celts and became a Roman city in 27BC. It was destroyed a few times and finally the Roman version was abandoned after the fall of Rome in about 250. These 2 things are a couple thousand years old and are outside of the actual city that has been rediscovered and excavated over the last 100 years.

While there are a fair amount of ruins

the remaining columns of the temple are about all that is recognizable as something.

The next day it was off to Arles and what was billed as the best market in the area. If nothing else it was large, a few blocks long. The other reason to go to Arles is the 21st largest Roman coliseum in the world which is still used for bull fights.

After a brief rest at the fountain we returned to St Remy and pack for the next days journey to Nice and the French Riviera. Pronunciation.

See the full picture gallery at the right.

It has been over a month now since our big 3 week European adventure so I guess it is about time to get the pictures and comments up on the big Yusmith.
Here is a Map showing the route followed on this epic journey.

I left the US on Monday afternoon Sept 30 on a redeye flight that got me to Frankfort Germany at 6 in the morning on Tuesday, to catch a flight to Bucharest, to meet Mary, that thanks to her scheduling had arrived there 1 day too early. In Bucharest we boarded a little turboprop which was the only flight daily to Satu Mare, Romania (official pronunciation here)

Believe it or not that is exactly how all Romanians talk, more on that later.
Satu Mare is a town of about 100000 near the northwest border of Romania with Hungry. We arrived and walked into the terminal building and waited for our bags at the about 8 foot on a side baggage belt go-around thing. (didn’t know they could be made that small) We got to our hotel, which actually was quite nice and went out to find a place for dinner. Satu Mare seems to close up about 5 in the afternoon but we did find a little 5 table place in the basement of a building and was able to finally eat some food after a day and a half of travel. (in fact it must be some ex-soviet state law that all restaurants must be in the basement because that is where all of the ones we ate in were located). We took care of business and then had about 24 hours to kill until being able to get the only flight out the next day. So we walked the town and hung out at the central city park.

The town itself was old Europe and with a blend of Soviet ugly.

While there we did notice a couple oddities. At all their streets where they had traffic control they of course had the walk, don’t walk signs but during our time there we did not ever see one person disobey those signs. Not old people, not people in a hurry, not teenagers, not young kids and not people wanting to cross a little 10 foot wide 1 way street. This was the most unusual thing I have ever seen. Unfortunately we were never able to find out why there was such a strict adherence to obeying the walk signs.
The other thing must be a result of history. See below for the old map of the area. You will see that Satu Mare was in a little area just outside Transylvania.

With that being the home of all vampires that must be the reason for the lack of famous Romanian singers and the preponderance of gymnasts from Romania. In fact as noted above all Romanians talk in the exact same voice. While we were out walking around I asked a random Romanian woman to sing the chorus of Jingle Bells and luckily my phone happen to be in record mode. Here is that rendition.

They just can’t carry a tune but as leaving she did do 5 flips 6 back flips and a Jacques Cousteau dismount.
So it was off to the Satu Mare International Airport (actual real name) to go to Bucharest for the night.Here is the waiting room and the security checkpoint.

After spending a short night in a hotel near the airport in Bucharest we got up and started on our way to Paris. We had a connection in Istanbul and here are a couple pictures of the airport.

What is of interest and somewhat surprising with these pictures from the Istanbul airport is that nowhere is there an ottoman to be seen, and there could be plenty of places for them to be used.
The full picture set in the list at the right.
On to Paris.

This was by no means a favorite Beatles or McCartney song but it is the only song that I know of that has an age in it that I would still live through. This song was on the Sgt. Peppers album which came out the same week I graduated high school in May 1967. Because of the impact of the album and the impact of graduating high school all the songs have always stuck with me and I do recall thinking at the time, ’64 man that’s old’. And now I am.

That pile of leaves should not be there. They should be in the neighbors yard. But the day that the tree began what is usually takes 2 or 3 days to drop its leaves it also started raining. What it is suppose to do is start to drop it’s leaves and the weather becomes a couple of those blustery fall days that moves the leaves out of my yard into other yards. So this year I have every single leaf from the tree laying in my yard and to add injury to this insult they are wet. I calculate there must be at least 1000 gallons of water in that pile making it weigh 6600 more pounds than it should. I felt every pound as I drug them on the tarp to the back of the back yard.

Lunch again, this time at table 21 with more or less the same selection.

A hint of the next stop is a city named for the battle cry of drunken college girls every where.

Jump in when it comes around on the guitar.

RRRiiiiight here. And a link over to the right.

varese-venice-trento-italy

The doorbell rang this morning and much to my surprise there stood Joe Kerr the famous decorating guy from Decorating with Dada. He had with him bearded fat guys with cameras and a skinny guy with a microphone on a pole.Of course I was somewhat taken aback by this and inquired as to WTF. He explained that they were here to do a ‘Decorating with Dada’ makeover of our living/family room. Now I was happy with the way it was but he said that millions of viewers were hoping to see this weeks makeover so I, with reservations, said OK. They spent about 15 minutes (with commercials) to change things over and then brought me in, blindfolded and this is what I saw.

Then they took the blindfold off and here is the result of their dada makeover.

My first thoughts were “brilliant, awe inspiring,and whimsical.But then I am on the cutting edge of decorating and crap so I will let Joe explain.

Basically what I do with the Dada method is to bring to decorating what Benoit Mandelbrot brought to mathematics. Notice that the plant is not a straight line and how it jerks your eyeball quickly to the right while at the same time invoking a sense of lassitude which then causes your other eyeball to jerk to the chair and invoke a sense of I should be sitting there. The ottoman creates a whimsical faux  focal point that really points to the focal. Of course having the lamp no where near a point where it could be used is one of the founding elements of Dada Decorating. All in all I’m very happy how things worked out. Just another brilliant dadaish decorating job. Beats the crap out the stuff done by that guy Art Deco

So that’s it. I find it a unique arrangement to live with but there is no limit to the level of inconvenience to live with cutting edge decorating.

The second stop was a city to the south, Dali. We had to take a crowded bus for about 4 hours through 2 lane mountain roads to get there. Everyone on this road drives like they are nuts. Getting there and back was the worse part of the trip. It is a nice area but much more “Chinese” than the coastal cities. So anyway another set of pictures for hours of pleasure.

dali