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> The south of France |
Follow my tracks to …The south of France
Follow Bill and his brother Charles on the French roads visiting France with their France Rail Pass.
PARIS GARE DE LYON - AVIGNON TGV
John Steinbeck traveled America with his dog Charlie. I traveled the South of France with my brother Charles. He’s an artist, looking for the right light. I like kicking at history like you kick the tires on a used car. We headed for Avignon, less than three hours away from Paris by TGV. After a bus ride from the TGV station to the center of town, we dropped bags at our hotel and headed for the Palais des Papes, built in the 14th Century. Pope Clement V came here to get away from controversy over his election in Rome, and several successors stayed to build the largest gothic palace in Europe. With our audio guides, we toured some of the 2.6 acres it covers. Central Avignon is a UNESCO World Heritage site, but our next highlight was down on the Rhone River. Charles knows enough French to order a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee, and he knows the children’s songs “Frere Jacques” and “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” You could dance on Saint Benezet’s bridge, as the song says, but you can’t go anywhere. It once crossed the river, but only four arches remain after all the floods since the 12th Century. Charles made some sketches, and I imagined donkeys and oxcarts coming into town when it was new. Posters were everywhere for the July Festival of Avignon, France’s alternative theater answer to Scotland’s Festival of Edinburgh, but it was still June. We slept soundly after a dusk walk among the old city’s stones and in the morning headed back to the TGV station for a 20-minute ride to Aix en Provence.
NOT TO BE MISSED
France Rail Pass’partner: AVIGNON TGV - AIX EN PROVENCE TGV
Provence is famous for its lavender, sunshine, and food. We spent two nights here, because our first day was devoted to Paul Cézanne, the artist more famous than my brother. At the tourist office, we got the information for a tour “In Cézanne’s Footsteps” and began a day-long immersion in the life of Cézanne, who was born and died here. Every day in the early 1900s he walked from town to his studio in the country, painted from 6 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., came back for lunch, and painted again until 5 p.m. I was pleased to learn that gifts from some American fans saved his studio from developers 50 years ago. We dined at the Deux Garçons restaurant downtown where Cezanne often ate. Northern French cuisine is butter and cream, but in the south it’s olive oil. The next day we visited older historic sites. Ruins of the Roman bath of Thermes Sextius founded in 122 B.C. are visible today at the entrance of the modern Thermes Sextius spa, and the natural hot water is still flowing. Wood dealer Joseph Sec had a monument made in 1792 that mixes French revolution themes and Masonic ones. And Charles got a little bit of art history he didn’t know at the Pavillon de Vendôme, built in 1665 as a place for an aristocrat’s trysts but later bought by the 18th Century portraitist Jean-Baptiste Van Loo. Now it’s an art museum.
NOT TO BE MISSED
AIX EN PROVENCE - MARSEILLE
We could have spent a lot more time in Marseille, which is only 20 minutes from Aix. If we really wanted to understand its vibrant, pulsating character, we’d need to have a French friend as a guide. It’s a cosmopolitan melting pot of peoples and times, the immigrants’ point of entry for centuries. Cave paintings in the area date back about 27,000 years. It was the first city in France, established by Greeks in 600 BC, and its notorious port began back then with wine and slaves from Gaul traded for Roman goods. Marseille has a reputation like Chicago’s during Prohibition, but Charles and I weren’t bothered in any of our promenades. We took a boat ride to the island of If, where King Francois the First came to see a rhinoceros stranded after a shipwreck. The rhino had been intended for Pope Leon X. Francois built a castle on the island and a fort in town. The fort’s ruins form the base of Notre Dame de la Garde, a tall white basilica that protects Marseille now. From the water, it looks like the tip of a mountain above the city. The Musée d'Histoire is loaded with relics of the Greek and Roman past and reminders of the Visigoths, Charlemagne, rebellion, the city’s decline and revival. And the sidewalk cafés in the old port served wonderful, garlicky bouillabaisse de Marseille, a seafood soup that Julia Child loved when she lived here.
NOT TO BE MISSED
France Rail Pass’partner: MARSEILLE - NIMES
Our trip to Nimes was on a regional train passing the backyards of South France. Where Marseille’ Roman past is mainly in the books and the museum, in Nimes it is in your face. The wonderful arena for 23,000 spectators is in the best shape of any Roman amphitheater, and every year in April they fill it with gladiator re-enactments. We joined a guided tour from the tourist office, then walked the five minutes to the Maison Carré, which means “square house” but is in fact a rectangular Roman temple. They show a 3D movie there including those Great Roman Games in April. Nimes is also famous for its bull rings. They were empty when we were there, but during the feria of Pentacost, at the end of May or early June, the bullfight and associated parades and bars attract as many as 1 million visitors. The next morning before catching our TGV back to Paris, Charles and I visited the Musée d’Arles especially to look over the Roman statue of a naked man fished out of the Rhone River in 2009. I couldn’t decide if he was a slave or a slave master.
NOT TO BE MISSED
NIMES - PARIS GARE DE LYON
* (2011 frequency) |
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| Last Updated on Thursday, 15 December 2011 10:58 |
2H40 by TGV
13 trains per day*
