France

Well, here it is. The original limestone chunk the rest of our shambling vacation house was built around. (Shut up.)

So after around six and a half to seven hours of driving on the Swiss Autobahn (so nice) and Italian-and-French mountain roads (not so nice, and a little terrifying), we arrived in Jausiers, France. Mary was carsick, and my butt hurt. We had only stopped twice – once for food, and again for gas – mainly to try to find an ATM, because we had only used about a quarter of the tank. This car apparently has an enormous gas tank. I’m dreading the fill-up.

  

Anyway, we checked in to our flat (at 6:30 – half an hour past their normal closing time, and half an hour before the front office would be closing for the day), and had a look around. The area is beautiful as we are surrounded on all sides by mountains and all manner of churches and towers built upon them – one of which is quite close.

  

Our first full day – Sunday – was spent mainly driving around and taking pictures. It seemed that every time we drove around another corner, we saw another mountain (or another angle of the same mountain) that we just had to take pictures of. Jausiers and the neighboring towns of Faucon and Barcelonette are all very quaint (as I’m sure are any other neighboring towns in this area), and we tried to find every possible setting for pictures. We even climbed up to that very close church tower in Jausiers, which was actually not that hard, and seriously worth the view.

  

  

  

We tried a few times to drive into Barcelonette (the largest town in the area, quaint as it is) and do some shopping, but it seemed like most of the stores were closed. I think we decided that it’s a bit of an off-season for the area – maybe most of their business during the year comes during ski season. Even our hotel (resort?) seems empty – I think we’re the only ones in our particular building (each building has 8 flats). Mostly we walked around, admired the landscape and ancient buildings, and tried not to hit any of the cyclists (or motorcyclists) we ran into on the winding mountain roads.

Monday was our two-year anniversary (weird, I know), so I put on a tie and we went in to town (Barcelonette), determined to have a nice dinner.

We had planned on this place we walked by called “the Patio” that looked nice – mostly outside, nice canopy above, all in this rock-wall terrace area. It looked extremely anneversaryish, but unfortunately it was closed. At five o’clock. Maybe it, too, is seasonal. So we wandered around, and finally settled on one of the four or five restaurants in the town’s main square. Here we found the main challenge of being in a foreign country and not speaking one bit of the local language – ordering food. We had no idea what anything was. We could make educated guesses, but once we were past the subcategories of the menu, we were stumped. Sure, we could have asked the server for help, but we ended up just picking random things and hoping for the best. Mary ordered “Lasagne”, and I have the sneaking suspicion that her pick was not as random as she let on, as it turned out to be lasagna. I ordered something called a “croque monsieur”. Our waiter asked how I wanted my meat cooked (medium). Hmm. So I get meat. This is looking up? What arrived was a circular “steak” (tasted and felt more like a dense hamburger patty, which was okay) topped with a fried egg. I also got french fries!

The food was pretty good, for what we figured out was mainly a bar-type establishment. It’s hard to tell when every (every) restaurant in this town had “SNACK” somewhere in big letters. The less-pretty-good part was the subsequent invasion of flies. Seriously. As soon as we started to eat, our table was mobbed. They were everywhere! I felt like I had to eat faster than I was comfortable with, all while waving my hand around in the air like a moron. Looking around, I don’t remember noticing anyone else exhibiting this type of behavior, yet people were eating. Maybe they were okay with flies walking all over their food? Or maybe circular hamburger patty-type meats with eggs on top are a particular fly delicacy. Either way, we finished our food and beat it, passing by this enormous fluffy brown and black dog that Mary wanted a picture with but we were too slow on the camera and too shy to ask for. Happy anniversary! (It was actually really fun, and we mostly laughed about it, both during and afterwards.)

On Tuesday we drove up to a lake about an hour away – mainly to see the lake, and partly to run across one of the many rafting companies we knew were in the area. We did them both! On our way to the lake, we stopped in at Anaconda Rafting, one of the companies with which we could receive a discount as a result of our resort reservation. The (extremely nice and English-speaking) lady who was working there recommended that we try something called “hydrospeed”, which we eventually signed up for and which I will describe to you in a little bit. Stop rushing me.

Continuing on to the lake, we soon found ourselves in a tiny town – the name of which I can’t remember (it was something French) – with a spectacular view of the lake (again, the name of which I can’t remember, and can’t be bothered to look up right now). The problem here was that, while the view was excellent, we wanted to be IN the lake, not hundreds of meters above it. We did enjoy a nice view of this island chapel thing, though:

 

So we decided to continue driving around until we found a beach – if there was one. Eventually, drawn in by some colorful kayaks and their potential promise of fun, we found a spot where we could get in the water. I would call it a beach, but I would be lying. It was like a beach, only instead of sand near the water, there was pavement, and instead of sand further away from the water, there was grass and trees and picnic tables. It was a little weird, but there were people sunbathing and a few people in the water, so we decided to give it a shot. It worked out pretty well – we stayed for about an hour, during which I got a sunburn on my stomach, Mary got one on her back, and we learned that the rumors of topless sunbathers in Europe are all (mostly) true! (Mostly in the sense that in movies they all happen to be in their late teens/early twenties, and in real life they all mostly happen to be in their late forties/early fifties.) There was even one completely nude swimmer, but she was a toddler and I don’t think that counts.

You may be wondering why I don’t have more pictures from this lakeside/topless/concrete beach/mountain road adventure, and you are not wondering for no reason. The night before I was dumping pictures from the camera memory card onto the computer, and I forgot the crucial ending step of putting the memory card back in the camera when I was done. As a result we had to rely on the internal memory of the camera, which amounted to five pictures, most of which we reserved for pictures of these awesome rock columns we just happened to find as we drove by. They were pretty spectacular, and worth the ten minute hike to see. And if you are also wondering if I was kicking myself the entire day for forgetting to put the memory card back in the camera, the answer is yes. Yes I was.

 

Hydrospeed. The thing we decided to do on the river (the name of which I DO remember. It’s the Ubaye river). Since we were on a river, I didn’t take my camera, and there are no pictures. So let me explain to you the particulars of hydrospeeding and how it differs from rafting. I’m not sure why I feel the necessity of explaining the differences between the two things, but it seems like a good idea.

So with rafting, you have a bunch of guys with life vests, helmets, and paddles together in an inflatable rubber raft, going down the rapids trying to avoid the larger rocks while paddling and hopefully staying in the boat. This is the group goal. Probably everyone’s individual goal is to stay in the boat and not look like they are paddling wrong.

Now let’s talk about hydrospeed. With hydrospeed, you have a bunch of guys (maybe – on Wednesday it was just Mary, me, and William, our “guide” – or, “the guy who tries to keep us from killing ourselves on the river”) who put on wetsuits with special reinforced padded areas on the knees and shins, followed by life vests, flippers, and helmets. Then, each person is handed what is essentially a large, foam kickboard and each person is told that this is their “best friend” in the river.

That’s it. That’s all you get. Then you follow this guy (William, in our case) into the river, where he has told you that you will be going through rapids of class 2, 3, and 4 (6 being the highest and described as “only waterfalls”). You are also told that this is better than rafting because “with rafting you can fall in the river – with hydrospeed, you are already in the river!”

This was actually really, really fun. The entire run (about 10 or 12 kilometers) lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I was genuinely surprised and disappointed when we were told that we were done. It might sound a little daunting, but the hydrospeed (the kickboard) and life vest keep you up in the water, and controlling your direction with the flippers was actually not that hard. The hardest part for me was getting out of the main flow of the river and off to the side the few times we stopped along the way. I’m really glad we were able to do it (even though we forgot the paper with our discount and had to pay the full price – which was only about 8 euro more, but still), and would love to do it again if anyone is going on a river trip and wants to invite me, or whatever. Here are some pictures of other idiotic people (not us – no camera, remember!) enjoying the pleasures of hydrospeed:

  

So now it is the last day. I am writing this in our flat, and sometime today we will probably head down to the internet café to check our email and upload our pictures (and this blog!). We might try again to do some shopping, but it’s raining a bit so who knows. Tomorrow morning, we will check out and head to Nice. Our flight to London doesn’t leave until 9:30 pm, so we will get to spend some time poking around the city. Maybe we’ll go to the beach – it’s supposed to be one of the nicest.