Diane
We’ve gotten behind a bit, and now we’re having trouble remembering what we did when. Now that the six of us have more or less agreed on the order of events . . . .
Our last day in France, and we went to Les Baux, a walled village that began as a Celtic settlement, was taken over by the Romans, and then ruled by local aristocrats who eventually became part of France. More recently, the Grimaldis, as in Prince Ranier and Grace Kelly, have a stake in the place and, in fact, Princess Caroline moved there after her husband died
Anna, our guide took us to a lookout that gave us a view back to the village, which was beautiful from across the valley. Going into the village, we found lots of steep, windy streets with touristy shops. Fortunately, there weren’t too many pesky tourists until we were on our way out.
Next on the agenda was a trip to a vineyard and olive grove where we tasted both wine and olive oils. The grove was planted in about 1489 and has been owned by a variety of people including, these days, Nicolas Sarkozy. We couldn’t get a look at the chateau on the property because he was there with his Italian model wife, who was doing a promotional photo shoot for the winery. We didn’t see either of them, but we caught sight of several intimidating security people. We also ate lunch there, which was just wonderful. It was quite the posh establishment.
We also stopped at a nearby Roman arch of triumph made of local limestone. As Anna explained it, the Romans built arches all over the place just to say, “Na, na, na, na, na. We won.”
Two sides of the monument right next to the arch were in pretty good shape, but the other two were being eroded so badly that most of the detail was gone. Apparently, the monuments were buried for a long time and only “discovered” in the 19th century when some excavation was done in the area.
The day had an artsy cast because we went to the place in Aix-en-Provence where Van Gogh spent a year at the mental hospital, where there is still a mental hospital. There are plaques pointing out several views that Van Gogh painted, many of them paintings that we’d all recognize from Art History 101.
In the evening, we had our fanciest meal yet at a 5-star hotel with a gated entrance. A whole troupe of young men led by one middle-aged guy waited on us. One with a perfectly casual but highly sculpted haircut explained each dish to us just to make sure we knew what we were eating. It was all delicious but a little precious in more than one sense of the word.