Hotel Saluces: evening

We were so late arriving at the hotel Saluces that I had to telephone the proprietor, waking him up and informing him "Je m'appelle Sabitathica. J'arrive!"

He showed us to our room ... la Niche.



Beautiful.




Setting down our bags concluded twenty-eight hours of continuous travel.

Traveling day, part II

Saturday, continued:

The long drive south, into the mountains of the Massif Central:




It rained most of the eleven-hour drive south, but as the clouds finally cleared we saw that a rainbow was waiting for us and we naively allowed ourselves to believe that all would at last begin to go smoothly ...


until, less than an hour away from our hotel, we encountered several signs which tried to prevent us from going forward.


But we were travel-weary and by now somewhat desperate to get to our hotel which, according to the directions emailed to us last week, should have been only a few more miles down this road. So:

1. I uttered aloud for the first time a phrase which is now becoming a sort of mantra for this trip: "what's the worst that could happen?" and
2. we agreed to pretend we didn't speak enough French to understand these signs and drove right past them.

Which you'd think would be a good idea. But then we saw this one:


And we were both like, "oh, they mean it ..." It's hard to argue with emphatic sentenceless punctuation.

So we had to turn around and take a different route, which ended up adding another two hours to the trip, but so what? we'd already been traveling for 26 hours straight on virtually no sleep.

But the detour turned out to be a stroke of good luck because we got to see many wondrous things, including a cloud caught in a valley:

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I should probably say that our map hasn't been very helpful. Our hotel (Hotel Saluces) is in Salers, a very small medieval village which would be hard enough to find even in daylight. And navigation wasn't made any easier by the fact that someone had painted over all the town names and direction signs for at least 40 miles in every direction.

Traveling day, part I

It has been difficult getting online ...


Saturday was a traveling day. We went from:
a taxi
to airport #1 (Atlanta)
to a shuttle
to airplane #1, and a flight which was terrifying, at least for me personally
to airport #2 (Stuttgart, Germany), where straight lines seem somehow straighter than in other countries, and 90 degree angles are even more so






to airplane #2
to airport #3 (Paris)



to a crowded, standing-room-only bus
to the rental car facility
to our rental car.

During the so-called "planning" phase of the trip, it somehow seemed like a good idea, knowing I was going to have been awake for twenty-two hours (I did manage to unterrify myself enough to sleep for 45 minutes on plane #1), to drive the rental car (a standard, which I don’t know how to drive) through France (a country where I don’t speak the language nor understand many of the simplest traffic signs) with L as my navigator (more on this later), for another five and a half hours.

Unfortunately, due to miscalculations which occurred during the so-called "planning" phase of the trip and also to some creative navigational decisions by L (more on this later), the five and half hours actually turned into eleven more hours of driving.

We began, as I have now learned to expect, by heading off in the wrong direction. We were trying to go south but discovered to our surprise that we were heading north.

More on this later ...

I like traveling, but I don't like the traveling part of traveling.

There have been difficulties.

Need some adventure and enjoyment?

This just in:


Well ... okay then!

France!

The plan:


1. fly into Charles de Gaulle on Saturday with L. Escape twelve days later. This is the only part of the plan we know with any degree of certainty.

2. rent a canal boat and spend four days on the Canal du Midi (which flows from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean). Anyone who has traveled with me will not be surprised to learn that there have been some difficulties with arranging this.

3. spend the rest of the time in the south of France. Negotiable.

4. swim in the Mediterranean. Negotiable

5. see Andorra and/or Spain. Negotiable.

6. blog live (yes, live!), assuming I can get online. Negotiable, stay tuned.

7. take the gun and leave the cannoli. Non-negotiable.

8. invest in good times. Non-negotiable.

Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

Saturday: neighborhood cat Minnie at her perch on the porch of the Nunnery. She was there all weekend, except when she got her ass in gear to go lie down in the flowerpot. Must be tough.


A flower at the famous Carroll Street Cafe with iced espresso in the foreground. Plus our headless waitress.



Clifton road, with the Nunnery down on the left.


The park:

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Called and sent flowers to my dear mother on Mother's Day.

~~~~~~~

We saw the new Star Trek last night. This is a little known fact, but I lived in a house with Gene Roddenberry's son back at Hampshire for like a year. We were living together when they sent some of his father's ashes up in the Space Shuttle. But we never talked about it. And we never talked about Star Trek, not once. In fact we hardly didn't speak at all, about anything, not that I remember. The new movie was pretty entertaining though.

~~~~~~~

Listening now to Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye by Leonard Cohen.

I love you in the morning
Our kisses deep and warm
Your head on the pillow like a sleepy golden storm

Simple and true.

Ragdoll kittens

Sunday we went for Mexican with L's friends Matt and Erin. Erin had a birthday recently and we were helping her celebrate. Matt and Erin breed Ragdoll kittens in their home.




OMG I want one.



Chaos:


Chaos:


Chaos:


Chaos:


Chaos:


Chaos:


Chaos:


Not chaos:


The mother of the litter:


There were like a million of them:

~~~~~~~

When we got back to the Nunnery after dinner, we discovered that the power was out because there had been a lightning storm. All it does is rain anymore.

The sky is falling

Weather.com is the bearer of wet news:


A view of my office Monday morning with rain outside the window:


Iced espresso + umbrella with rain outside the window:

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Speaking of rain, there's a leak in the roof of the Nunnery, which might not surprise those who have been here. The proper authorities have been notified and the Nunnery is being reroofed this week. Hooray!

Flamenco fascism

Saturday L & I went with markandwanda to a Flamenco recital.


As it happens, even though this event took place far outside my geographical and social circles, I knew two of the audience members, both of whom are named Magdalena.

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The recital was held in a Catholic high school. A southern Catholic high school, which is different from what you're picturing. But still, I served a four year sentence in one of these fine institutions in my misguided youth, and upon setting foot in this one - the first time I've been in a Catholic high school, apart from the ones in my dreams, since 1987 - I turned to L and asked her if she could smell the tyranny.