Yes, it's a slow week; I'm spending the day cleaning and getting ready for Jeff's opening tonight. But um, kind of related--I found these snippets from a journal I kept during Jeff and my first-ever vacation, which we took to Paris and Provence in the fall of 2005 (this is pre-blog, people! I wrote in an actual journal. So primitive!)
Jeff actually took a photo of me writing in Provence, so you know it's true.
ON PARISIAN SIGHTS
I had been to the Pantheon in Rome (perhaps cities all over the globe have them??) but didn't know Paris had its own. It was massive and full of ... columns?
Jeff took pictures of the sights, and I took pictures of him taking pictures of the sights.
We continued on to the Louvre, which was pyramidically shit on by I.M. Pei sometime in the '80s.
The Louvre, full frontal
Everybody takes this photo atop the Eiffel Tower, too
ON OUR PARIS-TO-PROVENCE ROAD TRIP
Jeff merged into French traffic while I stared blankly at my Mapquest directions. Mapquest hadn't been able to find the address we were starting from, so it had helpfully provided a string of unfamilar street names somewhere in Paris ... somehow, amazingly, we found our way onto the Boulevard Peripherique, which led to the A6 motorway. We drove triumphantly out of Paris proper, just as the sun broke through the clouds.
The view from our front steps in Provence...
The French have a death wish. [This was in response to their driving. People would speed past us doing 80 on a two-lane, two-way highway!] We found the D994 after a few misses and drove through the mountains as the sky turned pink. The scenery was truly breathtaking—the mountains rose, the color of dusk, sheltering little villages with rust-colored roofs and turquoise shutters, clusters of houses built right into the rock, making it seem as if they had grown from seeds. The trees were lush and colorful, and the sky seemed to cloak the entire countryside in quiet. Too bad we were going in the wrong direction.
These signs were everywhere as we neared the tiny town of Moydans, deep in the mountains of Provence. Sheep crossing! SO much less scary than deer.
I had been nurturing a rather macabre fantasy that Laurent [the B&B proprietor-slash-sheep farmer at our rustic accomodations... now, I believe, under new management, as there was no infinity pool during our visit. But we did see a sheep give birth, which is almost as good.] would be a Norman Bates-type psychopath, but my fears were assuaged immediately. How could anyone with sheep-shaped salt shakers be bad?
Our Hobbit hole-esque "gite"
ON A VISTIT TO A CITADEL IN SISTERON
Sisteron is home to a famous citadel built in the 11th century (or something like that). It is amazing—I said to Jeff that I felt like I was in "The Sword in The Stone" (It is admittedly sad that most of my knowledge of medieval history has been culled from Disney cartoons and "Ladyhawke" starring Michelle Pfeiffer, but what can I say? I am a graduate of the School of Life.)
Posing on the ramparts of Sisteron
In addition to the wax sculpture, there were cartoonish cut-outs all around the ancient grounds, a weird but fun anachronism.
You can see all of my photos, with captions, here. I'll be back in 2009 tomorrow, promise.
I love Ladyhawke.
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