The France Blogs, Day 2

France, Day 2: More travel-ey, and Toulouse

The noise of the street must have died out sometime between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., to be replaced by the sound of delivery trucks and garbage trucks. If Vegas is the City that Never Sleeps, then Paris is the City that Takes a Brief Nap in the middle of the night. We woke to light streaming in our windows at about 7:30, packed up our oatcakes and apples, and headed out to enjoy an hour or so before our train. We found a chain coffee and bread place, Pomme du Pain (apple of bread?) around the corner and got coffee, then headed just a bit further on the Luxembourg Garden.

I am in love with the Jardin Luxembourg. It is not really like a park in an American or even British sense … not remotely enough grass. Many open avenues for strolling and open niches for sitting, both of that fine white gravel (which dusts up your shoes and pants and blindingly reflects the sun) used all over Paris, chestnuts trees trimmed to rectangles, geometrical beds of grass and flowers (more accent than the main show—the people are the main show). And in the heart of Luxembourg is the circular fountain, and row upon row of green metal chairs. Opposite the fountain was a huge palatial building. Which we figured out later is the Senat. A world away from Congress in D.C. Yes, there were some Gendarme around the building, and I am guessing they were armed (like the fatigue-wearing guard we saw strolling the streets sometimes, with their tanned faces and machine guns) but it all seemed so much more integrated, less hallowed, more accessible. Less mystification around a building housing a government body which, after all, is supposed to be about the people. I think you could make some interesting comparisons between the American and French Revolutions, and the resulting governments, based on this architectural and symbolic difference.

It’s a bit like here in the UK, how the Prime Minister lives in a house on a street … a nice house, on a nice street, but while our President has his own White Palace (I mean house), here that is reserved for Queen & Co. And of course in France the monarchy are long gone, and all those palaces (and there are a lot of what they call ‘Hotel’s’ – which are mansions) are museums or government buildings, or offices, or housing.



We sat in the garden, sipping coffee near the fountain, watching the early morning commuters walk through the park on their way to work.

A couple hours later we were dragging our suitcase back through the garden on our way to Gare Montparnasse to catch our train south to Toulouse. The route was about 5 hours, but not the most scenic (which we found out on our 7 hour ride back). Flat (Nebraska flat) green fields outside Paris, which turned into rolling hills further on. The agriculture switched to vineyards just outside Bordeaux.

Luckily our hotel in Toulouse wasn’t too far from the train station. We got our room (tiny, aha!) and, after not really eating all day, stumbled out to try and find food. Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France, over 1 million people, called The Pink City because of the pink-tinted stone used in much of the architecture. There is also a lot of brick used there, it is an old brick-making center. I must admit we were really tired, and when we found the Capitole Place, I was rather disappointed. The city didn’t quite match the tourist brochure pictures—a bit more worn, dirty, and cluttered. It was a hot night and the streets were busy, mostly with drunk university kids.

We wandered down to the dry grass along the Garonne River, and sat down with a view of the Pont Neuf … which was sprouting trees from some of its angles and bends, silted up with sand near the arches, and of the floating bottles and plastic bags that came by on the river. Along the retaining wall behind us were huge photographs (part of a nation-wide exhibition I think, there were huge photos posted along the fence of the Jardin Luxembourg as well).

A kid came over and asked to bum a cigarette. Christien answered him in French. The grass smelled strangely like the summer grass (still with some green, but dry underneath) in my grandparent’s backyard in North Hollywood. The mosquitoes began to swarm up off the water as the sun went down, and the swallows (shrieking in a way I’ve never heard) somersaulted in to pluck them from the air.


In Toulouse, the Capitole Place.




The brick architecture, including a very strange brick convent with a tower.

The France Blogs: Day 1

Day 1: Traveley … and then Paris

Amazing that, by plane, it takes about an hour to get from Bristol to Paris … yet our day started at about 10 a.m. and we got to our hotel room at about 8 p.m. Buses and trains, buses and trains. CDG was amazingly simple, if a lot of walking (in the U.S. an airport that size would definitely have shuttles or tramways, in France though, you walk). We figured out how to get the train from the airport to the hotel, and how to use the slight confusing machines to buy tickets, and were on our way through the suburbs into the center of the city.

Side-note: It is surprising how often language isn’t the issue with machines. Everybody has a different icon system, computer screens and menu logic aren’t always apparent. So a machine to buy train tickets in Swansea looks nothing like one in Paris, or in Toulouse (that one was the weirdest of all) and you have to suss out what kind of graphic-logic the manufacturer and programmer were using. There is something incredibly frustrating about this confrontation with something which feels as if it should be elementary and obvious … it turns me into a lost 8 year old. It’s the same with Post Offices … amazing how stumped I can be by mailbox color and shape (Where the hell do I put my letter!) or the layout of a grocery store (Why would you put the hummus here?).

We emerged, blinking, into a bright, cloudless, warm Paris evening at the Luxembourg Metro on busy Boulevard St. Michel and oriented ourselves using the iron gates of the park. Hotel Stella, our home in Paris, is on Rue Monsieur Le Prince, about the center of the triangle if you used Blvd. St. Michel and Blvd. St. Germain, and then a line formed by the edge Luxembourg Garden to join the two. Which really meant nothing to me until we had spent some time wandering and I realized just how amazing the location is … which will become apparent I imagine, in later posts.

Rue Monsieur Le Prince is a street of Japanese Restaurants, bookshops, and apartments, with a Cave (Wine bar) right next door to us that meant we got the echoes of tinkling glasses, popping corks, and French (and English and German and Chinese and …) chatter late into the night through our windows. As well as plenty of rumbling Moto-velos, and delivery vans.



We were a little unsure at first, but it turned out to be a wonderful place in a 17th century building with a ridiculously steep staircase, exposed wood beams, and large room (we had TWO windows) … (large is relative here, in Paris a double room might be a bed with enough space to squeeze by along the walls, we had a double bed, a single bed, a desk, a cupboard, a bathroom with shower!) It’s a no-frills place with awful wallpaper, mismatched sheets, and green-painted furniture with ripping seams, and noisy plumbing, but in the end makes you feel like you’re staying with your great aunt. Through our windows we could see down the street, houses opposite, someone’s inner courtyard, and watch the spotlight of the Eiffel Tower rake across the sky.



We headed out immediately for food, found the narrow, crazy-busy street down near St. Michel with Moaz Falafel, and took our salads to Notre Dame to eat. The garden next to it was closed, so we sat in the Place in front, then walked along the Seine as the sun began to set. The world was loud, bustling, charged with energy. I think it may have been one of the first warm summery evenings of the year because the Seine was thronged with people eating, talking, drinking wine and champagne. We made a slow circuit along the river, crossed the Pont de le Archeveche at the end of the Ile de le Cite over to the Ile St. Louis to the Right Bank and around, back to the Left Bank along Pont Neuf, with its strange faces carved into the ride of the bridge.

We only got lost the one time when we tried to find our way back through the twisting streets back to the hotel. I didn’t think we’d be able to fall asleep with all the city and street noise coming in through the window … but was soon fast asleep.



In a way I’ve only given a route, without detail …. But it’s hard to describe because the first night was so perplexing. I really couldn’t believe the simple fact of the streets and buildings. The stunning fact of dome after dome, spire after spire punctuating the skyline, of the elegant stone buildings, ranging from a couple hundred to a thousand years old …. When the sunset turned to a saturated, deep wine-red beyond the bridges of the Seine and the towers of Notre Dame, with the swirling voices, and smell of wine and piss and dust in the air – I wasn’t quite sure I wasn’t dreaming.

When we had rounded the islands and were making our way back to the hotel it was late, past 11, quite dark. We stopped a moment along the river, looking down on an orangey streetlamp which illuminated a perfect spider’s web attached to the curve of the lamppost. The enormous brown and yellow spider was busy repairing damages as the moths flew recklessly close to his web. In the breeze off the river, all the spider seemed to catch were the fine white feathers of pigeons and seagulls. I lifted a hand and my jacket cuff caught the light, glowing a faint crescent—which attracted a moth, who brushed against my cheek.



Ah … Paris.

I read English at Oxford

So, probably wouldn't stand up in a job interview, but still. There we were in Oxford and there sure was a lot of English to read ...

We went to Oxford a couple weekends ago via Bus, with hoards of Swansea University Students (pretty much International, like us). Its a 4 hour bus-ride. But like I've probably already said, buses here in the UK are not quite the horror they often are in the states. A long ride, but pretty comfy.

Oxford, at its Centre (and there is a lot to it at the edges, where the re-ga-lar people live--and it looks like anywhere else, strip malls and industrial parks) is all about its Colleges. There seem to be dozens (ah, yes, 36 ...) and their buildings and chapels and residence halls dominate the town. Oxford University is the second oldest surviving university in the world (#1 is Bologna in Italy), and the oldest English-language University in the world. It was founded sometime in the 11th Century.

Yes ... so that's, like, a thousand years. A thousand years of students and teachers in the same place. Try to imagine that, oh Californian of the ever-revolving landscape ... There is architecture there stretching back all the way to the time of the Saxons. U.S.A., you were not yet even a dream in the eye of the dream of a zygote ... Poet Matthew Arnold called it, 'the city of dreaming spires' for all its church spires which, I must admit, in the misty gloaming looked fairly dreamy.



We wandered through the streets ... unable, however, to enter the colleges (all closed the day we went). I was impressed by rarefied and sequestered feel of Oxford ... Rather like cloisters. Students are protected inside the walls of the college from prying eyes or outside influences, placed into a context where they exist wholly as students (fed and cared for by the colleges--in fact there are cleaners who clean the students' rooms for them from what I've heard). I imagine there must be a bit of a connection with the way Monasteries, those first educational institutions, were run long ago. I was torn between envy and feeling quite Marxist and revolutionary about the whole thing. (Especially since we couldn't enter the lovely Radcliffe Camera ... since it was open to 'Readers' only ... its is a reading room that is part of Bodleian Library).

Now the Bodleian goes back to at least the 1400's. It has MILES of shelf space and quite a number of treasures. Copy of Shakespeare's First Folio anyone? Shelley's handwritten notes on Ozymandias? Most of the library (which is several buildings joined by an underground tunnel ... no, really) is, like the colleges, off limits (though as a UK university student I could apply for entrance actually ... will have to look into that!) but there are sections which are open. Christien and I stumbled into an amazing exhibit on Shelley, an Oxonian who once was a bit too rowdy for Oxford ... they kicked him out in his day but now seem to have gathered him into their arms as one of their own. In a little room we walked from case to case, looking a locks of Shelley's hair, a guitar he gave to a muse of his, but best of all at his notebooks with their sketches of trees, eyes, profiles, boats. And close-knit, beautiful, but illegible, handwriting ... though in one journal there were three words, written in larger, bolder print. On one page the word 'Illumines' on the facing page 'Own Shadows'. A message floating up from the text ...



We had a chance to climb up up the tower of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin which was well worth 3 quid a piece for the gargoyled views over the fantastic rooftops and skyline of Oxford. And later we even made it to the Ashmolean Museum where we wandered a bit among the ancient art, particularly the Buddhist images from Central Asia.

Ah, to be a cultured posh person, now that Spring is here ....

The New Digs

We moved! Hurrah! It's been a week here, seems less--probably because it just been so busy and with the new Term starting up time seems to be collapsing like a spent accordian ... (just something I was trying out. yeah, not the best metaphor).

Our new digs are quite unlike our previous place ... infact if you think of almost an exact opposite, this is it. Beck House was like a student reservation, removed off the road by a wall and parking lot, set apart, with several blocks for students. There were the fire drills and the 4 a.m. revelries. Our place was on the bottom floor, almost like a basement because it was partly dug into a hill, cold, damp, not particularly light. With no view (except the parking lot) and quite large (but in an empty, echoey kind of way since we didn't own anything to fill it up.

Our new place, though still managed by the Uni is a flat in a row house on a real honest to goodness Swansea street (and a crazy busy one at that). Bryn Y Mor is a main thourofare back and forth from the Uplands area to downtown. So we are now a bit closer to town and though it may be a tiny bit further from school it's only maybe a 5 minute difference in the walk (about 20 min.) It's on the 3rd floor, nearly the attic, and is a studio, so pretty small. We've got amazing light, skylights, views of the bay and of trees. It feels like an entirely different universe.

After a year of a tiny nasty shower that I couldn't stand to get in (okay, I will admit that I didn't shower quite as often as I probably should have because I just hated it so much), we have a shower/bath. And with a huge skylight you can stand in the shower with the curtain partly open and look at the clouds. I plan on having my first bath tonight, by candle-light ... looking up at the stars and moon.

And I am totally in love with the kitchen, which has a floor to (low) ceiling window and a huge skylight as well. And a "breakfast bar" with stools. It is much smaller than our old kitchen but arranged so that it feels like a much more useable space.

So, lots of pics to share, but since I can only load five I will try and give an overview ....



Coming up the stairs -- there is a nice airy landing which I might use for my office ... a little unconventional, but ... why not?



Bedroom/Living room combined -- but it's a nice space.



Bathroom with tub and skylight!




The gorgeous kitchen.





One sample view from out the kitchen skylight over the rooftops!

Rainy Day

It's raining in Swansea. Which is the natural state of things, I know--and not the bright and sunny days we've been having for so much of the summer. And honestly, I do love rain, but today for some reason it feels like a rainy day in almost a kind of Winnie-the-Pooh sort of way. (Perhaps I should make some tea).

The cloud is seamless, low, enveloping. The rain is coming down steadily now in a fine fast fall. Poor Christien is out in it. Everything in the world is damp. The papers on the table are beginning to buckle and curl, the clothes in the cupboard come out of it damp. The cotton shirts I am wearing feel slightly chill with faint wetness.

Ah, sea and rain, I do love you ... but why can't my clothes be dry?

I wanted to keep forging on with Llanmadoc--because it really was such a lovely retreat for us. So I posted about the pups last time (miss them still!) and thought I would post a few pics from the walk which was right behind the house--an enormous steep hill from which you get basically a 365 view. In fact you can see Wormshead (our favorite spot KB & WC) as well as out to the salt march and across to Llanelli and Burry Port. And I just looked it up and found out you really can see Tenby from there on a clear day (it's the edge of the Pembrokeshire coast). We walked up it with the dogs on a few early mornings and also by ourselves (hard to stop for scenic sights with three Lurchers trying to bound off after sheep or rabbits).

It is commons land, so there are herds of sheep that wander up and along it and also a herd of wild horses that was often grazing up there. On our afternoon walk we were wandering back along the ridge when we spied another couple wandering very close to some of the horses (they had foaled, so there were several babies wandering with the herd) and then another family came along on the same path. Well the stallion decided that this was enough and we were treated (from a but farther up) to a remarkable display of stallion herding behavior ... he chased after the mares in a wide arch, with his head and neck out flat (which I read was like a mimicry of a snake, scary--and indeed it would worry me if he was coming after me like that), stamping, nipping, chasing the laggards and rounding the whole group (which had spread out pretty far) into a tight circle. Then he stood guard at the edge--keeping the mares in the circle and watching us humans.

So here are a few pics from Llanmadoc Hill.




Coming up a trail (through shoulder-high rain-wet bracken (ie. ferns) and gorse, the trail meets another road.





In this picture and the next you can see the inlet which is essentially north. There is a huge area of sand flats, dunes, a long stretch of pine wood (that used to be a municions test area) and a salt marsh where sheep and wild horses graze.




This is basically of the salt marsh, underwater. We went to the beach the next day and discoverd that high tide has an unpleasant aftereffect--sheep droppings all along the beach that floated in from the salt marsh!




Here is from our afternoon walk to the far end of the hill--that is looking out toward where Tenby would be.




And finally, past the gorse and heather--Wormshead!

Carrington in Chichester

I want to write a bit more about Llanmadoc, but we also had another fun adventure, the week after we got back to Swansea.

We found out in the Spring that there was going to be an exhibition of paintings by our favorite two painters in the whole world/over all time: Leonora Carrington and Rememdios Varo -- at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Pallant House is a museum endowed by Edward James, who was a Lord of some kind (I think) who had a taste for Surrealist art and acquired a large collection. The museum, in association with the government of Mexico, developed this exhibition.

Carrington was born in the UK, but at a very young age she fled her family's social demands (she was a debutante and supposed to behave and marry well) and went first to London to study painting, and then to Paris--where she met the Surrealists and fell in love with Max Ernst. She and Ernst were together for only a short time before the threat of the Nazi's interrupted their artistic romance. Ernst, as a German alien in France, ended up in a camp. He was released briefly but ended up back in a Nazi camp after the Germans invaded. Carrington stayed in France for a while but eventually was forced to flee to Spain. In Spain she had a breakdown and ended up in Santander Asylum. Her family meanwhile tried to get her designated insane and committed permanently in another asylum in order to try and mitigate her "damage" to the family name. She was released from Santander, managed to give her family's agent the slip, and got away. She married a Mexican diplomat in order to obtain a visa to be able to leave Europe. After some time in New York she went to Mexico City. There she divorced (it had been a marriage of convenience, for the visas) and later married Emerico Weisz, a photographer and expatriate Hungarian Jew.

In Mexico City she continued to paint and develop a truly unique artistic style and an amazing body of work. She is now considered a Mexican artist--though she also spends some time in the US each year. She is about 93, still working.

So consider this part one.

As a p.s. There was a contest to write 150 words about the story behind one of Carrington's paintings. There were 3 paintings, 3 chances. Christien and I both wrote little poems to go with the images. So I will include one here to go with the image of one of the paintings ....




Are you really Syrious?

It is a dawn sky, the first of summer. Sirius rises: flame, fire. He noses up from the underworld where for two months he scented out the tunnels and caves, tracking through the maze. Weaver webs his progress on a loom of sails, each line of feather-fine silk is a line of light that Sirius scored through the dark. And now he is returned. There are dances to be done, another mark to carve on the totem. The long nails of the dogs scratch patterns across the marble tiles. They will all go hunting soon. Rabbits, through the dew-damp flowers. Antelopes, through the tall bent grass. The dogs will chase the hard hot heartbeat, hearing it far off in the cool morning, following its echo down toward the waiting river.

Puppies, puppies

Quite behind as usual ...

So--we were house-sitting out on the Gower for two weeks. It was gorgeous. A lovely house, lots of light. Our bedroom had windows to the north and south. South was a great rising hill topped with cairn/ruins. North was the trailing arm of the dunes out toward the tidal inlet, and a skeletal metal lighthouse (which once went on auction for 1 quid--they just wanted someone to take responsibility for the place's upkeep).

Morning one was us waking up at quarter to 7, stumbling downstairs to make sure the dogs didn't need to burst out of doors. But no, Lurchers seem to be a little bit camel (in the opposite sense) and never in a huge rush to go out and pee in the garden. But they were quite keen to get out on their walk and we rushed out the door, unbrushed, half-dressed, trailing bits of dream and sleep in our wake and bounded up the hill top (gasping desperately for air). Lurchers are part greyhound, sleek, fast, strong. Even Bella, with her injury, was a handful. They pulled us up and down. They long to chase and heaven help the sheep, rabbit, or cat who dashes past their nose if we were to lose the leads. (We managed, sometimes painfully. I brusied a finger holding onto Lyra when she lurched after a cat on one of our evening walks.)

After that first scattered business we learned how to cope better--if not gaining the upper hand exactly, we made a sort of compromise with the dogs. I came down early, let them out, had tea and a few almonds. Christien came down a bit later after stretching, and then I went up to change for the walk. Much more coordinated and organized.

First round here I will post a few pics of the dogs ...

Sweet Bella, who broke her foot in February, had just started wearing an orthodic brace and taking longer (45 min) walks with the rest again.


Lyra is the rescue that was abandoned in a parking lot. She is very shy--but warmed up to us by our first walk that evening and by the end of our two weeks we were very close. She loved to play and fetch. Can't believe a person who abuse such a sweet creature.


Terran was the baby, antsy, energentic and wicked strong! She loved to run straight up the garden and straight back again ... forget fetching.