After Barcelona, Southern France, and Back

Six-Four-Les-Plages

Three days in Barcelona (see last post) is not nearly enough time to explore such a city, but we wanted to visit my cousin Michelle and family, in France. So, we drove about 6 hours up the Mediteranean coast to Toulon. Toulon did not make it on this map, but it is just east of Marseille.

Our destination was the house of my cousin Michelle, husband Remy and their two boys, Gaell and Dima. They live just outside of Toulons in a little village by the name of Six-Fours-Les-Plages. A typically long and elaborate European place name, clearly derived before television and computers diminished humans' memories and attention spans.

Like the region around the Mediteranean in Spain, this area has been settled, unsettled and resettled many times over many thousands of years, most notably within textbook history, by the Phonecians and Romans. The area is not quite mountainous, more like dramatically hilly, offering spectacular views over the sea. Six-Four refers to six lighthouses or look out positions from whence the dominating tribe could survey and control the sea traffic.

Les-Plages means beaches, and they have lovely ones. Here is one we went to. You can see in the distance some of those dramatic hills.

Here we all are the day we went to explore two medieval villages.

The first that we visited was very small and perched at the top of a rocky promontory among the mountains. It seemed to have grown out of the mountain.

There was not much space in this village for the living or the dead. This is a view from above of their grave yard.

And one of many glorious views from the village.

 

Probably the main attraction in this village is the Romanesque church that dates from the 1100's. (In case I got anything wrong here, stay tuned for Remy and Michelle's comments!)

We all liked the interior of this church. I felt immediately a calming presence. The children lit candles: Gaell and Dima for grandparents, and Iris for great grandparents.

From this lovely little village we went on to the larger and more commercialized

 Le Castellet:

Like most self-respecting medieval villages, you enter through an incredibly thick stone wall.

There were lots of quaint shops catering to the tourists, but this one particularly took our fancy with its many glass containers of concoctions from the region.

There is no end to the variety of olive oil that can be purchased.

These syrups are used to flavor drinks. They include rose, lavendar and fig.

Un déjeuner français

After a consideration of all the restaurants in the village, most of which catered to the tourists with simple items, Michelle found one that served a genuine french mid-day meal for a genuine french family (and cousins).

Here Gaell is mimicing the statue that demonstrates the rather odd name of the establishment "Pied de Nez", or "Foot of Nose"

Below: Not a fabulous picture of me and Matt, but I wanted to show the view from the restaurant which looked out over the valley. Over the hills and bit to the right would be the Mediteranean. Down there somewhere is  a vineyard that Matt and Remy visited the day before. Stay tuned for a guest post from Matt on that.

Here you have the menu:

Every french meal must include bread and, if after midday, red wine.

This was not on the menu, but we each were given this lovely little starter. I think it was an asparagus mousse.



 I had the most decorative first course, with layers of vegtables and a light creamy - something. Don't really know what!

But Matt had the most interesting. True to type, he ordered the chef's choice which started with fois gras with figs and confiture of onions. He regreted that later, but enjoyed it at the time.

Then came his main course. What is this called? It is a raw egg on top of beef that is "cooked" in, I think it is lime juice.



Remy had the fish

Between the raw meat and the eyes on the fish, our American girls might have left the table, if they hadn't been hungry and thouroughly enjoyed their steak and potatoes, which is what all the children had.


For dessert, the Chef's Choice was goat cheese with some very bitter greans and a mixture of figs and onions.



 Once again, the children did not eye Matt's meal with envy. They were delighted with their choclate mousse.

A hike along the Mediteranean.

Another highlight of our stay for me and Matt was a hike that we took with Remy on a steep hillside along the coast. This picture does not convey the perspective well. The water is many of hundreds of feet below.

Looking towards Six-Fours.

The wild flowers were fantastic.



Our destination was this ancient church overlooking the sea.



This St. Mary was one of my favorites, from a land with many, many St. Marys!

Vilanova, Spain

or, the dangers of not knowing Catalan

Sadly, we had to leave our cousins and make our way back to Madrid.Driving directly from Toulons would have taken about 15 hours, so we broke up the trip by staying for 2 nights in a little town on the coast south of Barcelona, Vilanova.

Vilanova is in the Catalonian region, where the local laguage is Catalonian, not exactly Spanish. Also, the town is not a major tourist destination for foreigners and they don't tend to know English well.

It is pretty much all about the beach in Vilanova.

It was a little cold for swimming, but Adele, Iris and I enjoyed an afternoon wandering about on the very wide beach. We made our way out to a breakwater where we were amused to read this sign. The first language is Catalan:

We got a good laugh from  THE DANGER IS THAT SUPPOSED PROHIBITED FROM PULLED THE BREAKWATERS.

Perhaps I ought to have given some thought to what that was actually supposed to mean. But no, I was much more interested in the odd, but impressive statue of a - guess it is a cow as it has an udder, but those horns do seem bull like.

I am not really sure what I think of this woman who seems to be washing her hair inside the cow, but it is very well exectuted.

I was also trying to get the perfect photo of Adele and Iris on the breakwater:

which Adele thought a bore and made faces at me until,

she noticed what seemed like a strangely large bump appoaching in the water

which suddenly became an extremely large wave, about to crash on Mom.

When I registered the expression on Iris's face, I turned and leaned toward the shore, or might have surely been FROM PULLED THE BREAKWATERS!! As it was, I was only soaked, and laughing hysterically from the shock, and the delight of not having been smashed and pulled into the sea.

Our second adventure was also due to the language gap. We went looking for a place to eat dinner, always a challange as Adele and Iris are not fond of the typical Spanish food, and the Spanish are not typically interested in other's food. Also, the restaurants open SO LATE! Usually 8:30 or 9:00. So, after considering the menus of every other restaurant we could find, we ended up at a place we had rejected because it was pretty expensive. But they did have a few things the girls might eat, and a lovely place with comfy chairs to sit while we waited for the dining room to open, at 9:00. Meanwhile we had some appetizers. By the time we went into the dining room, we were not terribly hungry and planned to order a light meal.

We decided to order a second course for each of us and just one first course, a variety of seafoods that the girls were not likely to even try. The waiter was unsure of our order. We thought because we were ordering just one first course. We assured him that yes indeed, that was all we wanted. Well the dishes just kept coming and coming. One serving was like this:



Bits of fried white fish, anchovies, calamarie, something like big crayfish,  and something we could not identify.





 But we had ordered 4! Mon Dieu! We were totally overwhelmed.  

Iris is surveying her portion.

Matt and I were too proud to send back empty plates, so I personally ate more calamary, anchovies and unidentified seafood than I thought I would eat - well, ever actually.




Matt and I were too proud to send back empty plates. So, I personally ate more anchovies, calamary and unidentified marine creatures than I thought I would - well, ever really.



We found ourselves making a lot of jokes about how much helpful it would be to have our cats back about then.

Matt managed to be philosophical about the fact that we were spending more on the first course than we normally would on an entire meal for the 4 of us.

And there you have it. The dangers of traveling in a country you don't know the language of. Or, perhaps worse, think you do know.

As always, if inspired, please leave a comment or send me a note: margotkimball@gmail.com