Home at Last

Our return trip threatened to undo the well-being we had achieved on vacation, but we arrived home in good spirits.

The train to Marseille airport, COVID tests, and night at the Best Western all went according to plan.  But our flight from Marseille to Amsterdam was delayed over an hour; after an attempted mad dash (during which we ran mistakenly through forbidden doors and ended up outside the secure area without having gone through passport control), we missed our connecting flight. Damn! Delta re-booked us on an alternate route -- but on the following day. 

I’ve been a fan of Delta airlines since 2018 when they so kindly handled re-bookings and refunds after a family death disrupted my travel plans. I remain a fan. For this situation, Delta gave us vouchers for food at the Schiphol airport, and for a night + dinner and breakfast at the nearby Hilton hotel. 

Although we didn’t love the delay, it worked out in a good way. For starters, the Hilton was upscale. We had a lovely room and good food, all gratis. Plus, it was the night of the Champions League fútbol final which I had thought I’d miss. But now we watched it in the hotel lobby bar, alongside two young Dutch fellows (ages 24 and 20). They both work for Hilton -- a different one -- and were hanging out at this one for a few hours to watch the match before leaving on their vacation to Malaga, Spain.   

They were personable extroverts with excellent English, interested in learning about us and describing their career plans to “grow with the company” at Hilton. Together, we watched the match (as well as the unfolding fake tickets debacle) and they bought us drinks on their employee discount.  We were stranded in Amsterdam in the best way.

We had figured we’d just mosey to the airport in the morning to catch our re-booked flight. Thank goodness we got there earlier than planned because navigating Schiphol was a fiasco.  It took us nearly 2 hours to get through security and whatnot, and that was WITHOUT having to deal with our luggage (which had been retained by the airport). Our flight was boarding by the time we got through it all. 

 

I had some worry that our negative COVID tests might have expired by then but, whew, nobody called us on that. We settled into our seats for the 10-hour flight and never looked back.

I hope to make one or two more posts for this blog series – a few more photos and, possibly, some video clips if I can figure out how to post them to you-tube and link from here.Check back if you can, and thanks for following along!

Path of Least Resistance

The other day, I flashed on a bit of family lore: as a teen, my brother gave up on the French language upon learning that after the number sixty-nine, the French re-package prior numbers’ words in order to keep counting.  Seventy, for example, is soixante-dix (sixty-ten), Eighty is quatre-vingts (four twenties) and Ninety is quatre-vingt-dix (four twenties and ten).  Any language that can’t be bothered to come up with sufficent numbers-words, he concluded, isn’t worthy of further study.

Then I also remembered one of Steve Martin’s bits – the one where he pokes fun at Americans expecting everything to be ‘their way’ when traveling abroad

Which is to say that there remains a fundamental disconnect between how the French and American brains operate. To be direct, the French can be infuriating to travelers accustomed to American (or Irish) style service.

Having understood that the French appreciate even feable attempts at speaking their language, I tried deploying my limited French and met mixed results.  Some people impatiently cut me off, demanding Speak English! Others just got loud and eye-rollee.

I hasten to add that we encountered a number of approachable and helpful French travel industry workers. But we encountered an equal number of stand-offish people who seemed to be offended at the very suggestion that we even ask for service at a bar or restaurant.  Here, the customer is not always right.  Indeed, the prevailing attitude seems to be that we travelers should do whatever makes it easiest for them.  I can’t count how many times we were told  it would be better for us if you did this.

My favorite example : While discussing our last-day transfer arrangements with bike tour coordinator, Fabienne, we said we needed to end up at Marseille airport and asked how best to get there.  From the TVG train station in Avignon, she advised, so we bought train tickets accordingly, while she arranged a taxi to take us there from Fontaine de Vaucluse.

The taxi ride took around 45 minutes, and we found our train with no problem.  Once on it, however, we realized it was heading to Marseille by way of Fontaine de Vaucluse.  So we drove 45 minutes to catch the exact same train we could have caught at a station within a few miles of our hotel.   

Why didn’t she just tell us that ?   Here’s why: because it was easier for her (and also, probably, a good gig for the taxi driver. )

 

 

 

Catching Up

 I’m writing this while on the train traveling back to the Marseille airport to get COVID tested. If all goes well, we’ll board our flight(s) home tomorrow after spending the night at a good ol’ Best Western hotel adjacent to the airport. In the event anyone was pining for blog updates, well, sorry to keep you waiting but we had dismal hotel WiFis, especially the last one. I think I have lots to spill by now so I’ll split this update into several parts or posts so readers can pick and choose.

Locales: After leaving the tiny town of Les Baux, we rode to the almost-as-tiny town of Fontaine de Vaucluse, where we stayed for three nights at the Hotel du Poete.  Although that hotel name caught my attention months ago, I had neglected to read up on it. As it turns out, it is named in honor of the poet Petrarch (yes! of sonnet fame) who apparently fell in love with a woman in Avignon, disliked Avignon itself, and eventually decamped to Fontaine de Vaucluse which he reportedly adored. (read about Petrarch in FdV) 

The town is the origin of a natural spring that does not trickle, but ROARs through town (and through the grounds of our charming hotel) and feeds the Sorgue River. There is a walking path from town to the source which looks like a big blue bowl.

The spring/river flows with a tremendous amount of crystal-clear water – as drought fearing Californians, we couldn’t get over it.  Our hotel room was one floor up overlooking a gushing tributary and the resident duck couple. The gushing was so loud we had to keep the window closed to talk or watch tv.  

It occurred to me that other people touring these extraordinary tiny towns actually intended to visit them – probably pored over a guidebook and picked out the gems. But we were just following our cycle tour and had no idea. I made a big fool of myself at Les Baux by asking our hotel reception lady if there was someplace we could buy a coke and other dumb inquiries.  It was only after walking the towns and reading our guidebook that I got a clue.  

 

Cycling:  The riding has taken us through some beautiful territory, especially the last two days when we rode through the beautiful towns of Gordes and Roussillon on Wednesday, and Venasque on Thursday.

All of these are hill-top towns (for lookout and defense purposes back-in-the-day, I assume) so it’s always a climb to reach the tiny towns-proper where there are cafes, shops, tourists, and spectacular views over agricultural valleys. Our weather has been favorable: mild temps and a little breeze.

We saw plenty of other cyclists. It’s easy to tell the locals, kitted out on their high-quality road bikes. Most other riders – obviously on self-guided tours like ours – are on e-bikes.  We opted for our tour company’s standard offering of Cannondale hybrid style bikes (flat handlebars, wider tires), and for our routes this was certainly the right choice. We often found ourselves riding on paved but pot-holed pathways through orchards or vineyards. A road bike would have been tricky to maneuver.

 

The GPS unit provided by the tour company was essential. Although it performed well and was easy to use, we still felt vulnerable at first. Why?  Because they gave us only one unit to share. No back-up in case anything went wrong. We carried our phones but I learned days ago that it’s when you need it most that your cell signal sucks and all you get on google translate is a spinning wheel, or on google maps is a blue dot on a blank screen.

There  would be absolutely no way to find your way around without the GPS, especially since the bike routes clearly incorporated all sorts of local-knowledge on un-named backroads and paths. We had only one white-knuckle moment with the GPS. On our second-to-last day, when we were almost finished with our route, we stopped and spent around 20 minutes in a grocery store. The unit timed out and when we re-activated it, it took a while to re-orient. Then it seemed like it was starting us on the day’s route all over again. We kept riding on hope and faith, and it all turned out well. But yikes.

That’s it for today.  Stay tuned . . .