I was seduced by travel when it was from Eastern Oregon in The Dalles to Portland to Taft—on the coast, on the edge, so I’m gong to pack as much exploration of the world into my life as I can. Linny, too, has wanted to visit some of the places our families came from and places they never imagined visiting. We started realizing that our urge to explore was easily compromised—usually by economics or schedules—but we’re frugle and creative. Of course it's usually related to lack of means, but lack of time made traveling and discovering more expensive. A big chunk of every intercontinental trip was spent simply getting to and from—and recovering from the journeys. This was the trip that gave us momentum. Almost a month. Unheard of for either of us in our entire worklives, not counting times of unemployment. We decided is was a second honeymoon.
We had a friend in Barcelona, another in Paris, and good Portland friends had given us wonderful ideas for France. We rented a car in Avignon, explored Pont du Gard and the haunts of Vincent van Gogh in Provence. We spent a day or two in Arles. Then we drove to Séte, followed by Collioure and Port-Vendres on our way to Girona and Barcelona and, finally, Cordona, which is the site of a much-reduced mountain of salt that was jealously mined by the Romans when they were boss.
Our trip back to Avignon to drop the car and catch a train to Paris gave us a taste of Montpellier, but a bigger taste of an historic monsoon that dumped something like 15 inches of rain in half a day on the Rhone Valley. Not good. Rather terrifying. There was enormous damage to roads, vineyards, and other crop lands. We were on the M-6 coming back to Avignon from Spain to drop the rental car and catch our reserved TGV seats to Paris to fly home. That's when the storm hit. Traffic was soon barely moving at the rate that the taillights ahead were still visible. Too close. We were really under water. There was no safe visibiity, and the radio informed us that there was no exit. But this was not a play, although certainly dramatic.
Radio reports came that many on- and off-ramps to the A9 toll highway we were on were washed away. Fortunately, we had plenty of diesel and a good radio. Nevertheless, it felt apocalyptic.
But I've jumped ahead of the story.
From Paris to Avignon
27 August 2002
Our flight was another of our interminable journeys using Alaska Airline’s frequent flyer program. Plan everything as tightly as possible. Start phoning them exactly at the moment that your desired date opens. If you’re lucky, you get to leave when you want, but you might need three more flights to reach your destination. For getting anywhere in Europe, that was 20 to 24 hours of hectic travel, followed by a day of being toast. So, we planned on losing a day of our total at each end. And that’s not including any travel after we land or while we recover. But if that’s on SCNF’s TGV, your life has just been upgraded.
We’d made friends with a couple from Alaska on their frist trip to France after sitting with them in the international departure lounge in Seattle. That helped, and when we dragged ourselves off the plane in Paris, we all appreciated figuring out together what to do next. We got ourselves downtown to Gare du Est, since none of us had realized we could catch a direct train at the airport. It was OK. All of us needed to catch our breath. At the train station, we watched each other's luggage while everyone used the tiny showers downstairs. Then we parted company. We were on our way to Avignon and they were headed elsewhere. As I recall, she had a candle making business. I cannot remember what he did, nor their names, but a warm friendship of the road.
We were ready to enjoy the ride. We did.
Right off the bat, we applied the big lesson of our 1990 TGV ride to Dijon with Linny's parents. We figured out which way we’d be traveling and reserved seats facing forward. I was thrilled when we did it backward, but I didn't want a repeat of scenery receding at 160 mph again. Remarkably, as we scorched through the countryside, some elements were familiar, actually recall. We were comfortable, the weather was absolutely beautiful. It was late summer, but it felt vibrant and lush. Crops were rotating in. Fields being plowed. The identifying steeples of village churches stood above the surrounding groves of trees. Flying without leaving the ground.
Almost too soon, we were there. The shuttle bus took us from le gare to the city gate. The Reginal Hotel was just up the Rue de la République toward the Palais des Papes. For no reason I can find, I thought of San Francisco—the city, not the saint. It might have been the vibe of SF row houses that the main drag’s hotels and shops gave off. I might have just been sleep-deprived.
No matter. We were stretched paper-thin from disrupted circadian rhythms and troubled digestion. Here it was morning again, after 23 hours of travel. I can’t recall if either of us dozed on the TGV, but don’t think we did. It was an exciting part of the journey. Zombies, though we were.
Our room, arranged in advance and without much guidance, was inexpensive by virtue of age and condition. It seemed clean. Our small en suite chambre had a bedside window opening onto la Rue. We were on the 1st (2nd) floor, and our view was lovely, enticing, but so were the shower and bed. We turned the ceiling fan on high, and despite significant street noise, nodded into deep sleep.
We roused ourselves with a chance of catching an hour of daylight, and then watching night fall over Avignon. We wanted dinner outside somewhere, but not at one of the string of restaurants catering directly to the tourists visiting the Palais. We could see that morass from our window. The lights were pretty around the outdoor seating, but we knew the prices would be high and the offerings bland. There were smaller side streets to explore. In one direction, the older city; in the other, the newer, with fancier shops and more amenities. We took the first route first.
In the morning we drove in a meandering fashion toward Arles. We wanted to see the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence where Van Gogh stayed, and we were open to serendipity. We were, as usual, on the lookout for someplace to either have coffee or eat lunch.
