I love a good necropolis

I've written before about the days I spent with my dad, traveling around the country in a Dodge van during summers in the 1970s. What I don't think I've mentioned is that we loved to stop at old cemeteries and look at the gravestones and mausoleums. We'd read the names and dates inscribed, and speculate about the people whose lives (or deaths) we were glimpsing. 

Yesterday Anna, David and I went to Les Alyscamps, a Roman necropolis that was used for 1500 years. From wikipedia:

“Roman cities traditionally forbade burials within the city limits. It was therefore common for the roads immediately outside a city to be lined with tombs and mausoleums; the Appian Way outside Rome provides a good example. The Alyscamps was Arles' main burial ground for nearly 1,500 years. It was the final segment of the Aurelian Way leading up to the city gates and was used as a burial ground for well-off citizens, whose memorials ranged from simple sarcophagi to elaborate monuments.”

Anna had a great time climbing and playing on the ruins until we entered the earily dark chapel. It was made especially creepy by some experiments that were being conducted involving pouring fog into the place. That, combined with the noises the resident pigeons were making, was enough for her to tear out of the place vowing never to return!

Neighbors

Here at Mas Thomassy we have a few unusual neighbors. One of them is a feral cat, who seems to depend on us for food and water left on our kitchen window sill. She's very sweet, but timid. There was food left at the house for us to put out for her, along with an invitation to do so if we desired. Of course Anna volunteered right away.

Our other very special neighbors are two Camargue taureaus (small horses). The horses are born brown, but over the years become lighter and lighter until they become pure white. The pair on the property behind us are two males, one age twenty, the other just one year old.

Welcome to Mas Thomassy

One thing I've learned in the few years we've been doing house swaps is that there's a certain amount of ambiguity I need to be okay with. That certain amount is a lot. A. Lot. That said, here we are. After 28 hours of travel which alternated between seeming very smooth and really not, we are in our new home.

A bit of history about Mas Thomassy: A mas is a Provencal farmhouse. The oldest part of this mas dates back to 1447. From the 15th century until 1960 it was a 77-acre winery, making “vin de table”.

In 1996 the current owners bought the property which was, by then, practically in ruins. Over time, the property became shared by three generations. In addition to the main house, there are 3 attached barns. In the first is son Jammy and his wife and two teenaged sons. In the second is daughter Nathalie, and her husband, Peter and 4-year-old daughter, Nelson. In the third is Nathalie's grown son.

We are staying in the home of Nathalie, Peter and Nelson. Peter happens to be a green architect and he spent two years gutting and rebuilding their barn into a modern apartment. His sensibility and attention to detail is gorgeous. We couldn't be happier with our temporary home.

We've only been here two days, so these are just a few first photos to give you a brief look around. Tomorrow is the big marché, where the entire main street is closed for the weekly market. Needless to say, we're very excited to check it out!

Trading spaces

This summer, for the third time in six years, we're participating in a home exchange. The first two times (winter of 2008 and summer 2012) were both in Northern France, in a town called Rouen, in Normandy. This summer we're heading south, to the Mediterranean town of Arles, in Provence.

Whenever people hear that were doing a home exchange, they ask a lot of questions about the details: how we find swaps, how we work out the details, if we worry about our stuff, etc. 

Here, in a nutshell, are my answers:

How do we find swaps?

Our first swap was pure chance. I was looking for a French class on the Portland Alliance Francaise website and noticed a little ad mentioning that an instructor with the school was looking for a swap for her parents, who lived in Rouen. It happened that they wanted to come during the winter holidays and that Anna was young enough then that time of year (i.e. school schedule) wasn't an issue yet. The same family contacted us three years later to ask if we'd be available to swap again, this time in summer. We gladly accepted that offer as well.

Now, I do have to point out that my own personal philosophy comes into play here. It is this: if the universe (or a random French family) offers you an opportunity, you take it and figure out the logistics later. I'm a firm believer in saying “YES!”

This year I decided to go ahead and sign up on HomeExchange.com. One nice thing about these kinds of websites is that they allow you to be very specific about what you're looking for. We are willing to consider any destination, which gives us a lot more opportunities, but we're only available in the summer.

We received a lot of inquiries through HomeExchange.com, but most of them didn't really fit our interests or timing. Then I heard from Peter, whose location sounded great but the timing was off. Nonetheless we corresponded and it turned out he was flexible with the timing. A little bit more talking and a house swap in Arles for this summer was arranged. :-)

How do we know it's legit?

Honestly, we don't. Here's where trusting your gut comes into play. There's a certain amount of due diligence that one can put in (asking for, and calling, other folks they've swapped with, for example), but you really can't know for sure. There is always the possibility that when we get where we're going, it won't be what we were expecting. That said, so far those types of issues have been minor, and always unintentional (like the bizarre bathtub issue we had in 2008!) Ultimately it's chalked up to part of the adventure, and is always something we laugh about later.

How can we afford it?
The biggest advantage we have is that David is able to work remotely. The first time we swapped, David and I were both freelancers, and we both had active client work we took with us on the trip. Currently David is an employee at the fabulous iovation, and they've understood and supported our desire to have this flexibility (thanks, Kurk!).

Because we're trading homes (and cars), the expenses stay very much the same as at home. We continue to pay our mortgage, utilities, etc., and our hosts pay theirs. Where it can (and does) get expensive is with plane tickets. In the few years we've been doing this we've seen costs rise dramatically. That said, we've found a few workarounds:

• Frequent flyer tickets: We have, and use, Delta Amex cards. Delta partners with Air France, so we've been able to accumulate miles over the years. Of the six tickets we've had to France over the past years, I believe we've only paid for 2 of them.
• This year we had some major sticker shock looking for tickets, so we decided to try the new website,  FlightFox.com. Their angle is that they make a game out of your travel plans, inviting “experts” to compete to find the best rate/route for you. They claim to save most folks an average of 30%. We took a chance and paid their $24 fee, which definitely paid off — ultimately they saved us over $1,000. Yes, we have two layovers instead of one, and it's not on Delta so we won't get those frequent flier miles (we will get them on British Airways, however). But for a $1000 savings it was well worth it to us. 
• Consolodators: Through FlighFox we learned of ticket consolidators, specifically GetAwayASAP.com. Though their tickets are nonrefundable, the savings are impressive.

Don't we worry about our stuff?
In a word, no. This is an easy one for us, but I think very difficult for most folks. Doing this has really brought home the idea that our stuff is just stuff. That said, shit happens. Things can and do get broken, and that goes both ways. We did some minor damage to our host's car last summer and we felt terrible. We explained the situation, had them get an estimate to fix the damage, and paid up. It was a bummer for everyone, but no one was hurt and no one was angry.

The one thing we do worry about is our cats. So far we've asked that whomever stays here takes care of them, and that hasn't been a problem, yet. I wouldn't let our cats be a dealbreaker as far as working out a swap, but it would definitely be harder to pull off with someone who couldn't, or wouldn't, be okay with them staying at home.

So now what?
Well, we're off to Arles for two months this summer (late June to late August). We've never been to that part of France and really didn't know much about it, but it sounds amazing. Roman architecture dating from the 5th-6th centuries, the Camargue (a marshland populated with wild horses and flamingoes), and the quality of light made famous by Van Gogh (he made over 300 paintings there, including Starry Night and The Night Café). I'll be blogging about this new adventure, which promises to be very different than our times in Normandy. Arles is very much a Mediterranean town, with a population made up from Northern Africa and Spain as well as the French.

I first posted the quote below last June, but it really sums up my attitude about these adventures, and about life in general. I hope you've found some inspiration here for cliff jumping:


“Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.”
— Ray Bradbury

Happy travels!

70

My dad would have been 70 today. I can remember him talking about how weird would be to be 70, back when he was 64 and thought he could outwit his body indefinitely.

I have little ways of dealing with the gaping hole of his loss; little games I play with myself. One of them is not to look very closely at those folks who, out of my peripheral vision, look a little like him. I'll see someone, or more accurately some part of someone, and I'll let myself pretend, just for a moment, that my dad is there. The curl where their hair meets their collar can do it every time.

And I still have those crazy dreams — the ones where I know my dad is dead, and yet here we are talking. And I can tell it's really deep and meaningful and then I wake up and remember nothing. I'm just left with the feeling that we had a really amazing visit. I'm still not convinced that those are just dreams.

A few weeks ago, I came across a previously undiscovered box of old photos and other ephemera from my dad's family. There were scraps of paper that belonged to my great grandfather, my grandfather, my grandmother, my dad. Gone, gone, with only the bits and pieces left behind. I savored every minute of sifting through out-of-focus photographs of people I didn't recognize, my father's elementary school report cards ("talks too much"), and a few real gems. Among them are the photos here. I'd never seen them before, and I absolutely adore them. I love how in the series at the top my dad is cut off in every single photo. So classic of bad, old pics and yet I love the quirkiness of them now.

And this last photo of my dad and I when I was about 21. I don't remember ever seeing this image before, but it says it all.

Dad, you have my heart. I hope one day you hand it back to me.

Take-aways from our summer abroad

At the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris.

We've been back from Europe for a week now, but it feels like longer. Funny how that works. The 7 weeks there feel like a dream already. There are several things though that I've brought back with me: things that I want to hold on to.  In no particular order, they are:

Be less busy. Without realizing it, we completely changed our pace to match those of our friends in Europe. It's easy to do when you don't have school, camps, work, and other commitments. Coming back and seeing how overbooked (and often stressed) our friends are here makes me realize I don't want to get back on that treadmill.

Linger over meals with friends. Every single meal we had with our friends in Europe lasted hours. With kids, regardless of their age. There was no stress, no pressure: just good food, good wine, and good company (thank you Curtis & Leila, Eric & Rebecca, Clinton & Chavi, Anne & Theirry!). This one will be harder, because it depends on our friends here to try to let go a bit and relax the pace. We'll see if anyone's willing to play.

Be inspired. Man oh man was it great to immerse myself in art again. I've got a tendency towards art snobbery and so I don't bother much in Portland with museums, galleries, etc. And, in reality, there's nothing here that compares to the museums in Paris or Barcelona. But there is inspiration to be found, and I need to make more of an effort to find it.

Walk more. For 7 weeks I didn't worry about what I ate or drank. I ate tons of amazing cheese, patisserie, wine/cider, butter. I also walked an average of 20 hours a week, with a major hill every single day. I didn't do yoga or pilates or the elliptical. I also didn't gain an ounce. In order to make the time for this, I have to honor my first goal of not being so busy. It was easy to walk for hours when I had no where I had to be at any particular time.

Be late. I am chronically early. I am also chronically stressed out about being late. The truth is, I am never late, and my stress about doesn't help anything. In Europe, everyone's late. So much so that I had to force myself to wait 15 minutes past the time our friends told us to come for dinner just so that we'd be late enough to be socially acceptable! (It was really hard.) In truth, I'll probably rarely be late anywhere, but if I try to be late maybe I'll be on time and less stressed/rushed. And if I'm late to meet you somewhere, I apologize in advance (and you should congratulate me!).

Julia for a day

Julienne of leeks and carrots.

Last week, our good friend Eric invited us to dinner at his house. His father, Michel, was in town visiting and they offered to make a special meal for us. Michel happens to be a chef and teaches at a French cooking school, so we were especially excited to accept their invitation.

When making our plans for dinner, I asked if it would be possible to observe part of the meal preparation, or maybe do some prep work for Michel. Several days later Eric got back to me to discuss plans for the menu. Eric mentioned several courses, all of which sounded both fabulous and totally new to me. Then I was told that I should plan on arriving without David or Anna, four hours before dinner.

At this point I should mention that neither my French nor Michel's english are fluent, and that I was totally intimidated. But Michel is a sweetheart and didn't wince once as I clumsily attempted the various tasks he set aside for me. Let's just say I did more observing than actual cooking, but I learned a ton and can't wait to reproduce everything I learned (except, of course, the decorative handwork done to turn fruits and vegetables into things like flowers and baskets. That remains beyond my capabilities!)

In the blink of an eye, a carrot becomes a rose.

Grapefruit basket with carrot and mushroom blossoms and parsley. He made this for Anna, just because.

Preparing the insides of les aumenieres ("monk's pouches": pastry filled with shrimp, scallops, braised leeks and carrots.

Les aumenieres are tied with strips of blanched leeks.

David and Eric, waiting patiently by the kitchen door.

A final brushing of butter before going in the oven. I'm not even going to tell you how much butter was used in this meal! By the way, butter from Normandy is the best in France. True story. It's its own food group.

Anna's seat, complete with lily made from fennel and carrot, her basket, and the menu she wrote for each of us.

French radishes with butter and salt before the meal.

Pretty.

Plating and saucing.

From upper left, aumenieres served with a sauce made from shrimp shells and heads, whisky (which was set on fire), white wine, saffron, tomato sauce, garlic and carrots; zucchini drums filled with a garlic cream made from tons of garlic which was cooked 3 times to reduce pungency; potato pancake; eggplant cakes made with too many things to list here, which were cooked in moulds and then topped with a tomato confit. It was all crazy good.

A selection of cheese Michel chose for us. Cheese here is also its own food group!

We finished the meal with assorted pastries David, Anna and I brought from our favorite patisserie. And yes, you can come over for dinner!