La plage

About 30 minutes from our home in Arles is a sweet little beach town called Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Given the current heat wave, we decided to make a break for it on Friday and see if we could avoid the weekend crowds.

I personally fell in love with this beach. We found an area that was somewhat protected from the wind (the mistral) and spent a few hours building an amazing sand castle, searching for shells, and occasionally splashing around in the surprisingly cold water.

There is some interesting history to Saintes-Maries, which results in pilgrimages a couple times a year, but the town itself is really touristy. We did find an amazing beachside restaurant where we had the best moules-frites we've ever had in our lives.

While my photos capture my experience of the day, David's photos are not to be missed (plus he got great pics of the turtle invasion at the sand castle!).

La Roquette

Right now there's a huge photography festival happening in Arles. All over town, museums, churches, and all sorts of public places have become temporary galleries. At night, sheets are hung from the walls and photos are projected onto them.

Our new friends Peter, Nathalie, and Eliot invited us to join them for an evening of festivities in a section of town called La Roquette. Because we had Anna with us, our evening ended just when things were heating up, but we had a great time until then. Another friend of theirs, Nina, was performing. She covered a lot of great songs, from Radiohead to Neil Young to Portishead.




Les Images sont a la Roquette (The pictures are at La Roquette).


The lovely Nathalie.


At the bar.


Eliot et la flamant rose (Eliot and the flamingo).


Every year 10,000 flamingos come to the Camargue. I'm guessing this isn't one of them, but perhaps he's a fan?




Little, tiny photos tied to a grate.


Yet another reason to love France — wine for $2 a glass (decent wine, for that matter!).


The man on the left is walking around with photos concealed under flaps on his sandwich board. The man on the right was cooking dinner and came out to have a look.


Only a French man can get away with this.


Or this.


Checking out the action.


Nina, la chanteuse.


A bed, on a purple carpet, in the middle of the square for resting on (or under) while enjoying the festivities.


This bar comes to you.


Selfie with the girl.

True Love

When Anna was a baby, my Dad would drive up from Eugene almost every week and take the two of us out to lunch. Anna would watch for him through the living room window, patiently waiting for his arrival.

He'd pull up in front of the house around noon and their special game would begin. Getting out of his car, he'd do an exaggerated tip-toe from bush to bush, pretending to hide from Anna while she got more and more excited inside. Eventually he'd pop up directly in front of her, on the other side of the window. She'd laugh and run to the door to meet him. He'd plop down on the couch and the two of them would begin an embrace that sometimes lasted for ten minutes. I've never seen her do that with anyone else, myself included.

Of course I think about my dad all the time, but the two times a year that I post about him (July 4 and December 5) are especially difficult. Looking through all the photos, waiting to see what memory jumps out at me, makes the loss so palpable. All the weeks without those lunches, all the years without…him.

My father died 6 years ago today.

I miss you, Dad.

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!