Our first two days in Provence

We made it! I haven’t had a chance to upload this until the Monday after our arrival (for reasons that will become apparent below), but we arrived without major incident and are loving our stay. I say that we arrived without major incident because traveling this distance requires quite a bit of stamina.

Automobile, Plane, Train, Automobile, BED!

We set out for our friend Sharon's house at noon on Friday. Thanks to her willingness to play taxi driver, we got curb-side service to O'Hare and were relieved of the hassles and expense of parking at this busy airport.

Our flight was of course delayed, so we weren't in the air until 6:15 PM Friday. We arrived in Paris at 9 AM the next morning. Although the sun told us otherwise, our confused internal clocks insisted we were still on Milwaukee and it was 2 AM. Four hours later (6:00 AM according to our progressively sleep-crazed brains) we boarded the train that was to take us from Paris to Toulon, in the south of France. The photo to the right is taken in our train car.

We were met coming off the train in Toulon by Pauline, who, with her husband Alan, is caretaker for the property. They drove us the last 30 minutes to our villa in the hills overlooking La Londe and the Mediterranean.

I would recommend taking the train from Paris to the south of France to anyone. It will be an enjoyable ride back to Paris; especially since we will have had a considerably more sleep than on the way south!

A friend had tipped us off to book a first class train car, and that was a smart idea. We were the most exhausted in those last hours of our trip, and traveling in extra comfort was a huge help, especially for Julie. It was a delight to watch the countryside slide past us while eating the best meal of our 17 hours of travel – a poulet salade sandwich from the dining car.

Riding the train was a treat. Catching the train was not. We arrived at the Paris train station with several hours to spare, but the station is not particularly easy to navigate if you don't understand the language (in fairness, I’m sure Chicago’s Union Station is just as confusing to those who don’t understand English). Comprehending what we needed to do in order to board the proper train was quite a challenge to our jet-lag addled brains.

It was also a lesson in the odd French affection for long queues.

One line (of many to come) lasted 30 minutes. I was impressed at how patient everyone was as they stood with us watching civil servants behind desks. I’m sure these people are fine individuals, good to their parents and loyal to their friends. But their level of commitment to the job at hand is one I have only attained after taking too large a dose of Vicodin.

All down the long line of desks, agents were discussing tickets and schedules with travelers in what appeared to be slow motion, each transaction orchestrated to further shake your confidence in getting free before your train pulls away. To make matters more challenging, when I finally did get to the front of the line, I got none of the languorous back-and-forth, stamping and filing routine I’d been observing before me. Perversely, seeing everyone else receiving lengthy instructions and ticket-stampings gave me hope that once I reached my turn there would be a rewarding sheaf of red tape in store for me as well. This would somehow be gratifying. Instead, the woman behind the counter told me in broken English that my ticket was in order, and sent me to a platform number. How anticlimactic!

What’s more, she sent me to a platform that didn't exist (could she really have said 406, when there is only a platform Four and another platform Six?). What followed this revelation were two other train station employees giving us other conflicting directions.

I've spent much of my adult life catching buses and planes, but I've never been more relieved to finally find myself on the correct ride, at the proper time, heading in the desired direction.

Several of France’s greatest philosophers and thinkers wrote about the general futility and meaninglessness of life. After waiting in many of France’s impressively winding and glacial queues I can definitely relate. But conversely, I realize that this vacation has already taught me an important lessen -- in the only manner possible, I suppose, considered the advanced nature of my ignorance. It has taught me that the upscale American practice of hurrying, planning and struggling are all distractions from life, not means to discovering it.

Lunch hours in this part of the country run well into the afternoon, and weekends are selfishly guarded leisure times. Perhaps this is why standing in line isn’t such a hardship for the French. After a surprisingly brief amount of time in this country, I’m coming around to their way of thinking.

Posting This Blog, Resetting Our Clocks

Our villa has every manner of electronics – several large, flat-screen televisions, a Bose sound system wired throughout the compound, DVD players in every major common area.

But no internet connection. None. Correction! Later I learned that I did have access to a dial-up connection. Ian, our host, mentioned that better internet access is on its way as well. That's a smart idea for any vacation property, in my opinion. Even one in the "land of the sprawling queues."

Thus the need to find an internet café to send this blog post off. And because we arrived on a Saturday, and nearly everything in the nearby towns shuts down tight until Monday, I’m not actually finishing this post until two days into our stay.

It has been time well-spent. I can say that the advice I received from a friend was quite sound. She suggested we stay awake during the flight over, fighting the urge to sleep. Two days after this “clock-resetting,” I feel like I am fully acclimated -- without really skipping a beat.

Staying awake during my flight would have been far more difficult if I hadn’t been so engrossed in a wonderful novel. I managed to read it in its entirety while in the air, finishing the last few pages just as we touched down in Paris. The book is Eleven Minutes by the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. The novel is one of these two things: Either it’s the most spiritual story of sex I’ve ever read, or the most explicitly sexual spiritual book I’ve ever read. Many of the lessons that the protagonist, a Brazilian prostitute working in Geneva, Switzerland, are extremely Buddhist. It’s a beautiful book I already plan to reread.

Our First Sunset in Provence

By 6 PM on Saturday we were in our villa but too weary to do much other that snap a few photos and tuck into the food that our host's son left for us before he moved on a few days earlier. It was a feast. As we sat on one of the many terraces of this hillside haven, we watched the sun set and ate a meal of smoked salmon, pasta with red sauce, and for “dessert,” a baguette with chicken pate. Our wine was a chilled rose from a neighboring vineyard. The photos below show our view while we ate, the plastic glass of rose at my feet. (All photos can be explanding by clicking on them.)

This last photo is the hillside the next morning, as the sun was rising. Exquisite.