France 2021
I have taken this sabbatical semester to have a lot of fun traveling through Europe, but also to finish writing a e-book on Environmental Geology, class notes on California Geology, and a detailed plan for establishing a course in Field Limnology. I figured that I could do this anywhere with my laptop and an internet connection, so why not do it in a beautiful place like the Côte d’Azur in Southern France? Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez, or Monaco would be perfectly good places for an author seeking inspiration. Fortune had it that DJ’s godfather, Randal, owns a studio in Cannes, and very generously agreed to let me use it as my base of operations.
I flew into Nice, rented a car, and an hour later I was in Cannes, looking at the very building Randal had shown me in photos. It has secure gates and doors that open when the token in my key-chain is pressed against the sensor, and I knew the studio was in the ground floor, but outside of that my recollection on how to find the apartment was rather tenuous. “The first on the left” stuck in my mind, so I went to the first door on the left, entered a corridor with maybe 10 apartments (none of them labeled with a convenient number or the name of the tenant) and tried my key. Hmm … no … it doesn’t fit. Then I got concerned that is the tenant was there he or she would be alarmed if someone tried to open the door. So I went down the row of apartments, looking only at those that would have a type of key like the one I had in my hand. Whenever I found one I would ring the bell, ready to apologize; if there was no answer then I tried the key. In this way I went through the whole ground floor of the first of the four buildings. Nada! So then I proceeded to the second building and to my infinite delight saw, on the door of the first apartment on the left, a tiny little label that announced “Randal Bazzano, Feature Film Producer”. I had arrived!
The studio is at a perfect location, a couple of blocks from the public library and the supermarket, and across the park one finds the Arab part of town with delightfully mysterious shops and restaurants. Just a little farther is the train station, and on the other side of the tracks are the two or three blocks of the shopping district just before you get to the beach promenade. As seen from the beach, Cannes looks like an enormous, eclectic resort, where folks have their small rooms with the understanding that the only worthwhile activity here is to come to the beach, which is beautiful, public, and open to all. The day was overcast, but I still saw a few hardy souls bathing and trying to catch the few sunrays that came through the clouds.
I quickly adjusted to my live as an eccentric author, setting up my computer and surrounding myself with basic creature comforts. I discovered, much to my chagrin, that there is no internet service in the building, so tomorrow Monday I will have to go to the public library to work. Speaking of basic comforts, since all I have is a tiny fridge I adopted the strategy of buying just the bare necessities for one day at a time. Accordingly, after a good couple of hours at work I decided to stand up, stretch, and go shopping for a baguette, a bottle of wine, and a Terrine de Lapin for my dinner. I had just paid, and was putting the change inside my wallet, when the skies opened and water started coming down in torrents. Fortunately I had brought my umbrella, so I put everything down on an empty cashier stand and dug my umbrella out ready for rushing home.
The following morning was nice and sunny, and with a happy heart I went down to the public library only to find out that they were closed Sunday and Monday. Rats! I was so close to the market that I thought I could stop there to buy a bottle of water, but when I felt for my wallet in my right back pocket found I had forgotten it at the house. So I trudged up the hill to retrieve it and … nothing. I had no recollection of having pulled it out of my pants, but I still did a thorough search without results. Now my pockets are deep, the pants are reasonably tight, and no one had brushed against me, so I was pretty sure it had not been stolen … but wait … there was that moment when I put all the stuff I was carrying down to pull my umbrella … oh, no, I could almost see myself putting my shopping bags and my wallet at the cashier stand and then bolting under the rain. I am sure this is when I left my wallet behind.
I promptly went back to the supermarket, where I was sure they had found my wallet and had it waiting for me. Alas, it was not to be. Then I went to the local police station and again drew a blank. Finally I went to the big police station, in downtown, where the lost-and-found department is located, but there again I found nothing. At that point I realized that what I had avoided through more than 50 years of travel had finally occurred: I was in a foreign land, alone, and without money, driving license, debit card, or credit cards!
So what did I have? My passport, about 10 euros in coins, a good place to stay, food for maybe two days, and a cell phone that I could communicate with my daughter! The situation was not so dire after all. I promptly messaged Faby the news and asked her to cancel the cards and order new ones and 5 hours later, just as she was waking up she answered to tell me that the cards had been cancelled but my bank wanted to talk to me before they could issue new ones. What a pain in the butt, particularly since bank never pick up the phone, and when you finally reach them they put you on hold for hours. In the meantime we had figured out that she could send me money via Western Union and I could pick it up the following day at La Poste. The 9 hour time difference was a bit of an inconvenience, but the following day I came back in business with 500 euros in my pocket and a photograph of my drivers license that I found in my computer. I had a very good working day, accomplished a lot, and by nightfall I celebrated with a glass of wine and a morsel of chocolate I had saved for the fourth day of a starvation diet.
The next two days I recklessly spent driving first south and then north of Cannes along the Côte d’Azur. I say recklessly because I was all two aware that having a digital photo of your driving license might not be, in the eyes of the police, the same as having a driving license. But I only had my yoke-yellow Twingo for four more days, and unless I get a copy of my driving license sometime soon I will be unable to rent another car for the rest of my European stay.
On the way south from Cannes (limestones faulted against a knoll of potassium feldspar-quartz-muscovite-garnet gneiss) I went through Théoule-sur-Mer, and its red cliffs (continental red beds), Fréjus, Sainte-Maxime (marls), and at last reached the famed Saint-Tropez. All of them are fantabulous cities, and I rather liked Saint-Tropez because it still looks like an old fishermen’s town, with small houses aligned along narrow streets (and apparently occupied by the most exclusive boutiques you could imagine). A perfect sunny day.
The following day, on the way north, I had a clear view of the Maritime Alps (limestones, shales, and metamorphic rocks that have experienced the ultimate in structural deformation) and went through Antibes, Nice, Monaco (the ol’ prince is doing alright, but it was a bit too much luxury for a country bumpkin like me), Menton (which I rather liked), and eventually crossed the Italian border into San Remo. Around Monaco I felt like 007 as I screeched my tires around the tight curves of mountain roads that clung to the impossibly steep coastal cliffs, with amazing views of the blue Mediterranean. The beaches are of course phenomenal, and on account of the good weather there were many Jolie Nanas sunbathing and trying to outdo each other with the brevity of their bikinis. San Remo looks like a city that saw better times, on account of some rather dilapidated big hotels that are waiting to be bought by the big chains, demolished, and built anew. The way back was a bit of a chore because I hit traffic in Nice, but otherwise it was another perfect day.
I have thought that if I were to get stranded in an island I would like to have Chico or Josh with me. I will now add to that scenario that I would also like to have my daughter, Faby, on firm land organizing the search and rescue operations. She is an amazing woman who has managed to browbeat the banks into issuing new cards and the Department of Traffic Vehicles into issuing a new license. It will take a couple of weeks for the cards to arrive, and then she will have to FedEx them to me here in Cannes, but thanks to her I will soon be as good as new. Gracias m’hija 😍
A couple of days later I once again took the coastal route to Cannes. I had the sad obligation of returning my beautiful yellow Twingo to Enterprise in the airport. Sad because it has been a great little car, but also because without a license it is the last vehicle I am likely to rent while I am in Europe. On the way there, at Cagnes-sur-Mer I was distracted by a sign that promised to take me to the Musée Renoir. I reached for my inner Juan and decided that this was a chance in a lifetime, so I drove into town, figured out how to pay for parking, and woke 10 minutes uphill to reach the museum. Sadly I was disappointed because I got there at 12:35 pm, and the museum was closed from 12 to 3 pm, to allow the curator to engage in that sacred French ritual, le lunch. In any case, it was not the big museum, but rather the house where Renoir had lived when he once visited Cagnes-sur-Mer, so I just had to get back with my tail between my legs and head for the airport.
After returning my little Twingo (sob!) I managed to figure out the tram system to downtown, and from there it was an easy walk to the train station (in most European cities the main train station is smack in the middle of downtown), bought my 5 euro ticket to Cannes, and waited for the train to appear. Everything was normal, in track B, when the screen flashed the message that the train was 5 minutes late. Another train was leaving right then, and there was a rush to get in it, but it was one of the InterCity ones, and mine was the slow stop-at-every-town type. Suddenly I noticed I was alone on track B. Funny. Then came a rush of last-minute travelers, maybe a dozen or so, and we waited the 5 minutes of announced delay, then 10 minutes, and then the announcement for our train suddenly disappeared! Of course there was nobody to ask (the French are very fun people, but when asked for help all they can do is raise their shoulders in bafflement and utter j’n sais pas), so I took an executive decision and boarded the next InterCity train, oblivious to the fact that the ticket would have cost a lot more. There, that will teach them to cancel a train for no reason whatsoever. My inner German was incensed.
The following days I devoted to writing my book and made such good progress that by now I feel it is 50% completed. I think it is time for me to take a break.
Trip to Corsica
I wanted to go sailing in the Mediterranean and somewhere or other I read that the best place for this was the strait separating Corsica from Sardinia. I was lucky to get a spot in the Ecole de Voile of Capitan Fabrizzio Carboni, who was offering one more session in mid-October before closing activities for the fall and winter.
I started with a train ride to Toulon, which is not very far from Cannes, where I was going to take the ferry to Ajaccio, in Corsica. Turns out that Toulon was the main Mediterranean port for the French Navy during the Napoleonic Wars (the other being Brest, on the Atlantic side, which was often blockaded by the Brits), remains an important Navy base, and has a wonderful maritime museum where I learned all there was to learn about France’s marine wars.
The ferry to Corsica, the Mega Andrea, was huge! Three decks of garage, and five additional decks of cabins, restaurants, shops, and the necessary spaces to run the ship. But in this floating city there was no place to sit down and enjoy a good sleep. I had my meager sack dinner on the open air, sitting on one of the boxes where life jackets are kept, but pretty soon the fresh air drove me inside, where the other backpackers had already claimed every dark corner of carpet to spend the night. I got my own corner, and slept like a baby during the 12-hour crossing.
We got to Ajaccio around 7 am, and I headed right away to the train station to figure out the schedule for the day. I had plenty of time to explore, and the station master was kind enough to store my bags for me. Great, now I could explore unencumbered. Ajaccio’s most famous son was Napoleon Bonaparte, and everything in the city shows the pride that the inhabitants have for the controversial general and emperor. It was by the imperial statue when sunrise hit the city, and like so many other times I saw a town come to life. Ajaccio has some very nice beaches, and seems like a nice place to live in, but at the end is just “un pueblito” and by 11 am I was ready to move on.
I had the plan to go to the highest portion of the island, to see what it looked like, and figured out that the best way to do this would be to take the train to the town of Corte. It was a spectacular ride! The core of the island is formed by granitic intrusions, so it reminded me a lot of going up the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, with the same spectacular landscapes of half domes, spires, and glacier-carved valleys. Clearly it was going to take more than an afternoon’s walk around Corte to get a sense of the place, so I extended my stay at the hotel to two nights, and in the day in between hiked up one of the most spectacular canyons, to the point where the slope went from 30% grade to about 50% grade and where, rich in life experiences, I decided to leave further exploration of the canyon to younger generations.
The following day I came back from my mountain perch to Ajaccio, where I waited for two hours for the bus to Bonifacio, the port at the southern end of Corsica where I was going to join my crew. It was a pleasant ride, all the way through granite hills that reminded me of Southern California, when all of a sudden we broke into a coastal landscape of blinding-white cliffs. The White Cliffs of Bonifacio, formed by the most beautiful, cross-bedded sequence of calcareous sandstones that had clearly been deposited in a shallow carbonate platform not unlike that of the Bahamas. The rocks have since then been uplifted, creating the fabulous Bonifacio harbor.
I was supposed to board my boat, Empress, between 6 and 8 pm. It was 7 pm, so I was right on schedule. Still, I was the last member of the crew, and in a whirlwind I got to meet my new comrades: Captain Fabrice (early 50’s), Claire and Arnaud (early 30’s), and Alexandra and Xavier (mid 40’s). Together we were going to be sailing for six days in Empress, a 15 m long, 5 m on the beam, sailing boat with a 20 m-high main sail, and a correspondingly large jib (or Genoa) sail in front. Empress can carry as many as 12 guests, so we were in comparatively uncrowded and luxurious conditions. My cabin was pretty large, toward the front, and all for myself! Yeah!
Claire and Arnaud are “locals”, having just finished a one-year stint working as waitress and cook at a local pizzeria, and getting ready to move back to mainland France. Claire is a sweetheart and her job as waitress has given her powerful biceps that were going to come in handy at the time of maneuvering the sails. Arnaud is a fun guy to talk to, and he recommended me to visit the “uptown” portion of Bonifacio before we left. So the following morning, before anyone was up, I trudged up the cliff to enter the walled-city and found a superbly beautiful medieval French town quietly ensconced on top of the cliffs. Turns out that, because of its location, Bonifacio had been a much-sought prize between the Republic of Genoa and the French, and the numerous ramparts, walls, and old cannons speak of a troubled, violent past.
Fabrizzio, or Fabrice as everybody called him, is both Sardinian (Italian) and Corsican (French) on account of having each one of his parents to come from each of the islands. He bought the boat a few years ago, as a working investment for his Ecole de Voile, and finds it more profitable to make Corsica his spring and summer home, while his family remains in Sardinia. He is a fantastic sailor and a gifted teacher. Always calm, he took his time to explain the maneuvers and what needs to happen at every step (and with the infinite number of marine terms in French, Italian, English, and Spanish we had our work cut out for us), and then gave us plenty of practice in his expensive boat without fretting a bit. Now and then he would jump to fix the tension in a sail, but pretty much he stuck to the principle that you learn better by doing rather than by reading about it.
Alexandra and Xavier are very easy going, and are at the stage in their lives where change is in the air. Alexandra, who has the most beautiful smile and likes to laugh, used to drive a big truck. If I understood properly, she now owns a big house between Geneve and Chamonix, in the Alps, where she hosts tourists. Xavier also used to own a big truck, and is now re-conditioning a school bus as a camper van, with the idea of selling it so he can buy a sailing boat like Empress. Alexandra was kind enough to correct my most egregious errors while speaking French (and I was secretly happy when she did the same to Fabrice, who speaks more Italian than French).
I joked that Fabrice had control over the weather, because of the six days of actual sailing we had decent wind on the first day (so we could all get excited about learning how to sail), two days of little wind (so we could practice all the maneuvers in slow motion, as well as learn our basic knots), and then three days when the wind increased to category 3, then 4 the next day, then 5 for our final day. The latter was really exciting, with the boat cutting through the foamy waves as if they were butter. We were very lucky that there was not much of a swell, so we didn’t have the continuous bobbing that causes seasickness. Overall we were in heaven. Note: I am fully aware that this was a stroke of great luck, because we had been warned to bring oil skins, as heavy rain and squalls are common this time of the year.
By the end of the third day we touched at the port of La Maddalena, to walk a little on firm land, visit a small Italian city, and have pizza for dinner. It was fun and I was delighted to be in Italy. One of the “monuments” in the city looks like a post with the directions to far away cities, but is in reality a summary of the down-wind directions of the different winds that buffet the archipelago of La Maddalena: La Tramontana, il Mistral, il Levante, il Scirocco, and so many others whose names fed my imagination as a kid when I read the works of Verne, Dumas, and Salgari.
In Fabrice we also have a Three-Star gourmet chef, who every day for lunch and supper cooked us delicious food (breakfast was good too, particularly because it included strong coffee, but it was simple fare). For the main meals we would start with some Sardinian aperó, like thinly sliced coppa, zucchini carpaccio, and even sea-urchin (courtesy of the diving prowess of Arnaud), followed by pasta or risotto prepared in the most exquisite ways. Salad and veggies were to be expected at every meal, again beautifully garnished and flavored with herbs. I look forward to trying to reproduce some of his recipes when Faby, DJ, and Ronnie come to Italy next month.
I want to record here some of my nautical terms, just so I don’t forget them: Empannage – To move down wind by jibing, Louvouyer – To move against the wind by tacking, Virez – To tack ship, and the one that always got us scrambling to our places Parér à virer?. Now, you may or may not know that it is a lot more exciting to tack against the wind than simply let the wind push you (it is a matter of velocity vectors), but there is one maneuver sailing downwind that will remain permanently ingrained in my mind as being sailing at its most beautiful. It is called La Farfalla (the butterfly), in which the main sail and the jib open in different directions, one to babor (larboard or port) and the other to tribord (starboard), as if the ship was unfolding its wings ready to glide over the water.
As we moved toward our anchorage in Bonifacio I was, once again, stunned by the beauty of the white cliffs, which are a dream laboratory for teaching sedimentology and stratigraphy. The sequence could be easily broken in big alternating intervals of transgression and regression, with internal parallel unconformities and cross bedding. Add to that the erosive power of the waves, which have cut caves (e.g., the feature the locals know as Napoleon’s Hat) and tunnels through the rock, and which severely threat some of the buildings of uptown.
All good things must come to an end, and it was with a heavy heart that I said goodbye to my sailing companions when we got back to Bonifacio. Who knows when I will see them again? I was the only one who spent the last night on board, and the following early morning I lugged all my stuff to the ferry terminal in Bonifacio for the next stage of my trip: Santa Teresa in Sardinia.
Trip to Sardinia
How could I be so close to Sardinia and resist the temptation to go spend five days there? It all started with a short ferry ride from Bonifacio in Corsica (France) to Santa Teresa in Sardinia (Italy). Despite the strict mandate to wear masks and carry proof of vaccination nobody asked to see the latter, so I disembarked directly unto the peer, and from there had to trudge up the slope to the town proper. I am beginning to develop a nose for the place where the bus depot is likely to be, and got there around 10 am, just in time to have missed the 9:30 am bus to Olbia. The next one didn’t leave until noon. I think they do this to infuriate the tourists. To add insult to injury, in France and in Italy you cannot buy your ticket at the bus but have to go to a distant location to buy it. The most common place to get your tickets is the tabacchino (the tobacconist), so I had to turn around, climb three or four block into the central plaza, and there find out that yes, normally the tabacchino would sell tickets, but in this particular case they were being sold at the port motel, right by the place I had disembarked. Arghh! A simple sign at the ferry or the peer would have saved me lots of walking loaded like a burrito. Then I get to the port motel and find it boarded up! Nonetheless I rang the bell, and the lady who opened answered that yes, she had the tickets, but there were no more left for the 12:00 bus and I would have to take the 3:00 pm bus. Fine! By this time I was fed up and could hardly believe that a 40 seat bus was full, when there had hardly been 5 pedestrian passengers in the ferry—the 12:00 bus ended being empty except for me!
We crossed a pleasant landscape of rolling granite hills, with glimpses of villas at or near the seashore. The east coast of Sardinia is called the Emerald Coast, and it is a place where the rich and famous like to come spend the winter months. Us normal people only get to see it from the distance, so I will take their word for it.
Fortunately for me, once we reached Olbia the bus dropped me less than half a block from my hotel, so I finally got to shed my hot jacket, backpack, and shopping bag (where I was carrying my rubber boots and my oilskins), rest for a moment, and go out to explore the town. The first thing I discovered is that I had left my Camino de Santiago hat in the bus. Rats! Because the sun was shining, I had to stop and buy a hat, and I chose a Panama that makes me look like a mafioso. I had come to Olbia because I read that it is the hub of the Emerald Coast; it is an OK city, but not really spectacular, so in one afternoon I covered most of the sights and was ready to enjoy my room (a very nice room), have a good night sleep, and move on.
Fabrizzio had suggested going to Orgosolo, in the highest portion of the island, and the bus ride there allowed me to see the southern half of the Emerald Coast, the unspectacular town of Nuoro, and finally the limestone cliffs shrouded in clouds of Orgosolo. As the bus dropped me off in the central plaza, bathed in a gentle drizzle, I looked around at a postcard-version of an Italian mountain town, where all the ways seem to go up. I started walking in the direction of my guesthouse when I heard the piercing whine of a vehicle coming up one of the steep and narrow streets, and stopped just in time to avoid being run over by a white pickup that was sliding all over the place over the wet stones. It had to take a sharp turn to get on the street I was walking on, but the driver lost control, and right in front of me crashed sideways unto a parked car. The stunned driver recovered and took flight, but quick as lightening I whipped out my phone and took a picture of his retreating back. Normally I mind my own business, but this time I felt outrage and seeing a young woman come out of a nearby house explained to her what had happened. She ran to another house three doors down, and the owner of the car that had been impacted came to look at the damage. Oh Dio mio, Dio mio. I explained once again what had happened, showed the photograph, and the first woman took a photo of the photo with her own phone, and then I gave them the address of the guesthouse I was staying in just in case the police needed to talk with me. At this point a young man all bent out of shape came down the road, and a lively conversation ensued between him and the second woman. The first woman took me aside and explained that he was the owner of the pickup truck and was promising to pay for the needed repairs, but he didn’t want the photo shown to the police. My new friend explained to me that in this little town everyone knew each other, and that since things had been arranged, they would all appreciate it if I were to delete the photo from my phone. A la tierra a la que fuéres has lo que viéres, so I deleted the photo and with this simple act I became part of the town. My new friend insisted on taking me to my guesthouse, and gave me very clear instructions on how to call the owner Lino to come and let me in.
Right about that moment two new friends entered into my life, Monica and Lino. Monica was also staying in the guesthouse for a couple of days and Lino was our gracious host. The guesthouse looked like something that had come from the Pixar studios or Disney Imagineering: It was painted in beautiful loud colors, had little tables and shelves where an eclectic mix of art was displayed, had a modern kitchen in red, and each of the rooms had been decorated with good taste and imagination. This was all the work of Lino, who is an artist, muralist, and jewelry maker. He invited us into the kitchen and insisted on fixing us a tiny expresso so we could chat about what had brought us to Orgosolo. The first thing we established was that we all three spoke fluent Spanish, so that became our operating language. Lino is a proud son of Orgosolo, and told us that for over 50 years the town has been a devotee of “social art” as we would see in the many murals that adorn this mountain jewel. He himself had renewed a couple of the old murals, and had two or three of his own, and Monica and I expressed interest on him giving us a guided tour of the muralists art.
Monica is Italian, from Bergamo, but now lives with her boyfriend in Niems, in Provence, and attends the university in Marseille under an Erasmus grant, to do “something” with arts and communication. She has a Communications degree from Bergamo, but is now interested in pursuing art (particularly photography) as a means of communication. Curiously, what attracted her to Orgosolo was not the artistic tradition of the town, but the fact that in Sardinia there are many older women, Nonnas, who have reached the ripe age of 100 years or more, and she wanted to interview them photographically. “What do you mean by that?” “I want to document their body language as they tell me about their lives”, she answered. For an example she showed me a series of four frames, where a Nonna had stood up from her chair to show her how, as a girl, she had picked up olives. On one frame she was laboriously getting out of her chair, on the next one she was bending herself all the away to the ground, on the third one she was sweeping her hands to fill them with imaginary olives, and on the fourth one she was up, poring the olives unto the bag hanging from her waste, in a smooth movement that had something of the magic of ballet to it.
Lino had stuff to do, but we agreed to meet with him later in the evening to go see his murals and have pizza for dinner. On the way to drop off my backpack into my room I admired some paintings made on thick slabs of cork. It turns out that the island has many cork trees, so in addition to a lively production of corks for wine bottles, they also use it for postcards, tackboards, handles, and as canvass for all sorts of paintings.
Monica and I spent a delightful evening walking through the town, admiring the murals that the Orgosolians are so proud of. I took many pictures of them, and next time I see you I will be glad to show them to you, but let mention that some honor some of the local heroes, like the teacher who taught for 40 years at the elementary school, or the lady who baked bread for fun and for a generation fed the hungry of the town. Others are social and political statements, like the one that calls for equal rights and salaries for women, or a beautiful scene depicting the entry of a ship into New York harbor, which stated that “We are all immigrants”. Others are attempts at modern art, with cubist depictions of the type that made Picasso famous (there is even an attempt at using the elements on El Guarnica but with a different composition). And finally there are many scenes of daily life, simply celebrating the region, the town, and its people. Orgosolo really belongs in the list of “magic towns” such as Taxco, San Cristobal, or Antigua.
The mural Lino is working on right now is a bit weird: A map of the world, with red trails coming out of Sardinia, and protesting the proposal for a new Covid “passport”. At the base the word COVID is written using pictograms, with the I being represented by a microchip, and the D with a fingerprint. He is still working on coming with a short message he wants to write as a banner below the word COVID, so that gave us pause for discussing what he was trying to convey in the mural. He is concerned that the government will make use of its emergency powers due to the pandemic, to create an electronic ID that can be updated depending not only on your vaccination status, but also on whether you owe back taxes, or alimony, or whatever the government wants to keep an eye on. The stick is that if you are not a model citizen you would not be allowed to travel. I am not sure why he things that Sardinia is the testing ground from which this type of thing would extend to the rest of the world. The pizza was very good (although not as rich as American pizzas normally are), and with the good company and lively conversation time went by quickly.
The following morning Monica and I resumed our touristic visit of the town, but discovering new murals became increasingly difficult, and that gave her the opportunity to tell me about her project. She plans to submit it to a big exposition that is taking place in Paris next summer, but of course there will be a lot of competition for a slot in the show. In the meantime she still had to find her first Nonna, and as she said this she got a text message from some elderly lady who would like to meet with her the following day. So she decided to stay an additional night, before heading to other parts of the island. I was leaving that afternoon, headed for the coastal town of Alghero, but we agreed to meet for a day in Marseille the following week, when she got back from her fieldwork.
Lino is not an early bird, but I managed to rouse him so he could come to lunch with me (he ended paying for the lunch under the old trite that “this is my town”), and then he offered to drop me off at Nuoro, where he had to go to his accordion class (Really? Is there no end to this man’s talents?). So we took his old truck and came down the mountain, and then I learned that he had spent time in Cuba (hence his excellent Caribbean Spanish) and married there, but his wife and their little baby, Lucca Giovanni, had not been allowed to leave to come to Italy with him. So he is chomping at the bit to get back to La Habana to go pick them up. Poor guy. I cannot imagine anything more frustrating than not being able to see your baby grow. This is one of the reasons he wants to get better at the accordion, so he can sing to little Lucca Giovanni. I need to send him a CD with the songs of Cri-Cri.
The trip to Alghero was pleasant, and reminded me a lot of driving down the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, with a thin forest of scrub oaks and golden grasses, in between little mountain towns. Nothing as spectacular as Corsica, but a blessed land where olive trees and vines thrive.
Alghero is a very fine town. It was the largest city I saw in Sardinia and I liked it very much. My hotel was a few block from the beach and although comfortable it was definitely spartan. After the colorful and eclectic room in Orgosolo it felt like I had landed in a mental institution. On getting here I noticed an old town, with narrow streets and surrounded by a protective wall, so tomorrow I will go explore it.
So I did, at the wee hours of the morning, and got some beautiful photos of the sun rising over the marina and the fortified walls. I love seeing a city wake up, with some people eagerly scrubbing tables while others trudge their way to a morning job that clearly they are not fit for. In the marina I saw a handsome two mast sailing ship, probably built 80 or 90 years ago, which was advertising her last cruise of the season. 100 euros. For an additional 8 hours of sailing? I was sorely tempted, in the clutches of what Kerstin has called the withdrawal symptom of those who had recently enjoyed a good sailing experience. But at the end I resisted the temptation, reminding myself that I still had no credit cards and thus a finite amount of funds. It was a hard decision.
My goal for the day was to go to Neptune’s Cave, about 20 km away, at the other end of the Alghero Bay (or bays, really, since there are three distinctive embayments). I could see the cliff where it was to be found, way out in the distance. Now, by this time I was becoming kind of an expert on riding buses, so I asked about my options and was kindly directed to the ticket machine, which not only obliged by selling me a ticket for 4 euros, but offered me a full day of rides in that line for 7.50 euros. I went for the latter because, who knows, I might want to ride the bus all day back and forth looking at the landscape. So I took the 9:45 am bus, which deposited me at the cave entrance at 10:30 am, a bit early for the 11 am guided tour but so is life. I asked the driver where I would take the bus back, and he assured me that he would be right there until noon.
The grotto was right at the water line, 654 steps down the face of the cliff, and was very beautiful. Small in length, but with many interesting speleothemes (e.g., stalactites, stalagmites, columns , and curtains to name but just a few) and beautifully illuminated. It had a rather large room roofed with heliotactites (sun-seeking stalactites) that are probably no larger than a soda straw but twist in all sorts of bizarre directions. They are one of the few remaining mysteries in cave geology. As we were going out a boat was arriving with a new batch of tourists, and I thought they were the lucky ones because they would not have climb back up the 654 steps carved along the face of the cliff. Huff, puff, …, huff, puff, I finally made it back on top. It was about 12:30 pm, so I was not surprised about not seeing the bus. I went up to the little restaurant, asked for a much needed cold beer, and asked at what time was the next bus. “Tomorrow at noon.” “What? There are no more buses toady?” “No, there is only one bus a day.” So what do all these people do?” “I don’t know. Maybe they take a taxi.” I was furious. They had sold me an all-day riding ticket for a bus that only went once a day? And who had been the brilliant mind that had timed it such that you world get there too early for the first tour, and come out too late for you to take the ride home? Public transportation is not all it is touted to be ☹
So I started walking the 20 km back to town, sticking my thumb out from time to time to see if I could get a ride. Eventually I did, so my 20 km walk was more a 4 km walk. The folks who gave me a ride were a Sardinian woman (the driver) who was showing her friends the sights. The wife was Romanian, and the husband German, so pretty soon we had a four language conversation going on as we enjoyed the coastal ride to Alghero. Once there I took the perfect opportunity to bathe my pale toes in the Mediterranean, and walk along the beach like a bum.
I spent the following day doing the round of the museums that were in town (it turns out that some of the other interesting museums were out the way of Neptune’s Grotto, and if I had had better intelligence I could have tried to visit a couple of them). My first museum was the Museum of Coral. It turns out that the sea around Alghero has, since time immemorial, provided red coral to artisans, who have turned it into beautiful pieces of art. Of course is has been overharvested, so the community has come together to encourage rational exploitation of the resource. Before it was collected by dragging nets along the bottom, so they ended with a lot of pieces; nowadays there are a limited number of scuba divers who have the license to collect coral, but they have become “perfect predators” who hack out the whole individual colonies out of the rock. If you ask me, the old method might had been more sustainable, because only branches of the colonies were cut out, which allowed the coral to regenerate itself.
I followed by a walk down the “main street”, a narrow walkway where the coral artisans have had their shops since the Middle Ages. They do beautiful work, but it is not cheap; if you see a cheap trinket you can be certain that it is plastic (or as they euphemically put it “it is made with coral powder bound together with polymer”).
My favorite was the Archaeology Museum, which is not very big but is very well done. They have tow major sources of data: Shipwrecks and sites dotted along the coast. The shipwrecks basically show the growth of the Phoenician trade network, and they have cleverly reconstructed some of the finds in dioramas. The sites include Stone Age to Bronze Age settlements (Celts?), followed by Roman villas. The Romans by this time were trading all over the Mediterranean, and a beautiful fragment of a stone-tiled floor showed beautiful tiles that came from Spain, Algiers, Greece, Egypt, Italy, and France. The diorama representing the living room of the villa, overlooking the ocean, made me want to love in Roman times (as long as I was one of the elite, bien entendú).
The third day I packed all my toys and took the bus to Puerto Torres, from where the ferry was departing at 7 pm. I got there around 2 pm, which was way too early, and had to wait forever to embark. Comfort to the passengers is not high in the list of priorities of the ferry line, so there is no roof under which you could lounge. Instead I sat for a while in a small plaza that provided some protection from the wind (I am leaving, so wind and drizzle have once again settled over the island), walked around, had a coffee at a bar, walked some more, and finally boarded my ship. This time there was a passenger pulman room, in which I eventually spent the night curled on the floor.
Back to France
The following morning we got to Toulon, and a couple of hours later I was in Cannes, where I received the happy news that FedEx was holding my replacement credit cards! Without stopping at home to unload I jumped on a bus at the train station, had to make an unexpected transfer, and an hour later I was grinning like an idiot holding my replacement debit card, and two credit cards. I am again in business! The only thing I don’t have, and won’t have until I get back to California, is my driver’s license, because the State of California is too obtuse to understand that when you are traveling abroad you cannot use the double-authentication system through your cell phone that has become the vane of my existence. Then again, I have my Vietnamese driver’s license … I wonder if that will work on Avis or Budget.
After a few days of furious work activity I was ready for a break, and so I took my last hurrah of my stay in France and went to visit Marseille. Monica and I were going to do this together, but she is very busy visiting her abuelitas in Sardinia and I had to go to it alone. It was an easy but expensive train ride, and by 10 am I was there, ready to board the first run of the tourist bus. I have done the Hop On – Hop Off bus in many cities, and have always found it to be a good value. Marseille is not that large, however, and they only have one circuit. In retrospect and with perfect knowledge of the city I could have done the whole route walking. One exception, however, is the Basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde, which is atop the only significant hill in the city. It is quite a climb there, but the views are magnificent (the monumental statue of Notre-Dame de la Garde is gilded in gold leaf and can be seen from every corner of the city).
On the way there we had a good look at Château d'If, of Count of Montecristo fame. In the bright sun it didn’t look so big and menacing, and it certainly looked close enough to the land that Edmond Dantes should not have had any trouble swimming ashore.
The Vieux Port was the birthplace of Marseille, and is still where much of the action is concentrated. It was there that I went looking for lunch … perhaps an authentic bouillabaisse … ha, the dish is so expensive that I had to make due with mussels in a Diabla sauce, which was delicious and priced just right.
I satisfied my hunger for a museum with the MuCEM (Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée), which was not as exciting as I would have liked. They had a special exhibition about the Mediterranean diet, and how everyone in the world should eat from their garden, a common trope among the wealthy and snobby. They also had a connection to the forts that guard the port entrance, but I was running out of steam to visit yet another fortress. I might have done better visiting the Musée d'Histoire de Marseille.
I did enjoy myself tremendously walking through the narrow streets of the old town (Le Panier), but after a while I started feeling tired and thought it was time to go back home. Rats, the next train is not for another two hours, so I sat and waited at the train station and eventually dragged myself home at the crack of midnight.
OK, I am ready to move on from Cannes to Cogoleto, in the Ligurian
coast of northern Italy. I will miss Cannes, but there is a wide world out
there for me to discover and I better mosey along.
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