Bonjour,
We have just finished the frustrating experience of being entangled in the complexity of the French and Italian rail networks; we had to catch 5 different trains in our quest to get from St Tropez in Southern France to Cinque Terra on the Italian Coast. I know you all feel sorry for us – I can hear the sympathy from here…….
Anyway, when we left you last time we were just making our way into Southern France. Our time there was what could be described as ‘mixed’, with the transport being the biggest challenge. Our thinking was just to get a bus over the border, then pick up a hire car to drive along Southern France. Sounded far easier than it turned out to be.
For a start, the Spanish bus system is controlled by people who obviously loved their childhood games of ‘pass the parcel’ which in adult life has evolved to ‘pass the confused and frustrated tourist’. The bus process (if you can call it that) is to buy a ticket from one company, surrender it to another who provides a boarding pass for travel on a bus with yet another company. Yet none of those companies will assist unless you are within the specific realm for which they were responsible at that time. To approach a company outside of their window of responsibility brings a disinterested look, a finger point in the vague direction you should take, and then a satisfied grin that the parcel has been passed. Anyway, when the passing game was over, two very frustrated Australians found themselves in the hands of a brusque Spanish bus driver, whose attitude was only matched by his belly.
Mr Angry Belly’s method of having fun was two-fold; one was to demand to see the already surrendered tickets when the bus is stopped at some random crappy town, and make it seem like it’s a favour to let you stay on the bus. Two was to make an unscheduled and lengthy stop at an extremely expensive rest stop just 20mins short of your destination. We got an insight into how Mr Angry Belly got his girth – there was obviously an arrangement with the rest stop whereby if Mr Angry Belly dropped in bus loads of travellers, he could eat for free – and he was taking full toll. Despite the increase in tourist volumes for the rest stop I think the profit increase sat predominantly around our bus driver’s waist.
So it was a relief to get to Narbonne to pick up the car that we had booked the day before. All cars in Europe are small and nippy, and this is what we had reserved online. So it was quite exciting to get through the paperwork, and walk to the garage to see what we would be ducking around Southern France in. Would it be a Citroen, or an Alpha, or an Audi or an……… the door came up to reveal……a Ford station wagon. The look on my face obviously conveyed in equal measure my surprise, disappointment and confusion, as the lady asked ‘this is what you wanted yes?’. I couldn’t find the French words for ‘only if the car I actually booked ate another car then moved to the Shire’ so had to play a mixture of showing the booking form and playing charades to indicate that we did not plan on transporting a football team to France so actually wanted (and booked) something smaller. Much smaller. Her response was a ‘No, this is all we have and same price as small car’ with a look of fake empathy overlaid with a ‘we both know you don’t have any other option so suck it up Skippy’. So Krys and I loaded up our people mover for the drive to Marseille.
As for directions, there was no GPS available so we thought we’d at least settle for a map. But they didn’t have maps either. So as we pulled out of the hire place it was in a Ford station wagon with no maps and some vague directions to just ‘head for the A9’. We managed to find the A9 and had travelled about 30mins before a perplexing sign appeared on the side of the road. It said ‘Barcelona – 600kms’. Now as much as we loved the place, we were meant to be heading in the opposite direction. So while we had found the A9, our monster truck had been charging in the wrong direction for quite a while, with little option to turn around.
We eventually found a ‘semi-legal’ area to turn around (I deem witches hats blocking u-turns as optional to obey – if you can drive over or through it people obviously don’t want to stop you enough) and we were finally on our way. The next challenge – toll booths. We’d been having nightmares about being ‘those people’ who jam up a toll booth with no clue as to how to get through while a long line of locals lean on their horns to give a soundtrack to the driver’s shame. So on seeing the first toll booth it was like two people spotting a large group of American tourists; the first response is to shriek and want to run the other way. So we dived to the side of the road and parked until we could work out how it was done. Thought we had it worked out until we pulled into what must have been the truck lane, and the ticket we needed to get through the gate popped out about 8ft above my window. Krys had to get out of the car and hurriedly retrieve our exit ticket on tippy toes before the tooting started. So it was a huge relief to finally arrive in Marseille. The feeling of relief lasted about 2 minutes as our arrival was to a hotel overlooking a construction site, complete with a freshly conducted robbery in the foyer.
So Marseille didn’t really get off on the right foot. So only one thing to do – go explore and have a few drinks (at least to modify the perception of reality). But sadly even here we were off; Spain had conditioned us to think that dinner at 10.30pm was normal. Marseille decided to abruptly remind us that this was not the case by having restaurant staff greet two hungry and tired travellers with token offers for food, complete with ‘you can have some more if you want, but just letting you know that we want to go home soon’.
Marseille itself; well it is like the prettiest girl in an ugly school. It is quite nice, but you don’t have to travel far to find much better. It is on the coast and has some beautiful views over blue water dotted with little grey islands composed of jagged rocks and disused forts. All of this overseen by a large chapel situated at the highest point of town. But Marseille itself feels like a town that stopped trying some time ago. We returned Marseille’s token offers for food with a token look around the town. By token I mean rather than actually walking the town, we took one of those little tourist trains to the top of the city. I think this represented a low point of our travels to date – the fact that we could not be bothered to walk the town, and would instead jam ourselves into a mini train that normally drives kids around amusement park grounds. Our mini train travel companions confirmed our laziness – the elderly and obese tourist community of Marseille were all present; jammed together like clothed clumps of half set jelly as the poor train struggled up the hill. If this train was the one I remember from my childhood ‘Golden Books’ it would not be saying ‘I think I can, I think I can’ but rather ‘you are too heavy, you are too heavy’ before giving out half way.
The highlight of Marseille was visiting Krys’ Aunty Doris (Mauritian family connections know no bounds). The visit came complete with some Mauritian rocket fuel (called Patsis) and a Mauritian game of pool where you flick disks with your fingers. The set-up may be different in Mauritian pool but the experience isn’t – just like normal pool it was 2nd game and 3rd drink that I hit my peak, but that was still well below the natural level of Krys who dominated not only the game but facial expression.
While the visit to see Doris was great, the trip home wasn’t. Doris had tried to convince us to stay the night – her way of convincing us was to try and ply us with as much Mauritian rocket fuel as we could stomach. If I actually drank all that she offered I think I’d still be comatose on her floor now. But we called time and set-off for what again should have been a simple 30min drive back to Marseille. Didn’t count on a French road crew deciding to re-seal part of the highway including our required turn-off. So with Doris’ place 30 mins behind us, we were in a very familiar French place called ‘lost’. This time at midnight and again with no map.
Our fun this time was compounded by a wrong turn taking us down a dimly lit, narrow, single lane road with signs pointing to places I’m not sure even exist and with no other cars in sight. To top it all off, a vicious storm (that we subsequently found out claimed 20 lives through flash flooding) swirled overhead. I tried to play calm by casually asking Krys ‘hey, are you ok’. Her response of ‘yeah I’m fine’ was some comfort until I looked across to see that it had been said while she had her head buried in her hands. Oh how I yearned for the serenity of almost being run off the road by a psychotic Mallorcan cab driver……
Somehow we stumbled on some signs back to Doris’ place, then back to Marseille. But in the end what was meant to be a 30min trip was over 2hrs of the worst driving I’ve ever been through. I have never been so happy to get back to a hotel where I feel the need to dead bolt the door, and get to look out at the beauty of a partially demolished adjacent building. After that drive, it felt like heaven.
So it was with some relief that we left Marseille for the delights of St Tropez. Amazingly we didn’t get lost, and arrived to a beautiful hotel run by a French family. St Tropez is astounding; a beautiful coastline dotted with fading angular buildings that rise abruptly from the shores edge. Boats large enough to launch naval assaults, but which instead are used to play quoits and eat salmon slices on, are tied to the moorings that frame a huge port. The port area with the monstrous boats is like a ‘who has the bigger p#nis’ competition. But in this town the competition will never really end as an even ‘bigger one’ can just be bought.
As for the people, well the men all wear pastels, boat shoes, have cardigans tied over their shoulders and have a spray tan glow. The women wear exclusively white, drip with bling, have ‘modified’ bodies and carry small dogs. We are still trying to work out some of the fashion meanings though. Where we have got to is:
- Collar turned up on a polo-shirt; the meaning for this transcends St Tropez. Regardless of where you are, this uniform indicates a life of self pleasuring
- You combine aqua or peach pants with a cardigan; we think this means your wife dressed you this morning, and your testicles are ensconced in her expensive handbag
- You wear a shirt emblazoned with the name ‘St Tropez’; we think this means you are really a struggler, but are trying to get laid by implying you are entwined with the place (you’ll see me wearing mine around Cronulla Mall when we return)
But the key lesson I will take with me from St Tropez is that it is impossible to carry a small dog and retain any sense of masculinity.
St Tropez really does do things differently. A St Tropez lunch involves a hefty outlay, but comes complete with a fashion show, where tiny models strut and pose between the tables in an assortment of bikinis and small dresses. I could always tell when a model was approaching; Krys would ask ‘what is that’ and point at something random in the opposite direction. By the time my focus had come back the model would have moved on. And before I could figure our Krys’ game of diversion the show was over. I was outsmarted again. Not that this is proving difficult. Like saying that you can out run Kim Beazley.
While in St Tropez we decided to do what people do in Southern France; go to the beach and get nude. So we found ourselves what was referred to as a ‘naturalist’ beach, got settled and got nude. We did well to set up near an older couple, to whom time and too much gelato had not been overly kind. All was going well until another couple came along and set up near us, and did not nude up making the whole set up quite uncomfortable. Adding to my level of discomfort was that the water was very cold. So any swim meant a subsequent walk back to the towel sporting the package of an under developed 5yr old boy. Shrinkage is real people – VERY real. I was also nervous whenever I saw Japanese tourists; given my current condition I was half expecting to get harpooned, then dragged onto a boat to be sliced up for ‘scientific research’. While it was fun, the result from the day’s frolic was an uncomfortable one though. There are obviously places sunlight should never see – in respect to sunburn and of course decency. When I sit down I am sore in places I didn’t even know I had.
It was sad to leave St Tropez, but a relief to give our oversized vehicle back. The final challenge came in getting out of the Hotel car park. It is a narrow gravel area where cars are just parked wherever they can fit. And being St Tropez these cars are Porsches, Mercedes and Bentleys – our Ford station wagon looked more than a little out of place. I almost expected our leaving to be marked by a coterie of thin, tanned geriatrics holding small dogs lining the driveway and mocking our budget station wagon as we finally pulled out.
So now we are in Cinque Terra, which I think in Italian means ‘you have to climb a massive hill to get anywhere’. It’s beautiful, but tough for people of declining fitness. Will be interesting to see how we get on.
Ciao.
Trent, Krystal and some burnt, peeling skin in some unusual places.
smallthoughts 