South France from a Citroen 2CV

Monday, 3 August

Well, I am now safely in Marseille.

Street from our hotel

[What I remember of arriving in Marseille was that I had to carry my suitcase with me while I found a hotel, and I was too tired to walk far. The hotel I found made me quite uneasy, so I left my suitcase, and found another hotel that I liked better. Then I went back with the porter from the second hotel to translate and picked up my bag. I didn't write this however]

I walked down to the port last night where I think the liberty boats come in. My room here is 21.27 NF a night, and I don't think it will be much more for 2. It has a double bed (there was a double bed in Spain too). If Bob doesn't take leave, maybe we will transfer a few blocks nearer the harbor. Cabs are much more scarce, and I presume much more expensive than in Spain.

My dinner last night (steak) cost 10 NF including tip and my breakfast which I hope will be arriving any minute, will be 3 NF.

Bristol Hotel

To my sister: I have switched hotels and am now at the Bristol [which I find from looking on the internet was a 3 star hotel on the main street]. We have rented a car and are off to the Riviera for the day. I have a couchette to Paris the night of the 7th and one to Nurnberg the night of the 8th, so will arrive on the Oriente Express at 9:20 or so on the 9th. If you can get me a ticket to Frankfurt from Naples 2nd class, the next to last possible train, please do. I can leave the night of the 17th and arrive in the early a.m. of the 18th I think. The Italian strike is over

(Ed. note: a later letter said that her sister thought she could stay until the 17th having misread her letter, and I can see how that confusion could occur unless she re-read the letter and thought about it.)

I also need a reservation to Italy, but we'll settle that when I get there.

Tuesday, August 4

Today the ships came into port

Destroyer backing in

Tug with destroyer

Street from hotel window with Med-moored destroyer

Tuesday we had dinner at the Aux Ombrellas along the beach, where we could see the sun go down and lights go on along the bay.

Beach from where we had dinner

Beach

Postcard of the Quey 1964

Card mailed from the Intrepid on Aug. 6th.

Dear Daughter

Today I am going to meet Daddy here in this port. At least this seems to me to be in the logical place for the ship's boats to come in. I have been unable to find out the French for "Fleet Landing". Take good care of baby sister and be a good little girl for grandmummy,

Love Mummy.

(Ed note from my mom: I rec'd this card without the above letter since that went to her sister, and my only clue that she actually found Bob was that the card was mailed on board ship.)

Card mailed from the Intrepid on Aug 6th

Carrier anchored out in the Med

Dear Daughter. I met Daddy and have rented a car and are driving around the Marseille area. We have a Citroen 2CV which is really an incredible car. -- almost like a toy put together with rubber bands. Maybe we'll go swimming today. Love Mummy

August 5, Wednesday

Dear Mother
Well I meant to have this ready for Bob to mail. He went on board ship this morning to get his pay. It is very hard to a) get anything written and b) to get it mailed when he is here. I wish I had had time to make outlines of places to go at the ports I was going to be at instead of just the ones he would visit, except of course that they change them and it wouldn't do me too much good to have an exhaustive list about Toulon (which was the original schedule) when we are not there but are in Marseilles.

Yesterday we rented a car ($5.00/day) and it is really a LITTLE car -- not height wise, it is about the same size as a VW and also has a roll-back top, but the interior finish has been put on with scotch tape and it drives like a golf cart. Bob says the engine is similar to a motorcycle or a lawn mower and he calculated that we get about 70 mpg. It is a Citroen 2CV [and the gear lever sticks out of the dashboard].

Car with Bob in turn-off

Anyway, we drove along the coast, thru fishing villages and Toulon and to St. Tropez and Ste. Maxime.

Looking back to city

Hill through window

Headland from the car

Street Market

Waterfront

Ruin on a hill

Headland from around the bay

Bay from bridge

St Tropez from chapel on the hill

St Tropez from chapel on the hill

Local farmhouse

Plaque: Premiere terre provencale liberee a l'aube du 15 Aout 1944 Par les F.F. I brigade des marures et des parachutistes de la 7th armee American qui y opere leur jonction

Bob lookin at the Citroen 2CV in disbelief

We bought a loaf of French bread and some cheese and meringues and orange soda and had lunch by the wayside. We have been advised not to drink the water here in Marseille. There we stopped and had a swim. There was so much salt in the water that even Bob could float.

Public beach (plage) - No dogs

Beach San Rafael

Couple with baby

Then we drove back along the mountains -- in some places the pavement vanished altogether and once we met a logging truck and had to back down until we could find a place to pass.

View from high road

View from high road

Garage sign

Toulon from the high road

View of Toulon from the high road

We ate dinner here and it was pretty good, at a sidewalk restaurant along the waterfront.

August 6, Thursday

Today we visited Avignon, Arles, Les Baux, and Aix en Provance.

Cliffs along the road to Avignon

Cypress along the road

When we visited the Riviera and Provence, I had a Michelin guide book. The guide to the sites to visit was only available in French, which I can read a little bit.

Statue on top of Pope's Palace

This is the biggest Gothic palace in all of Europe. It was built in the 14th century and was completed in only 20 years by popes Benedict XII and Clement VI when Avignon was the seat of the papacy.

At the time we visited, Avignon was not very well known and was off the normal tourist track. Thirty-some years after our visit, UNESCO designated it a "World Heritage for Humanity" site. Now, the Popes’ Palace is one of the most visited monuments in all of France. The walls of the Popes’ Palace are flanked by four towers - some of which are 170 feet tall

Entrance

Walls of the palace

Doorway

From the Great Chapel there is an entrance to the loggia where through the large Fenêtre de l'Indulgence (Window of Indulgence)

Indulgence Window

there is a view of the Great Courtyard. From this window the Pope used to give his blessing to the assembled faithful.

Courtyard

Now, the visitor can see over 20 rooms, scenes of historic events, in particular the pope’s private chambers and the frescoes painted by the Italian artist Matteo Giovannetti.

Statue on church

Park near the Pope's Palace

Grotto in garden

Bob eating lunch

Looking over town

Sur le pont d'Avignon, L'on y danse, l'on y danse,

In English: Under the bridge of Avignon, One dances there, one dances there,

It was under the arches of the bridge on the Ile de la Barthelasse that dancing was once held. The song was popularised by Adolphe Adam who included it within his operetta "Le Sourd ou l’Auberge pleine" (1853). The above photo, which I took in 1964, still shows some of the little islands under the bridge.

According to legend, this bridge belongs to St. Benezet. As a young goatherd, Benezet heard a heavenly voice ordering him to go to Avignon. He crossed the Rhone by ferry, and in midstream announced that he was going to build a bridge. This was distressing news for the ferryman, who, bent on eliminating unfair competition, tried to toss Benezet overboard.

Undaunted, he marched in to the Avignon cathedral and again announced in a voice loud enough to be heard over the Mass, his intention of building a bridge. He was ejected.

He waited outside, repeating his story to the faithful, until the bishop, determined to prove that Benezet was an evil lying child, pointed to a huge rock, and asked the boy to pick it up. Benezet did so - lifting it as if it were a pebble.

Convinced of the truth of the miracle, the city built the bridge. Over its second pier is the little Romanesque and Gothic chapel dedicated to St. Benezet, who later became a priest.

Bridge from Promenade du Rocher de Doms in 1964

The bridge was built between 1171 and 1185 (first in wood and then in stone). It was finally put out of use by a catastrophic flood in 1668. It was not destroyed by either one of the World Wars.

Looking down river

Walls of town

Looking across river to the castle of King Rene

Looking across the river

Roof tops of Avignon

Walls of Avignon

King Rene's Castle in Tarascon

Castle moat

Castle

Collegiate Church of Saint Martha

Looking across road to road to Van Gogh's insane asylum in Saint-Remy

We visited the "Antiques of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence".

The Mausoleum of the Julii

The mausoleum of Glanum is a cenotaph erected in memory of Caius and Lucius Caesar , grandsons of the emperor Augustus 1 . Gallo-Roman monument erected between -30 and -20 .

Arc de triomphe de Glanum

The Municipal Arc of Glanum is a Roman arch located in the municipality of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the Bouches-du-Rhône. It is one of the oldest arches in France

Overlooking Les Baux

Les Baux looking across the parking lot

I was interested in Les Baux because bauxite, the ore from which aluminum was extracted was discovered here in 1822 by the geologist Pierre Berthier (who named it for the city). Charles Martin Hall invented a process to extract aluminum from bauxite at Oberlin in Ohio in 1886. That's where I went to school and we had an aluminum statue of Charles Martin Hall in the vestibule of our Chemistry building.

Unfortunately for France, the ore has been completely worked out; France now imports most of its bauxite from west Africa although they might still have been mining it when we were there in 1964

I was told that Dante wrote his description of Hell based on the twists and turns of the rocks in the landscape of Les Baux.

Dante's Landscape

Other artists and writers have also viewed the fantastic landscape and subsequently written or painted works where this landscape has figured. They include

ARTISTS
Yves Brayer
Antoine Serra
Van Gogh

WRITERS
Marie Mauron
Frédéric Mistral
André Suarès

ENGRAVER
Louis Jou

Desolation of Dante

«No one passes through Les Baux without a sense of true nostalgia, for here, more than anywhere else, the labours of time show what becomes of the most ambitious undertakings: ruined walls and breaches onto the void. The stones of man’s proud constructions devoured by the sun and wind. Only traces remain of their ambition, fears and solitude»
(T.Fréchier)

In the city in 1964

In early times, it was quite common to settle on a hilltop where a fort could be built to defend the town. But the fortifications could not stand against modern cannons.

Ruins

In the words of Mistral, the Lords of Les Baux were "never vassals". He was correct, since they were among the most powerful feudal lords in France’s Midi who ruled 79 fiefs with an iron hand for five centuries, crushing all insubordinance. They claimed to be the descendants of one of the three Magi, Balthazar. The evening star (Saint Estelle) was the sixteen-pointed star on the coat of arms of the Lords of Baux.

We might look at some events that occurred before Les Baux was finally overcome by France. For nearly twenty years, Raymond des Baux waged the Baussenque wars (1145 to 1162), fighting the Count of Barcelona for the earldom of Provence. He was known as "the scourge of Provence" - he found throwing prisoners off the top of the castle to be an effective solution. At the same time, Les Baux was also the location of the famous Courts of Love where poetry and song were occupations for the inhabitants.

Cats over a doorway

The castle was destroyed by Louis XI (in 1483). The most famous governor was Constable Anne de Montmorency, embarked on considerable restoration work, and the town saw a return to splendour. The Constable had the Treasury archives transferred to the citadel from Aix, where they were under threat from Charles V’s troops.

However, the castle and city walls were eventually destroyed under Richelieu’s orders because of the rebellious Protestantism of the Manville family who managed what had by now become just a barony. The ramparts were defended for 27 days but in the end they surrendered. Less than two hundred years later, Les Baux at last became the marquisate of the Grimaldi royal family of Monaco.

Now the village has been painstakingly restored and several buildings in the village are classified as "Historic Monuments." When we were there, it was still in the original ruins.

Fortified City Falls to Canon

Fields

Valley below Les Baux

Ruins on the hill

Iron cross in front of church

Entrance

The Alyscamps is a large Roman necropolis, a short distance outside the walls of Arles, France.

Bob walking between the tombs

It was one of the most famous necropolises of the ancient world. 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. In the case of Arles, there were five necropolises, situated on each of the main roads leading to this city. The Alyscamps was the most famous of the five and was Arles' main burial ground for nearly 1,500 years. It was the final segment of the Aurelian Way, a road that connected Rome to Arles and which lead up to the city gates. Alyscamps was used as a burial ground for well-off citizens, whose memorials ranged from simple sarcophagi to elaborate monuments.

Me being resurrected from a tomb

At one time, Alyscamps would have been much larger. Originally it was the largest collection in western Europe of marble sarcophagi outside Rome. The best sarcophagi have been removed to various churches and museums of Arles. The small amount now visible is what is left after looting during the Renaissance, and the 19th century installations of railway lines and a water canal.

The Alyscamps was the subject of several Van Gogh paintings. We visited in 1964. In 1981, the Alyscamps was classified a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as part of the Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments group.

Bob walking along ahead of me

We got to Arles at the end of the day, parked and walked into the Roman Theater. Arles Roman Theatre, known as the Théâtre antique d'Arles, is an Ancient Roman theatre in the Provence town of Arles which would have been used for a variety of theatrical shows. When we were there, they were using the site for a photo shoot.

This theater was probably constructed in the late first century BC to early first century AD, during the reign of the Emperor Augustus (27 BC–14 AD). Quarried for its materials in the Middle Ages, Arles Roman Theatre was only really rediscovered in the nineteenth century. By this time, only a fraction of its steps remained together with the orchestra and two solitary columns.

Now one of Arles’ UNESCO World Heritage sites, Arles Roman Theatre is the venue of an annual festival.

Fence in Arles

Theatre from where we parked (our car on left)

Entrance

Models in the theatre

Columns that remain

Bob walking ahead of me

This picture is of the amphitheatre, which was built around AD 90. It ranks among the great amphitheatres and could hold 20,000 spectators. Gladiator fights and animal hunts took place here until the end of the 5th century.

We really had a rather good day altho the tours of the Pope's Palace etc. were exclusively in French and so not much of a success (Bob does not speak French). Otherwise we had a good stay.

We turn our car in with about 800 km or 500 miles on it.

August 7, Friday

Bob on steps of RR station

Street Market

Looking up steps

Men with hoses washing down the parking lot

I have not been to Marseille since 1964, and at that time I was transiting by boat back and forth to the aircraft carrier that my husband was serving on.

So I have various photos of the waterfront, lighthouses and aids to navigation. I have identified two photos of Fort Saint-Jean, a 1644 lighthouse which was inactive even when I saw it.

Fort Saint-Jean

It was built by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem by the order of Louis XIV as a watch tower. It is on the quay south of the Passe de la Joliette.

Distant view of Fort Saint-Jean

Feu de Sainte-Marie, Marseille

And I have a photo of Feu de Sainte-Marie a lighthouse from 1855 which is floodlit at night although it is inactive. This is a round stone tower

Tourelle du Canoubier

But the black and white lighthouse above has been more of a problem. I think this is Tourelle du Canoubier, which is now yellow and black. The top of the tower is rounded and carries a black double-diamond daymark on a short mast. This is the oldest French beacon to be built at sea on an underwater foundation. It is located about 180 m (600 ft) southwest of the Feu de Sourdaras, off the Pointe d'Endoume;

Small beach lower left

Today we went to the Chateau d'If of the man with the Iron Mask fame -- the latter in a boat. People swim out there.

Bathers at the Chateau

Chateau entrance and drawbridge

Plaque in memory of Protestants

Well in courtyard

Mainland from island

Fishing from Chateau d'If

Boat through the gun slit

leaving Chateau D'If

Coming into harbor

Coming into harbor

I have gotten my couchette reservations back to Sis's -- I am going to spend a full day in Paris. Bob has to be back on board at midnight Friday, so I have a couchette to Paris Fri. night and one to Nurnberg Sat. night. We have to pick that up at the travel agent this morning.

Also I have to get some stamps to mail a letter to Sis and maybe get to her so she knows when to expect me.

Funicular

View from Notre_Dame_de_la_Garde

Looking down lift

Road up

Toward beach

Lower level

Walkway up

Looking left

Backyard of church

Rooftops

Views from Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde

PS The Italian rail strike is over. I enjoyed your letter that came to the ship at Marseille and I hope he'll have another one for me. I got the Seville letter via Bob. No we didn't send a forwarding address to Seville as we didn't cancel. Couldn't do it in time to get our money back, so didn't bother.

The girl in Madrid was out of town (a friend of their former Scout leader). The dresses I got in Spain are for the children at 2 and 4 or so - dresses alike and a dress for the baby bought in Valencia and a dress from Madrid.

I don't think my sister will write the rest of her trip to England up. We loved Portugal and Spain, but the train schedules were too hectic to go any further. I'm glad we 'sold' Portugal to you.

The baby's nails are hard to trim and I just try to catch her when she's sitting still. I never thought it was THAT bad. My niece takes much longer to calm down than my children do. And when she's tired, only Momma can hold her -- no one else will do. I never had any trouble with bugs and the kids before (Ed note: I had written that she seemed to get a lot of bites of some kind out in the yard that made welts on her) Have you tried insect repellent?

Fleet Landing

Millie (remember her husband was killed when my oldest was 3 weeks old) married 2 weeks ago to an engineer from Phila. Ruth is over here for a few weeks now too and she brought the news. The wife of the XO of HS3 (helicopters) dropped dead this week. I guess she had a heart attack. They are in their 40s I guess. No other real news,

Love RA

Aid to Navigation with carrier in background

I sent a lot of things with Bob and his bag was very heavy, whereas mine is much lighter. It was raining heavily when I left Marseilles.

Next Paris