Deborah's Backpack

Le Midi: Hail and Farewell

2007-04-07T15:25:39Z

I was right! Beautiful sunshine, a case full of silk frocks and flip flops and nowhere to go 'cept into a car...farewell breakfast on top of our hotel in Nice:

Lucas: At last we set off on our journey to Avignon we stayed in the Hotel Cloister and Dad says: “dad wanted to mum to dress up as a nun but she would have none of it” then that night we ordered a meal from room service that was tasty! Next day on the “Pont d’Avignon” we went to the end and we couldn’t get to the other side because the bridge was broken! They gave up after about 50 years because they kept getting invaded and also it was a bit difficult to build. So here we are watching the storm coming towards us:

So, this is us again:

And now at last we set off in the hired car and goodbye to Avignon then went on our everlasting trip to our house in Limeuil, this is our first day here where we enjoy occupying ourselves [note: he’s now translating direct from the original Latin] making bow and arrows and swords out of string and sticks then now I’m here typing on mum’s laptop these very words about our Holiday!

Theo: Avignon has walls all the way round the town, old walls that you can walk on and I read the map again as usual because I’m the guide.

In the car, all day yesterday, Lucas was mad all the way through the journey, especially the last hour when his face was purpled red. He called us all twerps (but this was better than he normally says). Mum and Dad were laughing, which made him madder. Now I am in the garden with my bow and arrow pretending 2 be robin hood; I grappled up the wall and shot him with my arrow - he’s mad with me and I’m about 2 run up a tree...sorry I’ve gotta gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…

Tony: First visit to Provence and loved it. Hired (inadvertently) a car strangely called a Nissan - Notte and after 550km we understood why.
The plane trees which line the RN’s and the city streets and squares work beautifully with the small scale of the vineyards and fields and with the Provencal stone and architecture. To Avignon: the hotel was in a C16 monastery with a strange modern extension by Jean Nouvel. Avignon’s centre historique is a perfect piece of urbanism which demonstrates how a city can work within preserved city walls. Highlight of the day was the flash hail storm which swept at least 2" of water into the town and (yup, you guessed) made the drains rise magically and with all the familiar pomp and circumstance of this tour..

T: Deborah has bought much of the families’ summer collection from the exclusive couturier – Monoprix - and the children and I have most fashionable sous-vetements. [Long lost tradition of washing small boys’ smalls in bath and stuffing over radiators remains long lost]. Eight hour journey to Limeuil – sworn to return next time in a Porsche even if we have to saw down the children’s legs.

Me: The sun shone brightly on our last seconds in Nice, as we prepared to venture along the cote d’azur. My oh my, did I have fantasies about skinny dipping off various hot rocks, Campari, brown skin and singing cicadas [‘nuff, ‘nuff]. However, the strange conclusion I came to was that putting 2 children and moi in a car (= confined and private space) for the first time on this venture, means time and place for major tantrums. Somehow, and interestingly, travel by train has meant no excuse for bad behaviour as all is public. Can this insight be extended to any meaningful social comment? Was life more civilised when wholly lived in public? Back to travel: Funky hotel, our extension, built 1994, missed out on finishes to bathroom – concept good, execution poor. The tour has been interesting in terms of observing (totally professionally, y’all hear) the levels of service and care offered through the trip. Hating to bitch, and with the exception of big bland efficient hotel in Nice, hotel accommodation has been poor in the extreme, ranging from sheer madness and badness (ripped sheets and bed bugs in Paris) to laziness (lack of information, soap and loo paper in Florence) to smelliness (trapped water under bath in Avignon, don’t get me started on Florence again) to blankets (blankets! Some brown! Some pink!) throughout. Lucky I have my family to keep me warm....

Le Midi: Hail and Farewell remains copyright of the author Burgh, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Nice weather for ducks (huh huh)

2007-04-01T16:54:28Z

Theo: today I saw the Mediterranean for the first time; it looked like a Cartoon or a film because it had palm trees and beaches in front. In Florence in a art gallery called Cézanne we had head phones I tried all the numbers on it and it went up to 44 different paintings with commentaries. In 2 days time we are going to Dordogne and hopefully getting the internet!

OK: Memories of Nice biscuits when small and various post-impressionists being bohemian. A good city but underdone by the rain, rain, rain. And closure of galleries for repair (that 35 hour week thing again? Surely not all can have crumbled at the same time?). Thus, we trog to the Musee des Beaux-Arts, on the back of a poem and a prayer, hoping for something amazing and - finding the biggest load of kitsche (and an amusing plaster cast of The Kiss, being snapped and papped) - enjoyed just a few good post-impressionists and some big breasted 18th saints (T's flesh for the day). So, in view of the rain, St. Dufy gives you the best impression of the view from our hotel:

Waking on Sunday, I once again chastised T for not purchasing that invaluable Leonardo de Vinci umbrella when in Rome; honestly - would have been best friend all the way. Imagine, therefore, schadenfreud when T found umbrella shop open this Sunday am in the flower market. Lucas and Caillebotte battled against the rain all morning:

Tony: Dufy or not Dufy, that is the question. In Nice, bien sur and a reminder of sunshine. Lunch was magnificent. The torteau died with a smile on its face [what's he eating tortoises for eh?] and was followed by Lorenzo the magnificent Lobster swimming in saffron bouillabaise with squid, bream, and soft shelled crabs that the waiter had to explain how (and why) to eat. The Sancerre was cold and cutting. Then to the beach for the five minutes of blue that Englishmen call the summer. Suddenly all Nice was out and about, lounging on deathly cold pebbles and sighing at the sea. The concert was disappointing. Much as we like a good requiem, this one had a death wish. [Well, it needs a big organ, honey].
Lucas:Well, when we went to The "Hotel Meridien"there was a TV in our room. Dad ordered room service to bring up bottle of wine, next at 4:00pm dad wanted to watch a concert, we did but when it finished we all thought it was a load of crap! I was about to write bollox but the spell check didn’t tell me how to write, that is why we hurried home quickly to write how crap the concert was!

But I really, trully think this is summer on the way. Damn the brolly...

Nice weather for ducks (huh huh) remains copyright of the author Burgh, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Things you don't want to know....

2007-04-02T18:04:20Z

Lucas: We went to the Uffizi on our last day in Florence and I was counting how many willies were on statues and I counted 28! Theo thinks it is 29 but I am sure I counted 28. Bottle top [deduce Botticelli here, sugar plum] painted women epics [hope I'm one of them] with their toe next to their big toe longer than the big toe! [Nope - have tried stetching it but no luck.]
Me: In Florence it slowly dawned on us (screaming headlines in Italian easily ignored) that they have a serious poo problem. Reader, this blog is not unduly concerned with a person's nether regions but it seems that the whole of the historic quarter of Florence has to be - ermmm - pumped out every night. This must be an issue on the scale of foot and mouth for us Englanders a few years ago and visitors beware. We had wondered why the Florentines looked so knackered and this, it transpired, was the unglamorous answer.
And now, your (not so) silent witness:
Tony: Have you ever smelled a mediaeval drain? On the third night I went down to the street to investigate. The smell was worse than anything you can believe as they sucked the ordure of millennia from a hole in the street. Who knows, this might have been part of a ‘Mediaeval Florence Experience’ laid on by the City Council. Not known for my sensitivity, I was actually gagging as I tried to get back into the apartment ['nuff said].
And so.....let'sgettouta here...

Next day we’re on the train to Nice, the first one, for 2 and a half hours and the seats were cool because there was a button that made the seat go up higher because it was First Class and on the second train Nothing much Happened!
Tony: The train to Milan was fine and the restaurant car offered thirteen variants on spaghetti pomodoro – but no, we saved ourselves for the longer leg to Nice and the SNCF first class compartment and restaurant car. Do not believe anything you read about Euro-trains – the restaurant car should have read: Pringles Originals con café freddo (not even any warm white wine) and a compartment that had seen better days in 1972. However, it is a beautiful route even though we did not stop in Monaco long enough to buy an apartment. Nor were we allowed up for air at Monte Carlo [keeps us riff raff out, tho']. We all felt a joie de vivre when we entered France and the sea in Nice really is azure even in the rain.

Things you don't want to know.... remains copyright of the author Burgh, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Firenze: "Borghia on my mind"

2007-03-28T16:11:26Z

Lucas: In Umbria at Lee’s place, when we were watching movies on his roll down Cinema [I think he prefers the term “screening room”, honey] and in citta della pieve where there was the smallest street in the world and adults had go sideways when they were near the end, and Mum wasn’t very happy when she saw how narrow it was. Me and Theo pretended to hold the walls back from closing in. It was called the “street of kissing women” yuk!
Me: For me Citta della Pieve was memorable for its Duomo carvings, which were fluid and almost early 20th C in their pastoral curves and realism – very different from the French gothic of Notre Dame and Chartres that I’m used to. How to make stone look like water – that’s the thing. That and the cold, alleviated by spankin’ hot water bottles – nice touch.

Theo: on Monday morning we got up early to take the train to Florence, everyone was freezing except me. I refuse to wear the new coat Mum bought me in Paris. In Florence I turn mums dads and Lucas’s fans on and off, muhahahahahhahahhah. I refuse to eat anything at all.
Tony: This should be a home-coming; after all, Deborah and I practically met at Instituta Machiavelli. But cunning manoeuvring of childer-beasts into cultural positions to no avail. So, today, reinforcements for leather fetish (Deborah two pairs, me one, but with Missoni belt). Managed (actually voluntarily) to take Lucas to first concert – Bach partita and solo violin programme – luckily Lucas agrees to stick with piano. Florence wonderful but very, very noisy at night as sound funnels up 16th century walls and full of pheromonal and unsupervised school trips by day. With post modern irony we go to excellent “Cezanne in Florence” exhibition (and expect to see “Masaccio in Nice” exhibition at the weekend).
Me: shopping tourism is unbounded in Florence as there are few (as yet) of the stolid comfort zones of department stores, gap or sephora. Instead – with aid of Lee’s unpublished notes for concierge.com – we make our way to the ‘erbalista of Sta Maria Novella for world’s best (and naturally most expensive) soaps.

Heading towards a Christmas tree near you soon….. Kids fail to realise that best part of being in a City is simply being there: walking and ogling. Humour at lunchtime in ersatz café next to local meat market, thus giggles at expense of American tourists who have inadvertently ordered whole boiled cock’s heads. Speaking of which, how many variants of sculpted willies can two small boys laugh at in one Florence stroll, we have: moley ones, pointy ones, bendy ones, ones that go up then across, anything it seems other than plain big ones. Indeed, only incentive for Uffizi tomorrow is David’s willy (small, as I recall).

Am right now hanging out of window by toe nails to bring you this...Florence anarchic enough to have unsecured wifi points but archaeic enough not to understand they might as well surrender the wep code as not....mwah!

Firenze: "Borghia on my mind" remains copyright of the author Burgh, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

The Big One [How Green is my Valley?]

2007-03-25T17:31:48Z

Wendsday night: our bold attempt to probe the wheels of steel and travel, 'cross Europe by train.
Lucas: Well now we are travelling on a train to ROME and Mum though it was a first class sleeper train but it is a boring tiny smelly carriage and I’m feeling claustrophobic because it’s tiny and boring. All I hope is that tonight will have gone by soon but I feel annoyed but I’ll just eat till I go to sleep, Bye!

PS: In Paris the pyramid Gallery,” the Louvre” was fun till my legs ran away & and I could hardly walk! But I saw the Mona Lisa it was cool and it was behind bullet proof glass!
Lucas: Well sleeping on the train was boring and the blanket for the duvet was itchy and the bed was tiny and you had to walk up a ladder to get up, the bed was kind of hanging from the wall! Well me and Theo, and me, bought monster munch crisps and they were nice but mum didn’t let us have many and mum was whining about how much wine there was (NOT)
Tony: It was a pleasure to see Deborah’s face when she saw that the couchette did not contain even a lavabo let alone somewhere for Oddjob to hide and spring out as we trained through the St. Godard Pass. Much muttering about planting trees and flying first class rather than endure a night with the children’s feet within three feet of our faces. There is also a danger of the train being full of people eager to minimize their carbon footprints [not much, mon cher…..most brought their own chuppa chips]. The morning rose bright and cheerful as we passed through Modena.
Rome: Keat’s Flat

Lucas: about ten minutes before I wrote this I was go-Carting and whizzing round the park and knocking Theo’s wheel and nearly I got lost! But now I’m hungry and there’s nothing in the fridge {In Keats’s house}, Bye bye!
Theo: in the exhibition about Leonardo da Vinci there was a mirror room
which I nearly couldn’t find my way out of. There was also a 12 barrel shot gun which you could spin and more barrels would come.
Hey ho: still the best kitchen in the world (all Keats needed was good chicken soup; all that swooning bollocks, oi vei), universe and anything (see view, above).
To Umbria and beyond…..T does country:
Tony: France was good enough for Terence Conran, even for Rick Stein, so who needs Umbria ? Many years of prejudice and a fear of running into Germaine Greer have needed to be eroded by a: visiting Umbria and b: having friends with a beautiful casa, indeed virtual castello between Rome and Florence on the edge of one of the hill cities. Weather not so good so time in front of fire drinking and reading books on Algeria (homework). Flesh frozen and unyielding - damn.

The Big One [How Green is my Valley?] remains copyright of the author Burgh, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Gay Paree: Rainy Tuesday morning

2007-03-21T09:21:09Z

Arrival Paris. MORNING: Grim weather and no thermals but determined to conduct worthly tour including homage to old home on Isle St Louis.
Lucas: well i couldn't believe my eyes when i saw the hotel bath it was the tiniest smallest puniest bath i have ever seen in the world and when I tried getting in only my head didn’t fit in it was so small and I’m telling the truth “Honest”! The room was tiny too but we have BBC prime and i caught Theo watching big chef little chef.

AFTERNOON: Like a wrinkle in time, we were standing outside our old home on Quay de Bethune and Madame the concierge came out. She looked exactly the same and I still don't know her real name.
Louvre unaccountably closed on Tuesday which is weird for capital city but they do have this 35 hour week thing to contend with. However, the most important (for me) place was the least known - the memorial to the French deportees, 200,000 of them, at the tip of the Isle de la Cite just by Notre Dame. This is not flagged in many guides and is the most moving, appropriate piece of architecture (opened 1961) that evokes powerful emotions. The centre installation, a long corridor lit by a single light, is lined with 200,000 glass beads or lights, each one a soul killed in deporation camps during the war. Impossibly not to be moved to tears - thus no photos as mascara not holding up. A stark contrast to Notre Dame, where we herded around with thousands of tourists (the Russians being best dressed for this weather). Suddenly realised this was down to Mr Dan Brown and secretly cursed. Taxi driver on way home will vote Segolene Royale...we will conduct straw pole (we're coming out as covert Sarkozies but strangely are keeping quite on this, not sure why).

Tony: Sitting in Jean Paul's favourite seat and trying to compose a sequel to 'L'etranger' involving the post modern irony of Paris on a rainy day with children, I was affronted to be photographed by a tourist who did not even ask for my signature.

Gay Paree: Rainy Tuesday morning remains copyright of the author Burgh, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs

Part I

2007-03-19T09:00:26Z

Allow us to add to the white noise of the 21st century. Permit our (very) short term blog to intrude on your already exciting lives. Dear readers, those of you more used to Dee Dee von F's apercus will have to read between the lines; this is the Orchard-Clark's collective toe dipping in the waters of blog-dom and children are present. I fear that it may fizzle out under a barrage of male hormones, "self-medication" and shopping but let's all see....together.
Take it away, childer-beasts:
Lucas: I'm bored beacause I'm not allowed to bring my laptop, "bored". The only fun thing will probably be when we are at the park at Rome!
Theo: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah boring boring blah blah
dont read it blah.
Me: Oh my lord.
Tony: What am I looking for in a whistle stop tour of France and Italy? I want: vespas, low-life, riviera, flesh, pasta, sad eyed madonnas, oranges and lemons, flesh, sunshine, bonding moments the children will re-live forever, flesh...[at this point camera pans out to lengthy wait at Exeter airport; Deborah being a travel-ubercontrolfreak. We have 12 rail connections ahead of us after short flight into Paris. That's 36 hours in Deborah-wait-time.]

Part I remains copyright of the author Burgh, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

Comment on this entry | Tweet this | Your own free travel blog | More Travellerspoint blogs