Summer 2010 - The Planning

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It’s a remarkably blustery day here today. I’m alone in the house, cozy but a bit jumpy, because there’s a lot of noise out there. A perfect day to holiday-plan.

Here’s my idea–if not a plan, a notion. I want to blog this summer’s trip, every day. I may not get online every day, but I'll be taking my laptop, so I can write each day and post later. I’ll be able to upload photos, too. (Better learn how to take good night shots.)

I want to focus in particular on the villages and the city neighbourhoods that have never and likely will never make it into the guidebooks. I want to hit on the country roads lined with scrub, and the scuzzy lanes lined with sex shops. I want to include food: the markets, the picnics, the restaurants, their owners and their recipes. (Better learn how to take good food shots.)

I want to write poetry, fragments of the road. Bits of conversations, signs, names.

I want to lump the work together into some kind of book. Maybe I can.




The idea for this trip began with the realization that we have three sets of family/friends currently living in Europe: Ezra and Katharina in Berlin, Marc in Haarlem/Amsterdam, and Mike and Marin in London. It seemed like a confluence unlikely to be repeated. Well, okay, I was looking for an excuse. When I started looking at the logistics, I decided it would be crazy exhausting to do three major cities in one trip, so we dropped London. There was no question about Berlin, Ezra being John’s son, and we’d be unlikely to choose to go there if he wasn’t there–it’d be too far away from the high-on-the-list places to make a special trip for.

So, Germany. I did spend a few days there some decades back. My memories are of white wine, beer halls, and precisely-planted corn-row forests. A bit of research revealed white wine, beer halls, and Rhine-side castles and manors. I tried, but I couldn’t get excited, so I turned the task over to John. “You do some planning for a change,” I whined.

John’s a man of strong and specific passions. He loves music-making, and astronomy, and paleontology. He looked up the latter and found it–in the south of France.

Woo hoo! It’s a long way from Berlin, but when John said “France”, the gypsy blood rushed; this was the spark I’d been waiting to feel. Besides, that’s what high-speed trains are for: a day of relaxing, reading, writing, and getting across Europe.


So, after considerable research, here’s the plan. Click on the names to see images:


Berlin, 10 days
Colmar, 2 days
Avignon, 1 day
Toulouse (just overnight to transition from train to car)
south to Foix and the Tarascon caves, 1 day
Villefranche-de-Conflent and the Canary Train, 1 day
Coullioure on the beach near the Spanish border, 2 days
Carcasonne, 1 day
St.-Cirq-Lapopie and Pech Merle, 2 days
a gites near Gourdon in the Dordogne, 1 week, visiting Lascaux and other caves, canoing on the river, marketing in medieval villages
Paris, 9 days in an apartment in St-Germain-des-Pres



Back in Vancouver, as the storm subsides, I crack a bottle of wine from Cahors, in the heart of the countryside we'll be exploring. The label is all about regional wine values:

Croix du Mayne is an estate located on a gravelly soil on a second terrace of the Lot Valley, exposed South, Southwest.

It's a good day for a sip of the south of France.






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