Pixel Imperfect @ wornpassport.com

My Own Seatbelt!

Sun, 04 May 2008 13:16 -0700

Sorry gang, I had what I thought was a fun posting for this one but somehow it got eaten in the ether. No time or energy to re-write at this point (I've never had one lost before so I don't save them separately as a habit) so the photo will have to do for now. We're in Montreal waiting for our last flight of the day. The photo du jour is Jack looking coy as he wears his very own infant seatbelt (a new invention to us) on a Swiss air flight today... Sorry for the boring post but I won't be able to recapture the original without a bit more food/sleep... Bye for now.

Sunny Barcelona!

Sat, 03 May 2008 11:56 -0700

Loathe as I am to post a photo of myself, here we are. Jack and I checking out Casa Battlo - Gaudi's contribution to the fantastically-named Manzano de la Discordia (google it - like everything Gaudi it's fun). We had a couple of hours to walk around Barcelona - packed this weekend thanks to an ATP tennis tournament, big Barca soccer game, and a Rubik's cube competition. The streets were crazy busy but it was great to be reminded of how much fun this city is. I had four or five other shots that I thought would give a better impression of my view of Barcelona - possibly my favourite city in the world to visit - but Krista was pushing for this one so I didn't fight too much. Not much to say really, except that if you have a three-month old baby, I suggest not taking the hotel shuttle to the airport, the train from the airport to downtown and then reverse it to get home. One train ride a day is apparently Jack's limit - we were the recipients of what was probably his worst meltdown of the trip (and really, it was pretty tame I think) as the slow train shunted around between stops. It seems that Spaniards are just as interested in little Jack as the French, we just don't understand all the nice things they are saying to him. Leaving off now as I endeavour to return the rental early so we can just take the shuttle into the airport tomorrow morning. Tomorrow is BCN->ZRH->YUL->YVR->Sophia...

Where The Pyrenees Dive Under the Water

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:24 -0700

Now that was a busy day! First, up at 6:30 to go for a 52km ride before Jack got up - a great ride over a steep col beside Mont Alaric. Then cleaning and packing the car for our departure from Lagrasse. Finished off with the drive to Collioure, the challenge of finding parking in a steep-sloped Med tourist town on a long weekend, and then walking around Collioure to find a quiet place to feed Jack and a suitable restaurant to feed Krista and I. I'm knackered. Luckily I had over 200 shots to choose from. There were some that were either more unusual or technically more interesting but we thought this one captured some of the spirit of our arrival in Collioure. Walking down to the shore and seeing dozens of cafe chairs right on the shore, the end of the Pyrenees coming down to kiss the Med, and the medieval fortifications in the hills around town. It may be a very popular tourist town but Collioure is beautiful. Much like Cadaques in Spain - just over the border and our last stop on our 2004 trip to see the TDF - Collioure is surrounded by steep hills and maintains a strong fishing tradition. The local specialty is anchovies and it was with pride that I saw Krista order a brochette of anchovies and serrano ham as an appetizer tonight - whole anchovies are not oft ordered by North Americans... The town is a nice maze of pedestrian-friendly streets and there is a long walk around the port and the fortifications. We even saw someone out on his stag night - complete with ball and chain around his ankle and drunken tasks to complete. Clearly some odd traditions exist on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm a bit too tired to wax poetic but we were definitely sad to leave Lagrasse. After five weeks here we were really quite settled in. We knew the baker, the folks at the epicerie, and several others around town. We knew the local roads to pretty much anywhere and I was getting better at euro-parking our fairly large car. We won't miss the omnipresent smokers but there are many things we will miss - not just the great red wine at dinner. And then there are the missed photos. I may have taken somewhere in the order of 4000 photos over the past five weeks but there are a few places I'd love to have shot - either we didn't have the time or we didn't get there at all. Something I will have to get used to with Jack on board. Speaking of the little monster, he has really been a gem travelling around here. We haven't had many dinners out, and the first one was truly a disaster, but lately he's been very tolerant of us eating out and of his sometimes disrupted routine. Despite not having slept much today - thanks to our frenzied cleaning and packing in the morning and our travel in the afternoon - he spent our dinner gnawing away on my thumb, Krista's arm, and pretty much anything else he could get his gums on. And he was downright smiley all the way home to our hotel just outside of town. It's remarkable what a difference a few weeks makes. Just a couple of weeks before we came here I was wondering whether or not we should come because of Jack's challenges. Unlike his first few weeks of life, he's shown himself to be a hearty traveller with a remarkable capacity for change and new environments. Now let's hope he sleeps tonight. A quick jaunt to Barcelona tomorrow (we're currently about 10km from the Spanish border) is all that stands between us and a couple of Swiss Air flights home to Canada. Now that we're packed I'm ready to see the misty skies of YVR...

Packing Up

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:51 -0700

It was pretty easy to pick today's photo-du-jour - it represents 25% of my photographic output today. And 100% of my photographic subjects... We're preparing to leave Lagrasse, sadly, so today was mostly a day of packing and cleaning. We're off to Collioure tomorrow and this place has to be spic and span before we head out. Back to the photo, though. It relates to something that I've been meaning to mention but haven't thus far. The picture is of a portion of the, obviously now closed, train station in a town called Capendu, just up the road from us. Capendu is not a huge place but it's probably home to 600 or 800 people and the train tracks run right through town. We went there today because they were having a bit of a May Day party (it's labour day here and most everything has been shut down) and we thought we'd stop by. It looked like a fairly standard Victoria Day event in Canada, with the exception that there were 5 or 6 wine domains whose wares you could taste. We didn't stay long but the image of the cement-sealed train station really resonated with me for two reasons. The first is the plight of the guidebook-driven traveller. As one of our sources of information, we brought an older Lonely Planet guidebook but realized early on that it has really crappy coverage of the area we're in - in fact their coverage of the south-west of the country is terrible. We periodically gripe about that but we borrowed a great book from the house so it wasn't really an issue on this trip. What I've realized in the process of exploring here, however, is that the Lonely Planet - for European countries at least - is all about what you can get to on a train. They rarely discuss anything that can't be reached by train unless it's an epic sight to see. The second reason it resonated with me is that one sees fewer and fewer towns with train service now. It used to be that the milk run from Barcelona to Nice - at least as I took it in 1989 - stopped in every two-Jacques town in the south of France. Now you need to find a sizable place (i.e., a large town or a small city) in which to catch the train. As an example, Lezignan-Corbieres is the closest train station to Lagrasse. Not bad - it's only about 19km away - but Lezignan is large enough to lose much of the appeal of the small towns of the French south and also has pretty terrible bus service to outlying areas. If you were travelling exclusively by train here these days you'd miss most of what the area has to offer. It's not quite the same in Provence, largely because the larger cities in Provence are quite close together and are the focal points for the region. Here, however (and I'm sure it's the same in many other areas of France), the rural landscape and towns hold the key to the experience. It's sad that the trains don't make it here anymore - Capendu, while lacking much of the charm of Lagrasse, has some great things going for it and is close to the Canal du Midi - and it's also sad that a substantial guidebook like Lonely Planet doesn't at least let the train travelling public know what they are missing. OK, there's my observation on progress in France and the details of travel in her south-west corner. Our interesting food of the day came from the Capendu event - sheep's milk ice cream! The ice cream booth, farmer-made ice cream, was the busiest stand in the place - it was mid-20s and still today - and much to our surprise the product was made from sheep's milk. And yes, we could certainly tell the difference. It tasted great but there's a certain weight and tang to goat's milk and sheep's milk that is unfamiliar to my palette and therefore a bit odd. FYI, today is likely the last posting of an image from the Corbieres as we're off to the sea in the Rousillion area tomorrow. Then it's into Barcelona on Saturday for an early flight on Sunday. The combination of a big soccer game, the long weekend, and a Rubik's cube competition mean that we have to stay at an airport hotel as the rest of the city was booked. I'm not kidding, every hotel under four hundred Euros a night in Barcelona has been booked for Saturday for at least two weeks. Oh well. We're pretty sad about leaving - even Jack was uncharacteristically quiet and sombre looking this afternoon - but it will be nice to see all of you when we get home. Hopefully we'll have internet access to continue posting until we leave. Au revoir Lagrasse.

Timeless

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:06 -0700

One of the things I find interesting about France, at least in the south but I'm pretty sure it extends north as well, is the seeming timelessness of some aspects of life. This is less prevalent in urban areas but is not completely absent. What am I talking about? You'll see many 30 to 40 year old cars on the road here - and these aren't collector cars - and even the new "housing estates" contain houses that look just like the 18th century houses down the road. The road signs are a mix of the old (see photo of the day - I absolutely love the look of the older road signs here) and the new. You still see old guys working the tractors in their small vineyards despite the proliferation of factory farming. There are still public markets in every town, stores still close for 2 to 4 hours at midday, and stores usually close at least one day a week (in addition to Sunday when everything shuts down), and on and on... Now you'll still see people talking on their iPhones in those 40-year old cars, and the folks with 18th century houses have high-speed internet and satellite TV, but there's this interesting sheen of the past that surrounds life in the rural south. I think that's what really attracts people to spend time here, and I'm sure it's one of the things that makes people go home saying 'man, I'd love to live in the south of France,'. But I also think that it's one of the elements of life here that would be difficult to adjust to if you lived here and needed to make a living. I think it would be a non-issue - and quite a lot of fun - if one were independently wealthy, but it would be difficult to try to rationalize a North American viewpoint on work and commerce in an environment like this. Not impossible, that's for sure - lots of people have done it - but it would take a surprising amount of 'cultural sensitivity', something that people might not expect since we're still in the, somewhat oddly-named, "western world". I love the way people here embrace history and try to hold onto the past but I wonder what the next 20 years will bring for the young people of France (and potentially other areas of Europe). As I mentioned, the photo-du-jour is a fisheye shot of an old road sign we found today. There are not too many of these left, particularly in the area right around Lagrasse, so when we saw a few today I annoyed Krista and Jack by stopping several times and shooting a bunch of them. There were three shots in the running - this was Krista's favourite and my second favourite. It does show you the kind of day we had today (mix of sun and cloud, lots of wind, a bit of light rain) and it brings out some of the texture of the old signage against the vineyard in behind. My favourite shot was a more brooding and atmospheric shot of a sign in a more advanced state of decay. Krista's lobbying won out but the other one will make it into the "best of" gallery when I get that together. What else happened today? Not much. We dropped Nana at the airport with a load of Brits this morning and then stopped by the Chateau de Lastours (didn't go in, just admired from afar), before heading back to Lagrasse. Jack had a 2.5 hour nap (unprecedented) while Krista napped and did yoga and I booked a hotel for our Friday stopover in Collioure down on the Med. So, we leave here Friday (that's right, the day after tomorrow!) and fly out of Barcelona on Sunday morning. Tomorrow (May 1) is a holiday here so we'll hopefully find some May Day celebrations to join in on as we pack up and clean up before Friday morning. The countdown is on!

Taking It Slow

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:26 -0700

Today was a pretty slack day here in Lagrasse. We took Nana for a walk along a section of the Canal du Midi (near Marseillette - I'd suggest giving that area a pass - head for Trebes, Carcassonne, or Beziers instead) and then walked over to see the abbey here (L'Abbaye Sainte Marie d'Orbieu). It was built in the 11th-13th centuries and is a fixture in this town. It is one of the prime Cathar sites in Languedoc, partly because it was at the heart of the Albigensian crusades against the Cathar religion (it's a long story - look it up). After nearly five weeks in town we thought we should at least stop by. It's not nearly as complete or intriguing as the Abbaye de Fontfroide (see previous photo thereof) but it's an interesting example of a fairly un-restored ruin. The abbey is actually split into two parts - the part we saw was donated to the government of Aude, the local department, and the other section is an active abbey owned, I presume, by the Benedictines. Krista and I are hoping to see the active side on Friday as that is when they open up for public viewings (the building, not the monks). I didn't take the camera as I was carrying a very sleepy Jack and nothing irritates him more than the beautifully crisp sound of the D300 shutter. It sings like the edge of a steel drum to me but Jack has already become very wary of the pendant around daddy's neck. Hopefully he'll grow out of that. Just before we left for the abbey I caught this shot of Jack and his fabulously beautiful mother as he slept after lunch. He never falls asleep like this - it's always a bit of a struggle for him to give in to sleep - so you know he was tired. I decided on a black and white for today partly because I was thinking in monochrome today and partly because it helps to focus on the central figures without the distraction of colour. This is also one of the rare 'goober free' shots of Jack these days as he has entered the (first) massive drool stage of life. It's rare to see Jack without a dripping wall of saliva on his chin. Try Photoshopping that out! Tomorrow we take Nana to the airport - she's on her way to the UK - and then we need to buckle down to hit our last targets before the fun is over. Very frightening to think that we need to pack up in just a couple of days. Hopefully we'll have blog entries up until Saturday and then a couple of galleries of "best ofs" early next week. Regards to all.

Two For The Price of One

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:42 -0700

Just when you thought I might start giving you some better photos of France, here I go again with a nerdy flower shot. I think I mentioned this before but I'm not really a flower shot kind of guy. I do, however, sometimes get enamoured with macro mode on our little Canon point and shoot. It's by far the best use of the little camera, hopefully you agree, and I do love the details of macro mode... I had the Canon out today as I did a short but interesting ride. I took my aluminum road bike, complete with 23mm tires at about 100psi, along a very rough dirt road - much like a BC logging road - to get to Notre Dame du Carla. ND du Carla is a 12th century church that sits on a high ridge about 5km west of Lagrasse. It's reachable only by this gravel road but it is still used from time to time for church services. I really wanted to see it but we thought it was a 4h round-trip hike, and not stroller friendly, so we weren't up for taking Jack out there. I figured I'd use my limited cyclo-cross skills to take the road bike up there and see what was going on. It was a very pretty ride with some very steep (i.e., over 15%) ramps and I found a bunch of great wildflowers - replete with pollen-laden bees and other critters - to view in macro mode. All went surprisingly well on the road until about half way down the final 2.5km descent. First the road started to really punish my backside - I'd double flatted. Then came the rain. It started just before I fixed the second, front, flat. Thankfully it started as a classic west coast mist before opening up after I got back down into town. I managed to get home in time to get the laundry off the line as the rain came in. Otherwise, today was a rest day after all the time in the car the last few days. Dinner tonight was trout stuffed with leeks, spinach, roasted garlic, and merguez sausage. Yummy, if I do say so myself. It's been fun playing around in the kitchen for the past few weeks - I'm not sure what I'll do when I have to go back to work. Maybe I should put together a 'five weeks in france' cookbook... Just a few more days left for us - hopefully you can stomach four or five more photos...

I Thought You Sete That...

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:50 -0700

So many stories, so little time. On the drive home today I remembered several things that I should have mentioned last night but I have again forgotten them - perhaps tomorrow. Today was an eclectic collection of activities and happenings so I'm not really sure where to start. So let's start with the photo-du-jour. It's a panorama shot of downtown Sete that I took from our hotel window this morning. Downtown is across the canal from our hotel and, as you can see, the main canal-side drag is lined with restaurants and bars - Sete was a hopping place this weekend. From the water, the town rapidly ascends Mont St Clair and you may be able to make out the ruins of Fort Richelieu near the top-left of the photo. The two things I love most about Sete, that I think are portrayed in this picture, are the colours (both boats and buildings - finally some building colour other than tan and orangy-tan!) and the fact that the town is built around a working waterfront - Sete is the largest French fishing port on the Med and the second largest commercial port. I've been here 4 or 5 times now but this is the first time I've stayed here. I think I like it even more now. Apologies for the distortion on the left side of the image but this was a panorama taken with a wide-angle lens so things got a little hairy at the edges. The other primary competitor for today's photo was a panorama of some excellent graffiti at the edge of downtown Sete. That would have been dedicated to my brother Chris - a lover of good street art - so I'll have to find another way to get it to him. We wandered the streets and morning market in Sete before heading to Maguelone, between Sete and Montpellier and a beautiful place. There is a cathedral at Maguelone that is built at the end of a sandbar (a 5km walk as cars are no longer allowed) with a perfect view of the azure Med. Things got a bit derailed by Jack being an unhappy camper in his stroller (there's nothing like carrying a small furnace on your chest in 26 degree-plus sunny weather!) but it was a beautiful walk amongst flamingos, egrets, and a variety of interesting shorebirds on the way out to the cathedral. The cathedral was built, along with a castle that was long-ago ruined, in the 11th century and continues intact, though now in private hands on land that has become a wine estate. I know, you're saying 'didn't he say the church was on a sandbar? How can there be a wine estate on a sandbar?' If I knew I would tell you. It appears that if you have lots of sun and some terrible soil, grapes are the crop for you. Perhaps we just need to turn central Africa into the new Bordeaux? From Maguelone we headed home via the coast and the Autoroute. It was at this point that our automobile luck served up one of my favourite stories of our trip so far. When we were about 50 minutes from home, the oil light came on in our (new) rental car. Irritated, I pulled into the next gas station and checked the oil. Of course it read as being full and the oil light went off the next time I started the car. Thanks GM and Hertz for another fantastic example of automotive engineering. But that's boring. The funny part came when I went into the store at the gas station to buy some cold drinks for our crew. I had my three drinks in hand and was waiting somewhat patiently in line when the guy in front of me - who was, by the way, buying a bottle of wine while driving on the Autoroute, only in France - asks for his purchase to be gift wrapped. Are you ##$%^@ kidding me? Gift wrapping a bottle of wine? This is a gas station not Birks you buffoon! I almost passed out when I saw the cashier go back to a cupboard behind the cash register and pull out a cute little wine bag and some yellow ribbon. I physically gagged when she brought out her scissors to do that seventh-grade ribbon curling trick! We're in a GAS STATION! Welcome to a 10-minute transaction. Just to put a cherry on top of the moment, just as soon as he gets his bottle of wine wrapped (he had paid earlier and therefore should now be leaving the store) he calls back to his lady-friend about 5 people behind me in line and says the equivalent of 'just hand that up to me and I'll pay for it.' Get stuffed mister... Is it not enough that you've just wasted our time with your purchase, now we have to wait until you've paid for everyone in your tour group so they don't have to wait (behind me) in line? But I wasn't bitter - I let it wash over me like the sands of time defoliating my memories... Back home in time to make a nice veggie frittata for dinner but not in time to catch the end of Liege-Bastogne-Liege on french tv - that was a pity. But I cannot complain - a sunny hot day by the med, some good food, and a bizarre exchange at a gas station. What more can a guy ask for?

Ooh La La!

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:12 -0700

This one will be short - I promise. I'm currently kneeling on the grotty rug in a small 3-star hotel room in Sete, writing this in complete darkness as Jack sleeps. So, yes, it will be short. Packed day today... Roamed the Lagrasse market briefly in the morning for petit pois biologique - english peas, one of Krista's favourite snacks - before hitting the road to busy Pezenas and its large market, many artisans, and interesting restaurants. Unlike last Sunday in the rain, Pezenas on a sunny Saturday was crazy. People everywhere, restaurants full, parking lots imaginatively packed with cars where cars should never go... It was fun, though, and very hot. It was probably at least 25 and sunny today, with barely a breeze to take the edge off. Given the lack of wind, we thought we'd head underground to beat the heat. Julie was keen to see a large cave so we drove to the Grotte de Desmoiselles (GD) in the southern Cevennes hills - beautiful knobby giants about an hour north of the Med. The GD is a commercialized cave - one of the largest in France - with a little funiculaire that takes you up into the main caverns. The "cathedral" - the largest room in the cave - is huge. I think it's 60m high, 50m wide, and 100m long. The photo-du-jour is a fisheye shot of Krista navigating one of close to 700 steps in the tour of the cave. The stairs were wickedly steep, wet in places, and generally pretty scary. Major kudos to Krista for managing all that with Jack on her front (and asleep most of the time). The cave was unbelieveable - huge stalactites and stalagmites, giant caverns, and very well constructed, low-intrusion infrastructure so that the natural beauty of the place is not lost. After the GD we had to book it back south through Montpellier to Sete - a small town that has a major commercial harbour and a great waterfront restaurant strip. We're staying at L'Orque Bleu (the blue orca), a small 3-star hotel, and our rooms face onto the canals in town - very pretty. It was an exhausting day but much fun was had - we even managed to have a late dinner with Jack mostly sleeping in the Bjorn on my chest. Now to see if Jack sleeps in his new surroundings... I'd better beat it before I get smacked for keeping the kid awake... p.s. Can you believe that in only 1 week all of this will be over and we'll be back in YVR? I can't... I'm not sure I'm up for reality yet!

Wow

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:09 -0700

Not a day goes by without a surprise somewhere around here. Generally I'm wary of attractions. I was going to add qualifiers to that but the reality is, I'm a bit wary of anything that is deemed an "attraction". Today I stand corrected. We went to L'Abbaye de Fontfroide - a privately-owned former abbey just outside of Narbonne (about 25 minutes from Lagrasse) - and it was truly incredible. It's no longer an active abbey - it has been owned by the same family since 1908, it was decommissioned as an abbey in 1900 - but it is remarkably well preserved and restored. I won't go into the detail we heard on the guided tour (another red flag - it's the only way to see the abbey and I'm not a fan of guided tours) but the location is fantastic, the building is striking, and the story of its history (built in the 11th century, active for eight hundred years, lovingly restored by a wealthy art patron) is intriguing. Even the tour was good - all in French, lead by a very knowledgeable (ok, also very cute) guide. The family that has owned the property since 1908 still lives there but most of the abbey is open for (very popular) public viewing. I'm not sure that the photo of the day properly communicates what we saw but you can see a small amount of the architectural detail involved. I think if I showed you a half dozen of my shots you might get a better idea but we don't have space (or time) for that here... Here's one anecdote to try to set the context of what the Fayet family has done to restore the property. Because of the vows of poverty and simplicity that the founding order took, there were no windows over the openings in the walls. There were lots of windows cut in the walls but they were just open to the outside - no coverings at all. In the main church on the site, Gustave Fayet (the patriarch patron & artist who bought the abbey) commissioned a couple of his artist friends to create stained glass windows with suitable religious motifs but using mosaic techniques from the middle ages to create the stained glass scenes. So, rather than painting a scene on a piece (or several pieces) of glass, the scene is assembled from many small pieces of coloured glass. Well, each of the windows in the church is an amazing piece of modern art in itself - they are beautiful, technically fascinating, and still appropriate to the setting. The church windows were made in the late 1910's and into the 1920's, when most of the restoration was going on. Later in that period, Fayet decided to create stained glass windows for another section of the abbey. Instead of having his friends use similar techniques for those, he collected pieces of broken stained glass from churches bombed in World War I. From these he and his comrades built collages of stained glass for other areas of the abbey. They are remarkable in the stories they tell and the technical skill with which they were created. You might be able to tell from my rambling that I really liked this place - it was one of those examples of the amazing things that people can do when they really put their minds to something. And in that I'm including everyone from the 11th century order that built this incredible complex - and then added to it and modified it over 800 years - to the the Fayet family for restoring it and keeping the feel and the history of the place without sinking to overly commercial kitsch. Really amazing. Having got through that, I must tell you that I was chastised tonight by my companions for not including enough food discussion in these postings. With the exception of a couple of restaurant dinners and one Krista creation, I've made dinner every night we've been here and have been doing some experimentation. I haven't been blabbing on about it because I figured that you are already bored enough with just the daily goings on... But, since they asked, here's how tonight went. I had it in my mind to make a paella-like meal using langoustines (shellfish that look like either really small lobster or really big crayfish) with roasted potatoes as a base. Well, I couldn't find langoustines today (that's a long story itself) but I did find some prawns and some whitefish to contribute. Add in the merguez sausage and asparagus we bought at the market and some turkey from the freezer and you're pretty close to paella. The only problem was that we didn't get home till 7pm and the gang usually likes dinner around 8 so that Jack can be bathed, fed, and in bed by 9. I beavered away at things but the complexity of paella caught up with me and Jack got bathed, fed, and bedded before dinner was ready (sound familiar?). Luckily, however, that gave the dish another 30 minutes for the flavours to really gel and for some of the spice to come out of the merguez and the dry chillies. Dinner was rounded out by some excellent bread, a nice crisp rose wine, and a Krista-special dessert of fresh strawberries with a hint of honey. It turned out pretty well and I might just try something similar for our next party - beware! I don't cook by recipes but I can try to write this one down if you are interested... Hope all is well in your worlds. If you see my brother Dan today, please wish him a happy birthday. And you might as well ask him how old he is while you are at it...