Provence

Continuing the series, this seems to be the shop in the French Provence village of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue were Ganesha got his tats:

It’s been less than 200 years ago that Nice became the property of France, rather than Italy. But nevertheless you can see many vestiges of its original Italian history, as this snap shows:

This is the hotel, and this is a statute of Miles Davis,

During the season when I was here, the hotel room prices started at around EUR 450 per room. It’s not that I object paying a price like this; rather, it’s a tourist hotel, and I fear that I would be sorely disappointed by what I found there.

Continuing the series, you better keep out of this guy’s way,

Forget Nandi the sacred Bull, this guy’s more happy on a HOG!

If you see a statue of a guy looking up and wearing a military cap, you don’t even need to look further, that is Charles de Gaulle,

Continuing the series, absolutely nothing spectacular about this one, just thought I liked the way it looked:

Continuing the series, seems to be some kind of tourist store in the French Provence village of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue,

 

Continuing the series, this is the village of Roussillon in the French Provence, famous for its ochre industry:

Imagine an unbelievable sandwich sent to us from Heaven by St. Michael himself, a sandwich so mind-blowingly good that it’s dripping with tuna and anchovy happiness that makes your mouth simultaneously water and explode the moment you bite into it!

Such a sandwich was what I was hoping for . . . but sadly, this sandwich is not it:

The sandwich is called a Pan Bagnat – that doesn’t sound French, so my guess is that it could be a vestige of the Nicois dialect or even Langue d’Oc that is still occasionally spoken in the south of France.

I even tried eating it next to a French police cruiser to see if that would enhance the effect, but sadly the sandwich was not what I had hoped.

Continuing the series,

A lone pidgeon sits on a fountain in the French Provence city of Cavaillon, and he thinks about his options. He’s not that dirty – but he does feel a bit dirty. And it’s not that cold – but it is somewhat cold. I saw him sitting here, thinking, for a long time. He ultimately had more patience than I, and I walked away before seeing if he took a bath.

The tiny Provential village of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue has a few paddlewheels in the creeks that flow through the center of town. This one is actually turning – but as far as I can tell, it’s not connected to anything so it must be there for decoration:

I took this snap just outside of a lavender distillery in Apt,

I usually travel to Provence in the winter, then the lavender has already been harvested – it is on my bucket list to return someday and see how they actually harvest this plant. Judging from the neat shape of the hedges above, I assume they use some type of curved, bladed harvesting device.

I took this snap just outside of a lavender distillery, in Apt:

Well, I can’t say it surprised me, but when I went up to the stuff and stuck my hands in and pulled out a huge amount and put it up to my nose and smelled it – no smell at all!  Not only no lavender smell, but also no rotting smell. My guess is that if they subject the lavender leaves to high temperatures then this more or less sterilizes the organics, and it probably takes a while before bacterial action sets in and it begins to compost.

Continuing the series, I took this snap just outside of L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue, heading in the direction of Apt,

I captured this head just along one of the banks of mighty Sorgue river and it passed through the L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue,

This is something you don’t see everyday – in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this at all. It’s a medieval doorway in the southern French city of Arles, but one that is framed with helical columns on both sides:

Barbershop poles are interesting things. They have them in the US, of course. Germany doesn’t seem to have them – at least, I’ve never seen one in Germany. They are quite common in Switzerland.

And you can find them in France, but not everywhere.

I took this snap in Arles:

 

Of course it is probably more at home here in Europe, originally deriving from a sign used for shops that had doctors and leaches and were willing to bleed you with them.

But that begs the question: what else do we see in our daily lives and take for granted, but that we would have also seen hundreds of years ago?  Probably if we could travel back in time there are more than a few things that we would instantly recognize.