The Moulin Rouge

Paris looks its best at night. The city is beautiful anyway, but when the sky is dark and the best of its buildings are lit up they really come into their own.

We left Lyon on a late morning train that got us back to the capital in time for lunch overlooking the Seine, a walk down to the Statue of Liberty and then the metro out to the Bois de Boulogne. Not been there in ages, but I do remember the shady ladies hanging around in the trees as they tout for business. I’m quite glad we were on Velibs which means we could ride away faster than they could totter in their impossibly high heels.

I say ‘quite glad’ because it wasn’t an entirely good experience hiring bikes. In principle it’s a great idea. There are bike stations all over the city so you can check one out at the start of your trip and then check it back in somewhere else when you’re done. The bikes are easy to ride and well maintained, but the actual check in/out system is a seriously convoluted process.

Or perhaps the translations were just a bit off.

Either way it took us ages to get Rich’s bike logged back into the system and even with mine we had to log out and then back in again to be sure, so I don’t think we’d do that again.

We were glad to be rid of them by the time we were done, and jumped on a metro back into the centre for dinner.

Pyramid at the Louvre

Neither of us was particularly hungry after a week of good food, but we headed back into the Latin Quarter for a cheap menu and found a little restaurant where they had cats roaming around under the tables then shot off with our cameras as soon as we had paid for one last walk around the city.

Up past Notre Dame, pass by the Pompidou Centre, down to the Louvre to squat down by the pools as everyone else lay on their edges and looked up at the stars, and then home by way of Montmarte, which seemed to have turned off its lights, so no photo opportunities up there.

Notre Dame

All very touristy.

Saturday – today – a walk through the flea markets and lunch and a train home. A bit of a shocking return to reality. After quiet, comfy TGVs we were back on the Eurostar with badly behaved British children running up and down the aisles, British parents leaving over the backs of their seats to talk to each other and a woman with a very flimsy grasp of French translating her paper’s obituaries into English.

Would rather be back in Lyon.

Pompidou Centre

Last time I was in Lyon was 2003. We were chasing some lost train tickets and only discovered the best bits – the proper old town – a day before leaving. This time, forewarned and forearmed, that’s where we spent a lot of our time.

We walked and walked and walked, which is probably harder to do in Lyon than it is in Paris because it’s so much more hilly. You have the silk district – Croix Rousse – and the hill up to Fourviere and the huge church (accurately described as a dead elephant with its legs up in the air), each of which require some hefty calf work.

So anyway, we arrived on Tuesday after the kind of train journey you’d never get at home. Comfortable seats, quiet carriages, perfectly behaved kids, a service that runs according to some kind of timetable… it was almost a shame to arrive. Particularly as the areas around Lyon’s stations are so dumpy.

Anyhow, we checked into our room and went exploring. Who would have known that Lyon would be such a catch for Art Deco buildings. I remembered the old Pathe cinema, of course, but look at this friendly building.

Oh, hai!

That sits out at the end of the little skyscraper district on the Part Dieu side of the river where you can live in great looking buildings like this:

Art Deco architecture, Lyon

And in the evenings you can take the metro into town and watch a film at this great-looking cinema, complete with a golden crowing cockerel on the top of its tower:

Pathe cinema, Lyon

We didn’t do that, of course. We were too busy walking and eating. Lyon is rightly famous for its gastronomy and we had some excellent meals, but it’s pretty lame if you’re a proper vegetarian. I ate fish twice a day every day. Not that that was a problem as it was universally excellent. We ate lunches outside in the sun on the huge Place Bellecour, and dinners outside in the old town on wobbly little tables perched precariously on the street cobbles.

We did give in to our aching feet once – when we took the funicular up the hill to the basilica. You can’t help but notice this enormous white building as it dominates the skyline, looking down on the city and the river. It’s a cool refuge from the sun at the height of the day, and right by the Roman ruins, which have stood over the city for a couple of thousand years and are in surprisingly good condition. Particularly when you consider they’re free to enter and you can clamber all over them (although you do get shouted at if you climb up anything properly perpendicular).

Traboule courtyard, Lyon

Highlights of Lyon? Rather shamefully it was probably the food, which I didn’t think I’d say as we trained out to Les Halles, which is supposed to show off the city’s culinary delights but fell short of the same in Nimes.

Still, pike souffle can do a lot to win you over. Particularly when it’s followed by Terrine de Pain Perdu Brioche – effectively a very naughty, rich, sticky bread pudding made with brioche. I need to find out how you make it.

The Arc du Triomphe, seen from La Defense

Last year was the first in about 15 that I didn’t make it to Paris, so it was good to get back – even if it was just for a few days either side of heading down to Lyon.

We had initially been planning on a trip to the ballet. Dad’s suggestion on account of the fact that there was something he wanted to see and we had never been, so he came up by train from the south and we did the same from the north via the tunnel and we met in the middle.

Without any ballet tickets.

Turns out it’s incredibly difficult to get your hands on any as there are all sorts of restrictions on who can buy what and when. There is even one day in the booking cycle when it is only open to foreigners and non Paris residents which strikes me as a bit unfair.

Opera Garnier where we would have, but didn’t, see the ballet

Rather unfortunately it coincided with Eurovision. I hadn’t realised this when I booked the train – stupidly – so our first job on arriving on Saturday evening was to find our hotel, dump our bags and then race to the Marais, which seemed the most likely place to find anywhere showing it.

But you know what? It turns out French bars aren’t all that hot on Eurovision. We found two showing it, but only one had the sound turned on. The other was showing the pictures on a telly in the corner with boppy music over the top.

Anyhow, we holed up in the one bar that was showing both halves of the programme and gently sweated through two and a bit hours of songs before hot-footing it back to the hotel for the voting.

Watching is back we didn’t miss much on the interval act although we would like to have heard the UK commentary as it became more and more abundantly clear that we were heading for last place again. Can’t say I’m entirely surprised: the performance was fine but the song didn’t really grab me the way it did Rich.

I wish I understood more of what the commentators were saying as they got very giggly at the national judges giving their scores.

Rooftops of Paris

Anyhow, we met dad the next morning and spent the next couple of days with him, eating cheap meals on the Rue Mouffetard (Bistrot Gourmand, since you ask – €9 for three courses) and training it out to La Defense, which Rich hadn’t seen before. Last time I was there I was late for a meeting at the top of the Grande Arche after my hotel TV, which I’d set as the alarm, helpfully came on muted. Next thing I know, frantic calls to see where I was and several arguments with taxi drivers who were averse to the very idea of heading towards Defense in the rush hour because of la circulation.

No such trouble this time around, leaving us time for a slow walk east through the tall buildings back to the metro by which we hot-footed it to Le Printemps for tea under the dome.

Well, that’s changed somewhat. Gone are the nice old mirrors and the brassware. It’s been considerably moderened up since I was last there ten or so years back and I’m not sure it’s for the better. The one thing they haven’t changed, of course, is that glorious glass roof, and the addition of mirrors on the tables, which I don’t remember from before, is a good one as it means you can easily look up by looking down, so no need to crane.

The dome inside Printemps

Yesterday I posted five of my top ten tracks from this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Here’s the second half of my top 10.

Now the guy who sings for Switzerland does remind me a bit of Glenda Jackson. This is his third association with Eurovision. He came fifth in the German national finals in 1999 and was on the Swiss jury last year. This year he’s singing Il Pleut de L’Or, in French.

A very strange lyrical concept from Armenia, which likens everything to apricot stones. Nonetheless a great performance from an accomplished artist. Deserves to do well.

Moldova‘s entry is very different to last year’s low-tech song. It’s far less folky-traditional and the video has had quite a bit of money spent on it, rather than being filmed in what looked like a school sports hall. A great up-tempo dancy number.

Ignore the mangled grammar in Latvia‘s entry. It’s a brilliant song and the performance is first rate. How do you cry and sing at the same time like that? Subtle and underplayed.

And finally Serbia whose song this year is just so funny. Stick with it despite the slightly jerky beginning. It’ll have you singing oompa oompa stick it up your joompa by the end.

Eurovision 2010 is on at these times:

First Semi Final: Tuesday 25 May at 21h CET
Second Semi Final: Thursday 27 May at 21h CET
Final: Saturday 29 May at 21h CET

In the UK they are all on at 8pm. The semis are on BBC3 and the final is on BBC1.

In the meantime, if you want to order the album, Amazon has it on pre-order for £14.99 right now.

Eurovision 2010 is shaping up to be a great year. We had our traditional preview night on Saturday, and here are my top 10.

Starting with my tip for the top, I reckon Denmark could be a winner. It will be up fourth up in the second semi-final, on Thursday 27 May. Nothing fancy – just good singing and a strong ending that should appeal to anyone who is more interested in the songs than the acrobatics.

Blugaria is a bit of an odd-ball. I think it will suffer from not having a defined ending, but the video is great and the chorus is so simple than anyone can sing it, which is quite important in a Eurovision song. It also mixes electronica and classical, which often does well, and in parts is somewhat reminiscent of Pall Oskar’s Icelandic entry from 2007. So it’s got pretty much all the bases covered.

Albania has a very Goldfrapp A&E video, not that that will count for much on the night. It reminds me a lot of Let’s Get Happy by Lou, who sang for Germany is 2003.

Spain has a guaranteed slot in the final, along with the UK, France, Germany and last year’s winner, Norway. So it doesn’t really need to try, but nonetheless it’s come out with this great circus-themed entry. Love it, plus a great performer whose experience of stage work really pays off.

And finally for today we have Iceland. Iceland often does a great song and last year came a very well-deserved second with a haunting ballad. This year it’s returned to more traditional dancy stuff this entry that deserves to do very well indeed – assuming the performer isn’t grounded by another ash cloud.

That’s the first half of my top ten songs for this year’s contest. Check back tomorrow for the rest.

And if you want to order the album, Amazon has it on pre-order for £14.99 right now.

Les Baux de Provence

Arles is not that nice, it turns out. I’d forgotten that. All I could remember was the market that went on for miles, and all the olives.

Well I was right about the market. It stretches right along one side of the city walls and you can buy pretty much anything you want. Bags, hats, cheeses, jams. Chickens, live and dead. In fact, I think the dead ones got the better deal as the live ones were crammed into crates and gasping for breath in the 35-degree-plus heat. Poor things. Ducks, quails and guinea fowl, too. I don’t think I could buy dinner when it was still capable of making a run for it, so I’m assuming they’ll crack its neck for you before you take it home.

It’s all very interesting and full of great smells, but once you get away from the market – where you could easily spend 90 minutes looking, poking and tasting – the rest of the town is a bit grubby. There’s the Roman ampitheatre and the matching Roman theatre, and of course there are city walls (this is Provence, after all) and a river to walk along, but none of it can be said to be very ‘nice’. Probably the worst bit, though, was the crappy service we got in a street-side cafe where they repeated the order wrong and, when we followed them inside to check they’d got it right they got all shirty and insisted they had.

Except when it came they hadn’t.

Ho-hum.

So we spent half a day there and then headed over to Les Baux, the little medieval town perched on top of a rocky hilltop. It gets hideously busy in high season when the seven car parks that scale one face of the hill get filled to overflowing, but today it was actually pretty quiet, leaving us plenty of space to wander around and look out across the valley views.

22 people live there.

Anyhow, it’s a nice place to spend an hour, but we didn’t stop for drinks or shops. The best thing to take back with you is photos, which is what we did – both from within the village and looking back at it from the other side of the valley where we had a very informative discussion about the forest fire risk with a student guarding the road, whose English once again put my pitiful grasp of French to shame.

Nimes Roman Arena

Today we went to Nimes to see where dad is thinking of buying a flat. He goes there a couple of times a week to dance, and as it’s a 45 minute journey and most of his friends live there it makes sense to move.

Like Avignon, Arles and many other towns around Provence, it has Roman roots and buildings several thousand years old around which the rest of the town is built. There is a well preserved Roman arena and, opposite a modern library and arts centre designed by Richard Rogers, a column-clad building called the Maison Carree, which used to be free until they put an exhibition about Roman history in it and started charging for entry.

Maison Carree

I’d never been before, but it seems a nice place. There’s a great indoor market where you can buy just about any food you could imagine, with much of it so beautifully produced that you could serve it up right away if you had friends coming round to dinner. Beyond the market, the city is split into wide boulevards and narrow, older streets that sit in shadow and offer respite from the sun.

We passed by the estate agents to pick up leaflets and looked at the streets where dad would like to buy. There’s one particular quarter with a grocer, a good paper shop and a small restaurant, its leafy streets bordered by some notable landmarks that give it a villagey feel within the city that he’s picked out as his preferred location, and it is certainly nice.

The plan after Nimes had been to head for the Pont du Gard, the three-level aqueduct that carries water to the city from Uzes, skirting a large hill along the way. But as we left Nimes, the clouds rolled in and heavy drops of rain hit the windscreen, and so we cut straight to Uzes and sheltered in the colonnades along the edge of its large town square. It didn’t last long, and was more of a shower than a storm, and so we pressed on to the Pont after an hour or so, parked up and walked across it as the puddles evaporated and turned the air humid.

It doesn’t matter how many times you see it: the Pont du Gard is an impressive feat of civil engineering. It’s stood for centuries longer than the half bridge at Avignon, and yet it looks not much older than a hundred years or so. Only the graffiti confirms that it’s actually much older, as for millennia tourists and travellers have been scratching their names into the soft orange rock from which it’s constructed.

The amazing thing is that it was still a working road bridge until earlier this decade. Now, of course, you can only walk across it (it is a Unesco World Heritage site, after all), and only on the lower level. Dad remembers walking across the very top 40-odd years ago, but that’s no longer possible.

Pont du Gard

The Gard river is calm below the Pont, and a lot of people swim there, jumping in from the rocks to cool down. It’s obviously fairly safe or they wouldn’t let you do it, except that while we were walking along the furthest bank, having passed over the bridge and set off along the other side we noticed two ambulances pull up. They another. And some more, followed by blue-suited medics, who ran down to the river with stretchers.

Leave it to the Americans to leap to wild conclusions, which ranged from a kind jumping in and breaking his back to some sort of mass suicide event. They were even stepping over the safety ropes strung along the edge of the bridge to keep us all back so they could get a better look.

We never did find out what happened, of course, because we didn’t hang around to gawp, but plenty did. Instead, we headed home and, finally, made it to the Cafe Des Arts to toast Rich’s new tenant. A day late thanks to the storm.

Avignon rooftops

Wednesday is market day in St Remy. So that’s what we did. We spent the morning close to home, wandering through the winding streets looking at the fruit and veg and the cheese and fish stalls that shame our market at home, and at the photos, paintings and carved wooden trinkets laid out to tempt the tourists.

The market is a stream of stalls that cuts a twisted path through the tightly-packed buildings that have stood there for hundreds of years. They pick up close to one of the many plaques that mark a spot where Van Gogh painted one of his pictures of the town, sweep past the fountain that commemorates Nostadamus’ birth in the town and ends up by the carousel opposite the church.

It’s a lively way to kill a couple of hours, after which we headed back to the house empty handed – as we’d expected – and made plans to spend the rest of the day in Avignon.

This was to be our first link with home since arriving in France: it’s twinned with Colchester, just a few miles up the A12 from where we live. It’s a small city with a glorious past. Like so many Provencal towns it has impressive walls, but its most notable features are undoubtedly its incomplete bridge and the Pope’s palace.

The bridge did once stretch right across the river, but seemingly nobody could quite work out the currents, and the furthest half was always being washed away. Eventually someone had the bright idea of just giving up on it and leaving it like that, looking like a great stone pier to nowhere that was eventually immortalised in song (Sur Le Pont d’Avignon) and now that’s what most people associate the town with.

Whatever the reason for building the bridge, it’s a shame that this, rather than the Pope’s Palace has become its symbol. I’ve not been inside, and we didn’t venture in today, either – just walked up behind it so that we could look out over the terracotta roofs – but the grand palace that lines one side of the main square at the head of the town was the centre of the Christian faith in the 14th century, when the pope and his entourage fled unrest in Rome and settled in Provence. From here, seven ‘official’ popes guided their global flock until it was safe to return to Rome and build the Vatican as it stands today.

The only trouble is, when the last official pope left and subsequently died, rival popes carried on in Avignon, which must have led to no end of confusion over the years as each camp fought for supremacy over the other.

Anyway, there is no pope there any more, and after the French Revolution the palace was seized by the state so it’s not papal territory, either. It does look good, though, but if you have seen the Vatican in real life then it doesn’t even come close. It must have been impressive when it was first built.

It’s not actually that curved and Disney-esque in real life: that’s just the way the panorama got stitched.

So we kicked around there for a while, watching the world pass by on various scooters and street trains as the kids of the town span around on their heads and knees to the music they were blasting across the square, then headed back home to eat, with plans to head into town for a drink.

You know what they say about best-laid plans, though and, inevitably they came to nothing as the clouds rolled across and we were treated to a spectacular thunder storm that barely pierced the muggy night air.

It’s hot, and reckoned to get hotter as the week goes on. The cigales sing when the thermometer tops 24 degrees, and they were out in force before six this morning. We joined them, eventually, and sat by the pool eating croissants and bread, then threw our stuff in the car and headed for the coast.

From St Remy that means a ride through the Carmargue, famed for its flamingoes, horses and bulls. It’s a bit like the Fens with rice and better wildlife, although today that too seemed to be hiding from the fierce sun. Flamingoes, we saw a few, although none close at hand – not like last time. The bulls, which are said to make a fine beef steak (I was unaware beef came from bulls, no cows) sheltered under the trees, and the white Carmargue horses that weren’t out being ridden through the salty wetlands were tied up in the shade of their ageing open-sided stables. Only the humans, it seemed, were foolish enough to brave the full heat of the day.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is a small seaside town with particularly good beaches and a small harbour where the fishing boats land their catch. We weren’t there for the beaches, so we walked around the out-of-season town and into the small church about which it is built. It’s small and dark, and on the walls there are plaques with the names of people said to have been cured by miracles at the church.

They’re attributed to the black icon in the crypt, a brick-built cellar kept hot by the flames of several hundred candles whose flames have blackened the arching roof. The icon is Saint Sarah, the daughter of Mary Magdalene, one of the three Biblical Maries after whom the town was named in the 1800s. Once a year, the gypsies of the town take out the icon on St Sarah’s day and walk it through the streets and into the sea. It’s quite an event, and always brings large crowds.

Not today, though.

So we dodged the lavender sellers outside the church and drove on to Aigues-Mortes, from which King (later Saint) Louis IX launched the Crusades. Like Saintes-Maries, I’ve been here many times before, but it still holds a certain charm. It’s walled on all four sides, with the bulk of the streets knotted up in the middle. There’s a square at the centre, with little shops and houses leading off it in all directions, slowly baking at the height of the day.

The city was rebuilt because Louis had no sea ports under his own control as he set out on a mission to convert, the other Mediterranean towns falling under control of Provencal rulers. Yet I don’t think he’d have too much trouble recognising today the town he founded centuries ago. He might even recognise his own statue at the centre.

We sat around, cooling down with a drink and putting off the moment we’d have to pour ourselves back into the roasting car for the ride back home, via what is reputed to be the most expensive supermarket in France to finish up the day in the pool.

Work feels a world away – not just a few hours’ train journey north. And, heat aside, Provence beats London hands down.

Swimming pools are pretty cool, too, in every sense of the word.

It’s four years since I was last in Provence, and little has changed. As you might expect. This is, after all, a part of the world where vast tracts look the same now as they did a hundred years ago. Much is older still: the Roman Maison Carree in Nimes, the Popes’ palace in Avignon, the three-tiered Roman viaduct in Gard, and the Carmargue houses built with rounded ends, their windows clustered in a way that protects their inhabitants from the fierce mistral wind.

Neither have more recent additions much changed. Not since I was last there, anyway. The Eurostar remains the best way to get to France, and the TGV is still as efficient, speedy and smooth as ever. It puts our trains to shame.

We caught a single-decker out of Gare de Lyon and sped down through the French countryside, watching as the Massif Central and then Lyon passed by to the west; the Alpine foothills and Mont Ventou to the east, calling in at such fragrant stops as Valence and Orange on our way to Avignon.

Dad met us at the station and drove us out to St Remy where we sat eating dinner on the patio in t-shirt and shorts, still hot at 23h as the bats swooped around the courtyard, the cigales sang their rasping songs in the trees all around, and fireflies danced in the trees at the end of the drive. It felt good to be back.