#4 Marseille---Milk, Coffee & Sugar

It was hard to say good-bye to our hosts in Pierrevert. They had made us feel so welcome and relaxed. Our visit had been the perfect respite after so much traveling down through Europe and across the Alps. We were rested after a week, to be sure, but we felt we had barely scratched the surface of Provence.

Still it was time to move on. So our hosts dropped us off at the train station and we bought tickets down to Marseille on the next train. We got to St. Charles station right around dusk. Red was impressed by her first view of the city, as you come out of the front of the station, which is on bluff overlooking the Vieux Port, the old port.

We clunked our rolling bags down the steps and along the swarming evening boulevard that takes one down to the Canebière, the great massive artery of Marseille leading up from the head of the port. The sidewalks were crazy with people coming and going in the early evening rush. We were relived to find our street where our hotel was supposed to be. It was a rather seedy street, as one would expect in this part of Marseille. A prostitute stood in the doorway within sight of the main street. Our hotel was on one door further---a student dormitory, in fact, that also functions as a hotel an gets decent ratings online. It was among the cheaper options in Marseille near to where my friend was staying.

Once in our rooms, and after getting wifi, I emailed Jean and told them we had arrived. I gave him the street address. "Right on the other side of the prostitute," I told him. She seemed like a fixture, after all.

#3---Thanksgiving in Cézanne Country

On our journey southward we stopped for a week in Provence, as the house guests of a friend that Red knew from back in Cincinnati. Her friend's husband used to work for the U.S. State Department, but now works for a large international scientific research facility nearby in Provence. They moved to a small town near Manosque a couple months back with their daughter, who is enrolled in a bilingual school.

Our week there was stunningly marvelous, and happened to overlap Thanksgiving, which we spent in the company of our hosts, as well as other expatriate and local families in the area. A splendid time was had by all.

On our fine autumn weekend afternoon Red's friend took on a drive of the famous Luberon area of Provence, towards Avignon. We met up with a local herbalist that Red knows from doing an herb class in France a couple years back. He gave us a tour of the ruins of the cliff town of Oppède, which (according to our guide) was abandoned in the 1970's as the population dwindled, but now has a smattering of residents again who have begun to open a few businesses. It reminds one of a town in the Greek isles---the long stone paths---but without any tourists to be seen.

I remarked that in twenty years, the place might be a tourist center again, and no one would believe that it was ever so depopulated. Who knows?