The cafe lifestyle

 

Recovering now from our resurgence of COVID, but still prone to occasional fits of coughing, we have resumed our café lifestyle.

What is this café lifestyle, you may ask?

It’s not complicated.

In the morning, we go out for a coffee. This has ambiance and lingering, without either being absolutely necessary, and in the afternoon, we go out again for a drink or snack or coffee or whatever, where the lingering and ambiance take on more importance. Here we spend time on individual endeavors and contemplation. I, for instance, am writing this that you are reading now.

Our morning choice for café today was a bit of a random discovery, being something of a joke recommendation as we walked on from a morning errand, as what appeared to be a cute antique store turned out to be an old-world tea house as well.

For the afternoon, we have returned to a large courtyard patio café fronting on the slightly grand Boulevard Victor Hugo, one of the great hotel streets of the city, sitting between where we live and the sea. There is steady human traffic passing by before us, and unfortunately two-lane car traffic on the street as well, perhaps at its rush-hour peak.

I have a short blue pen and one precious last sip of champagne in my glass. I would put this slightly more formal café as on the pricier side, but ten euros for a glass of champagne is never a bad bargain, and I’ve indulged a little as a celebration of my return to the world. I had only stopped at one glass out of a prudence for my health, which still has a way to go to be fully restored.

Between us and the sidewalk is a small, very perfect olive tree in a raised planter’s row just starting to grow fruits, and a short, pointed iron fence. On the sidewalk walks by an immaculately coiffed black French poodle just to reassure me as to the country I am in.

For all the hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of cafés in this city, it can be curiously difficult to find ones with their own relaxed, garden-like space that is not overwhelmed with people. That this has comfortable chairs, is unusually close to our home, and provides ten-euro champagne is a real boon to our new way of life.

And that’s not the champagne in me talking.

Indeed, I need at least two glasses of champagne for it to begin talking in me. 

Also, it sounds better than this.

The end of Saorge France

 

A full week later here I am completing my eccentric photo tour of the French mountain town of Saorge. Today's pictures will complete my collection of 42 pictures of the village. Could I possibly have anything left to say about Saroge?

Sure. For instance, we can talk a bit about their monastery. The monastery is sort of out at the far end of town and does a lovely job of taking in the natural scenery of the area, the history, and the views back at the town. Many of my pictures from the past six days are from the exterior grounds or the inside buildings and terraced grounds and gardens of The Monastery of Saorge.

These pictures of the monastery were not free as it cost seven euros to visit!

But I do think I've aleady mentioned this... price. 

Owned by the French government, I will grant that the monastery is kept up pretty nicely. They've also made the place over into a writers residence which must be the kind residency I dreamed of finding when I was younger. The writers, translators, scriptwriters, and composers that somehow landed this sweet gig, occupy the level of the old monk cells, which presumably are redone. There they tirelessly labor on stuff like clerkmanifesto probably, but in French, and of not as high a quality.

There's a communal kitchen too, but none of this was open to visitors.

I'm not keen on the State charging admissions to cultural and natural treasures like national parks and museums and historical locations, but this one was at least worth it. On an ill fated trip to a more famous, more preserved, and more loathesume hill town called Eze, we paid even more money to enter their "Botanical Gardens" which I put in quotes because it wasn't really very convincing as a botanical garden, more a few pretty paths at the top of the town with nice views of the sea far below. But let's not talk about Eze, which is like a lovely well made antique piece of furniture encased in a plastic protective coating. It bums me out.

No, the Monastery was a site built in the 1600's where people monasted, and soldiers occupied, and craftsmen crafted over many years. I even ended up in some sort of tunnel room that was partly painted gold. I think it was a modern art installation. I probably even featured a picture of it here that you would have assumed was the product of my usual fakery, although I might also have a fake picture of it too. Speaking of fakery, many of my 42 pictures featured cats that were rarely real, but the monastery here had a couple of quite friendly cats which makes me feel that all of my other pictures were at least in the proper spirit of the place.

And now you know all there is to know about Saorge!

Trains

 

Sometimes the problem with the world is the we evaluate it on a curve. If, for instance, all countries are bad (hey, I'm just throwing out the possibility), we might be inclined to think the best country is brilliant just because it is so much better than the worst country.

And so it is with transit.

It took me a long time to realise that there are no countries with good transit, and no cities with good transit or walkability. There are just badly put together places where it is better. 

I come from a country where transit is notoriously awful. And I increasingly visited places where the transit and walkability was much better. This excited me. This excited me so much that I even moved out of my own country to try living in one of these far better places.

But I was confused about the curve thing.

And when I got here I found that yes, it is way better here. With effort and time and money and sacrificing access to places one might want to go, one can live pretty well without a car. 

Compared to Saint Minneapolis, on a curve? It is great. 

It is absolutely brilliant!

But in reality?

Sorry dreamers.

Let's talk about Saorge, France, the one of a hundred most beautiful mountain villages of France that I have been showing you pictures of for days and days.

We took a train there. 

It was a marvel, as promised by the name of the train, the train of marvels. In fact, it was a lot like what I thought exploring France by train might be like; a train with pretty windows going from tiny interesting town to tiny interesting town until it can't go any farther, gives up, and comes back to where it started.

But sadly the train to Saorge is the exception and not the rule. Indeed, it is pretty much one of a kind. There could be a vastly more train lines just like it but there aren't. If we were to measure say 100 kilometers from where I am now, in every direction (discounting the half of it that just goes out into the sea), so something like an hour and a half drive then, we could find literally hundreds of darling villages and small towns that would easily charm you and me both. I went and looked on a map to make sure I wasn't exaggerating. It is insane out there! I literally could pick any place name showing on my map, out in Provence and the Maritime Alps, do a street view, and melt my heart on the spot.

And how many can I get to by train?

Maybe one percent, with a good walk and/or a lucky bus.

How many could I visit by bus?

Maybe a few more if I were willing to travel all day and sit at a series of ugly roadside stops for one to three hours, both ways.

How many can I get to by car?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Well,  so by fortune and wonder one can take the train to Saorge. But you still have to walk up a mostly sidewalkless road (a narrow one in the tunnel) for twenty minutes to get there. At least there's mostly no cars in the town.

On a French curve? 

Paradise.

Fine.

Dining in Saorge France

 

Though I think the mountain village of Saorge would be considered a tourist destination of the Cote D'Azur, it was the first one we went to that felt like getting away from the Cote D'Azur. We were with other tourists on the train, but hardly a glut, more like a small sprinkling somewhat overwhelmed by school groups moving between towns, and though our destination town was sleepy and small, it had real life to it. The people living there, as few as they were, outnumbered those of us visiting. In short, more people were hauling around bags of stuff and running their morning routines on a Friday morning than there were wide-eyed tourists, taking pictures, like me.

The cafe we had lunch at reflected the remove from the fancy coast where we live as well. Ingrained with decades of food challenges in traveling the small country towns of America, it was not a natural adjustment for me to go now to a small village and get a plate of utterly delicious mushrooms for seven euros, pastis and cappuccino for three or four each, and a lovely plate of four good quality diverse cheeses for eight euros. But so it was. And we happily sat out hiding in the shade at an outdoor restaurant table nibbling and talking of our good fortunes and swatting at the occasional annoying fly.

Using the bathroom before setting on our way was its own treat. It was up an impossibly tight spiral staircase and left me free to look around an upstairs interior room of the historic village. Among the 850 year history of brilliant engineering and charming construction feats in Saorge, adding in plumbing everywhere was surely not the least of them.

Your guide to Saorge France

 

Humming along on my six day festival of photographs of Saorge, France, which is a heralded member of the Beaux Villages de France, it did occur to me that I don't know very much about Saorge. Yes, it is one of the 100 most beautiful villages of France. Yes, it is up the mountains from the Cote d'Azur, getting pretty close there to crossing into Italy. And yes it is picturesquely built on the steep hillsides as they climb off into the mountains above. In the end of May we could still see some patches of ice lingering on the mountaintops above us.

But what else is there about Saorge?

So I looked it up.

And...

I didn't find anything of note. I mean, Wikipedia is nice but I think it peaked circa 2015. Now it just gets wider, but no deeper.

So...

Saorge is old.

It has a church.

It has a monastery. And something something Italy then France.

Er. So, maybe we'll just continue with my impressions and I'll make stuff up as needed. How's that?

Saorge was founded in 1182. It grew quickly due to its success in producing honey, which it provided to the sugar craving people living in the valleys below. It has its own dialect of French which people say is slower, more measured, and easier to understand, though I was still pretty confused by it. I did understand "miel" and "reina" and "abeille" which mean honey, queen, and bee, which just goes to show these people are still into the same stuff they were into 850 years ago.

That's cool.

So we bought tons of honey.

The town has a fantastic church, a baroque one, and I don't say this lightly, but in this wee mountain town was the prettiest church I have seen so far on all of the Cote D'Azur! I am a big fan of churches but after a baptism (so to speak) in Rome, a lot of the rest of Europe has been a slight let down. Like, if you don't have Caravaggio and Bernini and Michelangelo to do your church decorating what's your plan instead? So many places just went for the same kind of thing, only not as good. The church in Saorge took a different route, high as they were on bee pollen and mountain flowers. They went gaudy instead, and it works way better. They used crazy colors, purples particularly, that I have rarely seen anywhere. And instead of impressive moralism, they, for once, seemed to have some fun with it. 

It's great. Among our 42 pictures there are at least a couple church pictures.

At the edge of town they also have a monastery, where we spent a lot of our time, both hanging out on its parklike grounds, waiting for it to reopen after lunch, and also inside among its more Renaissance delights and beautiful gardens. Even more of my pictures are from here. It should be noted that this is no longer a Monastery, but is owned by The State now, and cost fourteen euros because Capitalism.

Have I mentioned that France is secretly just America under a more tasty pastry shell? 

No? 

Well let's not get into all that now. 

Here are some pictures of the delicious pastry shell then: