St Laurent du Var with bathroom pictures

 

It has been too hot to go on any real adventures here in France. I hope that hasn't taken too much of the spice out of clerkmanifesto for you. I've tried to make up for it by converting my pictures of flowers into Dr. Seuss versions for you.

I have now done this 3,748 times.

And then...

AND THEN!

We had a doctor appointment in St. Laurent du Var!

I know it's not far away, but...

1. It is an out of town adventure!

2. Maybe I could take some pictures of it and convert them to Dr. Seuss versions?

3. I'm almost certain this Dr. Seuss thing is just a phase and eventually we'll work our way through it. This may help us work our way through it!

4. It's still in the nineties mostly here so this was probably our biggest chance for advenure anytime soon.

And what an adventure!

Actually St Laurent du Var is only two train stops away from us and is not... great. More than once on this trip I thought "What a pit!" But! 

It has a large mall on a beach. 

And after we walked endlessly, half lost on pedestrian unfriendly, baking hot streets to find an eye Doctor who had mysteriously moved her office there, we finally made our way to their ratty beach on the far side of the airport from us. This beach was conveniently in front of the mall. So after the beach we went into the mall, which is always a bit like going home for us. It was also, mildly, air conditioned! We shopped in it unsuccessfully for a while, and then we had a drink that spilled over into a really nice lunch.

Oops, I think I just gave away the whole story.

Fortunately I have pictures. These pictures have naturally been Seussified, and though they are hardly comprehensive as an account of the journey, you already know the whole story of the trip, so these with a bit of commentary ought to fill you in the rest of the way.

Feast your eyes:

I did not take pictures of the more private and often ugly Doctor going part of the trip, except, there was this figure on a shelf behind the reception of the opthamologist that reminded me of Doris the Alien. So here's one for you.

We made it through the hot city to the beach. Here's my shadow on the beach:

And then from the shore this is looking back at the Cap 3000 mall.

Looking back another way from the beach was what looked to be an enchanting old hill town. I really want you to know that this is NOT indicative of the charms of St Laurent du Var. In fact, these pictures are making everything look way prettier. Though the town did look intriguing, though far away.

On the (hot) beach I saw what looked to be swans! In the ocean! I walked down towards them and found the prettiest area of the beach was closed to access because it was a bird nesting site, so I just peered in longingly.

Then I took some pictures of swans from a legal distance so as not to have my French visitor's visa voided.

We're almost at the end now. What a journey! I didn't know that you would want to see pictures of everything on this trip, so much of our mall wandering will have to go undocumented. But when we made it to "The Garden of Crepes" or "Le Jardin du Crepes" inside the mall, to have beers, it turns out, at the bar, I came to my senses and snapped off another photo of our restaurant. It gave us fond memories of The Rainforest Cafe in the Mall of America, but with better food, which we decided to eat some of after the beer.

And that's about it, except for one last thrilling surprise...

Pictures from the bathroom:

Horizontal

 

The keen-eyed among you will have noticed that at some point pretty much all pictures on clerkmanifesto began to come in a vertical format. This is not out of any particular preference on my part, but has to do with the peculiarities of how pictures get formatted here. I either have to make the images smaller than I like when they're horizontal, or they spill unfashionably over the sidebar.

But in my endless Seussification of flower photos, including some images dating back many years, I have on my hands yet again horizontal pictures.

I'd really like to show them.

I just wanted to warn you today in case this is too much of a shock. 

If you are sensitive to these things may I suggest that you lie on your side to view today's images.

Montpellier as it really is

 

Having shown here a few pictures of Montpellier France, a lovely medieval French city growing rapidly even as we speak (the fastest growing city in France), I am struck that with all my playful filters and whimsical takes on my own pictures, I maybe haven't fully conveyed what Montpellier plainly looks like. I am tempted to take my simple iphone pictures straight out of the phone and show you to them just as they are.

But then I reconsidered.

I mean, what about all that time I spent converting my pictues into Dr. Seuss illustrations? And honestly speaking, the pleasure I took in Montpellier is more of a cartoon at this point anyway. Vacation and newness, in a car free part of a city where most of it is 500 or more years old, overloads quickly with a kind of ridiculous charm. It takes awhile for a place like Montpellier to not be a kind of dreamworld.

I haven't gotten to that point yet.

Thus today's pictures of Montpellier, most of which you won't have seen yet, presented with a bit of whimsicality.

Tomorrow we'll drift on to darker subjects, but for today, here is all the possible charm I can express of Montpellier France. Even so, it has more than I can convey here.