sunshine doesn’t constitute the summer!) and when we get weather like this, it always reminds me of the time we spent in Villeneuve-les-Avignons in the south of France.
Villeneuve has a population of about 10,000 and lots of medieval streets, as well as a castle to match, and it’s just across the River Rhone from Avignon itself. To my mind, Villeneuve is a far better place to be based in than Avignon itself, even though the distance between the two places
is a mere five km; Villeneuve is far less touristy, much more authentic.
We visited Villeneuve as part of a grand tour of France by train; we did a complete circuit of France by train in a fortnight (God bless the energy we had then!). We had started by flying from Gatwick to Montpellier and as the plane came in to land at Montpellier, we had a great sight of the masses of
red flamingoes that inhabit the lagoons close to the city. After an overnight in a very comfortable Sofitel in the centre of Montpellier, we headed to Avignon and thence to Villeveuve, where we stayed in the five star Le Prieuré, an hotel based in a converted 14th century monastery. It offered the last word in comfort and dinner in the gastronomic restaurant was just as enticing. In Avignon itself, we
did all the sights, including a walk on the famous half bridge that partially spans one section of the river. In the old days, most people seemed to know the song about being “sur le pont d’Avignon”, but I’m not so sure the song is so well known these days.
I should mention also, talking about Villeneuve-les-Avigon, that the town is having a fantastic music festival on June 21st, with a great array of artistes. And it’s all free!
Avignon, incidentally, has just set an unwelcome record. Very recently, a man who was on leave from his work in the oil fields of Angola, was beaten up and left for dead outside a bar in the town. When he was rescued, it turned out he had 11 g of alcohol in his blood, equivalent to having drunk four
bottles of whisky in as many hours. This unfortunate man eclipsed the previous record for alcohol consumption, set in Ain in February 2005, when a man at the wheel of a car (just imagine!) was found to have had 10 g of alcohol in his blood.
From Avignon, we headed to Paris and then to Épernay, in the heart of the Champagne district, where we met up with our old friend Francois Bonal, of the Champagne producers’ association. Plenty of refreshments were the order of the day!
From here, it was back to Paris, to travel on a slow diesel train to St Lo in Normandy, where we took in such sights as Granville, the Chausey islands and Mont St Michel (currently in the throes of a
massive restoration project, not entirely visitor friendly). Then we took a leisurely and restful train back to Paris on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
We had intended to overnight in Paris, but every hotel in the 7th arrondissement, where we usually stay, was booked out. So we took the next train down to Orleans, where we stayed in a rather grubby and downbeat Sofitel, quite a contrast to other Sofitels we’ve stayed in). Next stop was the much more
interesting town of Poitiers, replete with bookshops (always a good sign!)
From Poitiers, we took the train, through Bordeaux, to our second last destination, Biarritz, where there were some fine sights to be seen around the beach. Our final destination was Toulouse, which didn’t impress as a tourist destination. When I think of Toulouse, boring is the word that comes to mind.
One group of people whom France is failing to impress are the British. Figures from the Office for National Statistics in the UK show that last year, 8.8 million Britons visited France, quite a fall from the 10.9 million in 2008. The main reason for this is the continuing rise in prices in France, which
has now become quite expensive for tourists. In the present economic crisis, other European countries, like Italy and Spain, have become cheaper and more competitive.
However, despite all that and the continuing right-wing violent street protests in Paris against the new gay marriage legislation, there are some really interesting things happening in the city of
light right now.
One notable event has been the reopening of the Louxur cinema in the boulevard de Magenta in the 10th, close to the borders of the 9th, 10th and 18th arrondissements in north-east Paris. The cinema had been opened in 1921, designed in a neo-Egyptian style, hence it being named after the
city of Luxor. It was then the flagship of the Pathé chain of cinemas and it managed to keep going until the 1980s. Then it became a nightclub, before being abandoned to dereliction in 1988. Now city hall in Paris has restored the building, including its amazing and capacious interior. The project took 10 years and cost €25 million. Once again, the Luoxor showing films, mainly films from outside France in their original languages, as well as hosting cinema festivals and other movie-related events.
Then another Parisian institution is being feted, the green newspaper kiosks, which were set up
150 years ago. These days, there are fewer than 340 of these kiosks left; they were going the way of another Parisian institution, the pissoirs, which have just about vanished. But city hall has stepped into the breach and has given €200,000 in financial aid to the owners of the surviving kiosks to tide them over during the present crisis in the newspaper and magazine industry. City hall has also extended the list of products that the kiosks can sell, which now include publications from the Ville de Paris, souvenirs, soft drinks and sweets. Mediakiosk, part of the giant J C Decaux outdoor advertising firm, looks after the maintenance of the kiosks and has promised to bring their numbers up to 370. It’s great to see these two examples of really progressive support from city hall in Paris, outside which an exhibition on the green kiosks is currently being staged. It’s not often that local councils do things this
imaginative, especially in this part of the world, Ireland and Britain.
Coming up in Paris from June 10 to 21 is another unique event. The Grand Palais is being turned into a drive-in cinema. At any one screening of films, on the largest screen in Europe, measuring 30 metres across, 1,000 spectactors will be accommodated in a fleet of Fiat 500 convertibles. People will also be able to enjoy dishes prepared under the supervision of Canadian star chef, Gita Seaton; she’s promising such delights as cheesburgers, bacon and eggs, fried chicken and tempting chocolate dishes. It’s the sort of mad idea that can only happen in France and, I guess, it will probably work to perfection! After the summer, the Grand Palais is going to be turned into a giant ice skating rink.
However, not everything is done with aplomb in Paris. Anything connected with the Elysée Palace these days seems to be disaster-prone and I’m not just talking about M.Hollande. The palace decided to place a tribute to Baroness Thatcher on its website. While the English language script was word perfect, the reading of it was anything but. The English pronunciation was so mangled that it turned out to be high comedy. It can be heard in its original form on the Rue 89 website.
Talking of websites, I should mention an intriguing website in the US called beforeitsnews.com
For anyone who enjoys conspiracy theories, this is the place to go. Some of the stuff here is quite wacky, but other pieces will give you reason to think. One of its current predictions is that this Sunday is going to be disaster day in Los Angeles, and it backs this up by running a story that an
enormous list of movie industry celebrities are desperately trying to sell their properties in LA, a move that’s been going on for some time. Obviously, they must know something that the rest of us don’t!
Mind you, this particular website last week promised that a swarm of earthquakes was going to hit around the globe; there were a few bad ones, especially in China, but as for a swarm, there was
none to be felt!
Here in Ireland, nothing much happening, except continuing tales of financial cutbacks, which gets very boring after a while, especially in you’re on the receiving end. It’d be great if lots of positive things were happening, but the negativity in Irish life is pervasive. I should mention one Irish institution that shows its often irrelevance to what’s happening, the state owned broadcaster, RTÉ.
It’s nearly six months since television transmissions changed to all digital and we didn’t make
the switch. We have a TV set sitting here totally redundant, apart from its DVD player, and I can’t say we miss it at all. The schedules on RTÉ television are diabolical and if there is an interesting sounding programme, it often turns out to be a repeat of a repeat of a repeat. Mind you, reading about some of the programmes on BBC Four, one does sometimes miss having a set. A woman of my acquaintance told me recently that the evening schedules on RTÉ television are so bad that she feels the only sensible way of spending the evening is to go to bed, a pretty damning indictment!
I don’t bother looking at the RTÉ website for news-after all there are so many news sources on the
Internet that you can find all kinds of interesting and relevant international stories that just don’t get a mention on the Irish station. As for its radio services, there’s an occasional interesting programme on. A lot of people I know in Dublin swear by Radio 4 and find it much preferable. One friend of mine, a
well-known Irish writer, who lives in Dublin, said to me the other day that if by any chance he got sick, he would make an ideal patient, because he could spend all day listening to Radio 4 and would be perfectly content!
These days, I find what RTÉ does almost totally irrelevant not only to everyday life, but to a real understanding of what’s going on in Ireland. The RTÉ ‘palace’ is full of well-paid presenters (despite salary) cuts and it’s like they were in a cocoon. If the station it didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have much sense of deprivation. But I’ve a nasty feeling that if you were dependent on many of the 50 or so television channels in France, you’d have exactly the same feelings about them. Now that the brighter evenings and hopefully better weather are here, there are many more rewarding things to be doing than sitting at home watching an evening of tripe on television.
But at least, there’s one interesting thing happening TV-wise in Ireland. The government is planning to bring in a broadcasting tax, which every household will have to pay, as a replacement for the traditional TV licence. This is because so many people now watch TV on their tablets or their Smart
phones. The government, in true Orwellian style, now has details of every household in the country on its database, thanks to the new property tax, so everyone can be rounded up. Evasion of the traditional TV licence is still a serious problem in Ireland.