Chambéry again

Hi all,
to allay your fears before going into all the details, I have been able to book my train ticket to Bologna tomorrow as there are no seats today! From there it should be easy to get the local train to Ravenna.

But back a few days...

the last time I wrote I was in Arles & had met Kathryn, an Australian from Sydney. After we left the Internet Cafe we went for dinner & ended up having it in Le Café de la Nuit (Cafe of the Night), the one immortalised by Van Gogh in a painting of the same name! For those who might be familiar with the painting, the Cafe is bright yellow on the left hand side, with black iron scrolls on the wall, & there are stars in a blue-black sky. As we were sitting there I looked up & realised why it was in the Place de Forum. If you imagine a roman structure that is 2 marble pylons with a triangle on the top, with writing between the pylons, & then break that in half from top to bottom (go on - try!) then this was embedded in the front wall of a hotel opposite! It was a bizarre but amazing way to preserve it! I had walked through this Place earlier in the day but not noticed it, which will teach me for not turning around. You should always look behind you as well!

Both Kathryn & I wanted to go to a bird park nearby in The Camargue so I picked her up the next morning & went together. My hope was to see Flamingoes, & there were thousands of them. We spent ages watching them & their interesting group dynamics! eg when a group is feeding, others must reckon there's pretty good food there so want to join in. So they fly in pretty much head first under the water & bash into the rest of the group! I called it "scrumming" since head down, bum up, that's what it looked like they were doing. We also saw animals whose name I can't remember but they were basically Big Rats. The size of a cat, with a rat like tail & beaver like front, they were very cute. Swam well too. The Park has 6 or 7km of walking tracks that take you around the swamps so it was a full morning into the early afternoon. We also got to see a few of the fairly famous white Camargue horses.

We drove down to St-Marie-sur-la-Mer, to have a quick look at the beach & an ice-cream, then left & went to a perfume Museum. I dropped Kathryn back into Arles before driving towards St-Remy-de-Provence & finding a B&B for the night. Jumping into that pool was fantastic after all that walking. Danielle, at 7pm that night I was sitting in a café in Eygalières nearby the B&B. I promised to let you know what I was doing!

Thursday was an amazing day that will stick in my mind forever. I went firstly to a lavender museum near a town called Gordes & then up to Orange, where I'd seen a pamphlet on their amphitheatre, saying it was a pretty special one. Now I realise I've said I was a little disappointed in some of the ruins, but maybe that was all in preparation for this one! I hadn't realised that apart from the semicircle of amphitheatres, there was also a stage wall that closed the gap by going straight across the theatre. Mostly these have disappeared & there are only a few pillars & crumbling blocks to show for it. Well; Orange is one of only 3 places in the world, & the only place in Europe, that has a complete stage wall still standing. The others are in Syria & Turkey. 38 m high & over 100m long, it brought me to tears when I walked in & saw it! So I guess I was impressed with this one... I spent about 3 or 4 hours exploring it with the audioguide, took a whole roll of film which you will all be bored by no doubt in the future, & had lunch on the steps staring at that wall. It had obviously been a few storeys high & a 3.5m statue of Augustus has been restored into a niche high up. The amphitheatre has had a checkered history, being used as a prison & also having a whole town built inside at different stages. This was all removed to take it back to how it originally looked. Now they have lots of opera & concerts there but of course nothing the night I was in town.

My aim for the night was Vaison-le-Romain & stayed just outside so I could get to see a few things the next day. Which were, of course, the foundations of an old roman town which you could walk around. There were mosaics in situ as well as in the museum, which had inspired me to make the effort to go!

Drove to Lyon after lunch but didn't arrive until about 4pm. Found out the trains were full to Bologna today (Saturday) & that I could maybe only get as far as Milan on Sunday! This was not meant to happen! My plan had been to book, find a place to stay near the hotel, dump my stuff, clean out the car & then return it. This way I would not have to carry my luggage back with me. I'd arranged to drop the car between 5&6pm so needed to go, since it is 25km outside of Lyon itself. Thought I'd do that, catch the shuttle bus back to Lyon & work out my plans after that (find a place to stay, see if there were buses or planes etc). Found it hard to navigate my way out of Lyon as I only had the guidebook city map which had freeways that looked like spaghetti & an 8-lane one that went off the page, with only an arrow saying it went to the airport. Roads from the city centre out to the airport don't actually seem to sign you there until you are on the right one. Helpful! Anyway, I made it.

As it happened, Jeremy was working at the car place yesterday afternoon, was not busy & heard about my dilemmas! He became my travel agent, airport guide, translator, moral support & generally put up with me saying "I don't know" a lot (bus or train? Lyon or Chambéry?). He made it all a lot easier, was very patient & kept his humour. As it ended up, I caught a bus to Chambéry, but had a few hours to kill since it didn't leave until 9pm, arriving at 10. Rang ahead & booked a hotel so I knew where I was going.

Was sitting at a restaurant in the airport when in walked Jeremy after finishing work, to keep me company! Which inevitably meant he later became my porter as well. So you can all thank Jay for keeping me sane last night & helping me out.

Today I have discovered there are no buses to Milan, but I managed to reserve a seat tomorrow on the train as I said before. Didn't sleep well last night since although the hotel is in a great position across the road from the station, it's quite noisy. But I've booked another night because it meant I could have the room today & it's so cnvenient to the station. Am having a weekend day today - not sightseeing at all!!!

Anyway, it's all worked out in the end, as I hoped it would. Next blog will be from Italy!!!

luv,

Belle xxx