We started out the day with another walk around the streets of Palavas, ending up on thelong quai with a view back to our hotel (the blue one) ...
... and along the Marina, which proved to be much like marinas everywhere in the world: long lines of moored boats, mostly with silly names. What is it about boat lovers that draws them irresistibly to puns?
Since we're in the South of France, there was, of course, the occasional Van Gogh boat...
... or at least a boat of two in Van Gogh colors. And the odd King Charles spaniel, our dog George's breed...
... as we discovered by the fish stall. This one seemed less interested in the fish his human was buying than in some distant point of interest. This may explain why...
Some very odd fish in this region.
After a lesurely shower and some time to catch up with this narrative, we were fetched at our hotel and started out by for the ancient walled city of Aigues-Mortes. To get there, we found ourselves driving through the southern end of the Camargues region, famous for its wild white horses (did anyone see the film?) and its low-lying marsh and lake-land.
Here's a piece of Aigues-Mortes. The exterior wall is a magnificent piece of mostly medieval architecture and construction, a perfect rectangle with its longer sides, I'd guess, each a quarter mile long, and with towers at each corner and strategic points along the way. It was begun in the thirteenth century by Louis XI, Saint Louis, who was obsessed with grabbing Jerusalem back for Christianity from the Muslims, and led two distastrous Crusades which failed to achieve that end.
The center of the city built within the walls has become the perfect tourist trap. You can buy everything there from miniature, stuffed Camargues horses to computer games. I got taken away making abstract paintings with the camera, these two in a sweet and cookie store:
At the center of this commercial bedlam, we found a pleasant square with many sidewalk cafes surrounding a statue of the good Louis, a challenge for a score of kids to scale--well, at least the lower part. Here are ours...
We got Matthew and Diane to produce a rare pose for the camera...
After lunch in the square, we were ready for the long climb up the spiral staircase to the top of the main tower, from which we could see the battlements below...
From the tower, we found the path along the ramparts and made the tour of the entire city from this vantage point, with splendid views down over the roofs of the city...
A much appreciated stop for gelato (I chose chocolate and nougat) we returned to our cars--there are nine of us, with Diane's parents today--for a comedy-of-errors drive to the beach at L'Espiguette. After several wrong turns, we stopped on a side road and rang the security bell at a stranger's gate to beg for directions, and found we had headed in precisely the wrong one. Several hair-raising adventures later, we reached the famous beach and strolled out over its vast, sandy expanse to the edge of the Mediterranean...
By this time the weather, which had been kind to us thus far, had turned windy and cold, so our beach time was limited.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, then, we made a final stop at the "hypermarche," a supermarket plus, an acreage of commerce where you can buy everything from your groceries to TV sets and clothes.
Whilst Diane shopped for family necessities, Ellie bought some lovely tulips as a small thank-you gift for Helena, along with a tupperware container for the cookies we had acquired at Aigues-Mortes. Then we headed back to our hotel, with a lovely over-the-shoulder view of sunset over the Camargues.
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