Narbonne/Perpignan, France

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French."

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

I'm far from Cannes, and even further from being young, but basically the above still applies. Learning French at school and via Duolingo, and then going to France and trying it out? Well, that's a bit like learning English from 'Downton Abbey' and Bond films, and then rocking up in Glasgow. It's a journey, and one with a very long way to go yet.

One thing that helps is the huge number of words that are spelled the same in both French and English. You just have to tweak the pronunciation a bit. Not only words where you can clearly see and hear the French influence (debris, omelette, reservoir, genre, ballet) but also some others that aren't quite so obvious (rectangle, apostrophe, occasion, parachute, machine).

Admittedly there are still a few foodstuffs on restaurant menus that I don't recognise. But in fairness the same applies back home. I was into my late twenties before I learned what a shallot was. Here they call it an échalote. 

People who are genuinely bilingual have a kind of unconscious 'switch' in their brains that lets them move between languages instantaneously. My own 'switch' is more like a big rusty lever that I've spent years laboriously hammering into place. Now I'm trying to make the lever go three ways, and at times the lever crumbles and my brain just shuts down altogether. It almost makes me miss the days of travelling in South-East Asia and happily using amateur sign language for 'chicken' (flappy side-arms) or 'beef' (finger-horns above head).

That said, I think I'm still doing better than most of the other foreigners here. In McDonalds I saw an Eastern European family clutching ticket number 97 and they were left utterly perplexed when the store manager yelled out "Quatre! Vingts! Dix! Sept!" ('four twenties ten seven', that's how they say 'ninety-seven' in French.)

Anyway I don't have much to report from Narbonne, or from my day trip on the train to Perpignan. Hence the waffle above, and the double dose of Edd vs Food below. Til next time.

Palais-Musée des Archevêques, Narbonne

Outside my front door in Narbonne

Weird statue of Salvador Dali in Perpignan.
He once proclaimed Perpignan train station to be 'the centre of the universe'.
If you look at his Wikipedia entry, whatever you do, don't scroll down to the part subtitled 'Sexuality'.

Looking west over Perpignan from the Palace of the Kings of Majorca.
The mountain in the distance is Cañigo (9,134ft), about 30 miles away as the crow flies.

Perpignan again

Edd vs Food #168
Set menu at Au GousTous in Perpignan
Paté for starters, pork cheek with mashed potato for main course.
('Mashed potato' sounds much less sophisticated than écrasé de pommes de terre.)

Edd vs Food #169
Taco/fries/drink combo at Enjoy Tacos. Kind of like the French version of Taco Bell.
Special offer: 10 free chicken nuggets!
Felt a bit sick afterwards TBH.

Nîmes/Avignon/Montpellier/Arles, France

I've been quite busy on these French trains recently. You can get special offers as low as €1 for a single fare if you look hard enough. Also there's a French app called BlaBlaCar for car ride-sharing (as opposed to car ride-hailing) which can get you from place to place cheaply if you're travelling flexibly and solo, which I always am.  

Anyway, I have four places to report from:

• Nîmes is where I've been staying and it has a remarkably well-preserved Roman amphitheatre, at which Metallica filmed a feature-length concert movie in 2009.
• Arles is chiefly famous these days because Vincent Van Gogh lived there. There's a signposted walk that takes you round some of the scenes he painted.
• Avignon was where one of the Popes lived, back in the days when there were two Popes. (This has nothing to do with the 2019 film "The Two Popes". See here for details.)
• Montpellier, well, I can't think of anything to make your eyebrows go up. But it's very nice.

Wandering around places like these, or their equivalents in Spain or Italy, makes me feel a bit bashful about just how much wilful ugliness we put up with in our towns and cities in the UK. I know it's not fair to compare everywhere with Seville or Florence, but even so, it sometimes feels like even the most obscure and run-down continental towns have nicer architecture and more greenery and less litter than almost anywhere back in Blighty. 

In my own home town there's been a lot of redevelopment recently, and it's very welcome, but must it always be limited to glass & steel & concrete? Couldn't it involve water or grass or trees? And must 'regeneration' always mean just adding another street full of vape shops and bookmakers? 

It must however be said that France isn't immune to municipal ugliness. In Paris, the modernist area of La Défense is like some kind of huge dystopian sci-fi fantasy; basically it's Milton Keynes on steroids. Also, our beer is better & cheaper than theirs. So on the whole it's looking like a draw. Until the World Cup, at least.

Place de la République, Arles

Alyscamps, Arles

A sidestreet in Avignon. Painter at centre, painting.

Palace of the Popes, Avignon

In Montpellier:
an apartment building where balconies are taken very seriously indeed.

Hôtel de Région Occitanie, Montpellier

Place de la Comédie, Montpellier

Nîmes
L-R: Roman amphitheatre, Court of Appeal, and Pradier fountain

Les Jardins de la Fontaine, Nîmes

Edd vs Food #167
Chicken supreme at Le Bistrot de Tatie Agnès, Nîmes

Grenoble, France

Before arriving in Grenoble I checked the local weather forecast, and all it told me was: 'Moderate Avalanche Warning'. Thanks guys.

When my first Spain trip began in January 2017, I was already past forty, but it was the first time that I'd ever gone to sunnier climes during winter. Straight away I realised that going to sunnier climes during winter was an absolute no-brainer. Nothing lifts the mood like feeling the sun on your face. This is one reason why, on this trip, I've been heading south as fast as the TGV will take me.

That said, Grenoble is a fair way above sea level and it's been pretty chilly. Snow-capped Alps loom at the end of every street. And one inevitable sacrifice when travelling in winter is that the photos are never quite as good as the views. But I'm here for the memories, not the photos. Also, everything is much more pleasant when you avoid the high-season crowds.

While here I had one properly sunny day and I devoted it to exploring a small town called Vizille, a half-hour bus ride to the south. (People from Vizille are called Vizillois. This is the kind of detailed local knowledge that you never get until you're researching your travel blog on Wikipedia.) See pictures below. It's nice to get out of the big cities and I will try to do more of this in the weeks to come, even if I have to hire a left-hand-drive car in which to do it.

Grenoble is one of five French communes that were honoured by De Gaulle for their particularly active part in the Resistance during WW2. Back home in the UK, while we rightly revere the memories of the Blitz Spirit and the Battle of Britain, it's important to remember that it takes a whole new level of spirit to keep fighting back when the enemy is literally knocking at your front door. 

Obviously the memorials and the monuments here are annotated tactfully. They don't refer to Germany or to the German people. But at the same time, they don't cover things up. I saw a plaque in Dijon paying tribute to the 'victimes de la barbarie Nazi'. There are no bland platitudes about 'the fallen', as if what happened during 1939-1945 was a natural disaster like an earthquake or a tsunami. We should always call things by their real names. Because the same thing might come back one day, and we never quite know which direction it'll come from; and from a British perspective, when you remind yourself who makes up the five permanent members of the UN security council, it fans the flames of Francophilia a bit. As does being here, and eating their food, and drinking their wine. Vive la France.

Looking east from the Bastille. About the same climb as Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh.
That little blotch of reflected orange sunlight on the horizon, left of centre...
It's Mont Blanc, France's tallest mountain, roughly 70 miles away to the north-east.

Central Grenoble at dusk, looking west along the Isère river

Château de Vizille

Château again, from across the park

Looking southeast from Le Péage de Vizille

Fish and chips. Served with...chips???

Edd vs Food #166
French tacos at Snappy Food, Vizille.
Merguez sausage and fries within. Cheese throughout.