Greetings From Aix-en Provence:
It’s Friday evening (November 8th) and Sophia is at Hip-Hop dancing. Great thing about dancing, you don’t need to know a language. So, while she dances, her chauffeur (French word?) has a few minutes before going to pick her up.
Here’s what is important in life and where you get to place your priorities if you don’t have a job. Marlene ran out of Nespresso coffee capsules, so we went to the very fancy Nespresso store in Marseille this morning. Not a bad trip actually, even in rush hour. About 30 minutes from our house. Did a little walking around and decided it was like New York City in that there were so many people walking. Crowded sidewalks, congested streets and horn blowing. Like so many European cities, there seems to be shopping on every street with plenty of buyers. Not only downtown, but there’s lots of retail in neighborhoods. It looks like the United States of the 1950s. Shopping centers basically do not exist and lots of people do not have cars. Thus, there’s shopping near the housing, which is above the 1st floor retail, and when you get out of the center city areas you begin to see 6-12 story apartment buildings with first floor retail and proximity to mass transit. We got on the Marseille Metro Line 1 today, just for fun and to practice for our journey to an upcoming Olympic Marseilles football game. Nice system and very clean subway stations, which was surprising, as you wouldn’t eat off the streets in Marseille. Being a bit of a transportation nut, it was fascinating to see the subway trains with rubber wheels. Of course, you usually see heavy rail. I’ve seen rubber wheeled cars on small people movers at airports, but not on a full-scale subway system. The trains were fairly noisy, rubber on rubber, so lack of noise is not the advantage. I’d like to know how many systems have gone to rubber tires and why, but I’m not up to doing the research, at least right now. We went to lunch at a typical French restaurant, this one at a small boat harbor in south Marseilles. Geez, the French have big lunches. Marlene had a caesar salad. Some lettuce with lemon slices, orange slices, chopped apple, chopped chicken, chopped cheese and vinegar and oil. I’m not into caesar salads, but Marlene is convinced they are considerably different in the U.S. I had my usual pizza – cheese, with some more cheese, and a little more cheese. No olives, please. The French always put olives on pizzas. I could understand the Greeks and olives, but the French? When you tell the waiter at lunch that you’ll pass on dessert, they act shocked. You should have seen the desserts these folks put down. Three scoops of ice cream on a pastry with chocolate sauce. Dessert is part of lunch, even if you just have a sandwich. Embrace change.
Anyway, let’s take a crack at showing a little of Venice. The photos emphasize architecture, which is fascinating throughout the places we’ve been, but buildings are really old in Venice. A couple of photos show you some homes (you might even see a little wash hanging out a window). Which brings us to this note ---- you need plenty of clothes pins. Folks simply do not have dryers. We’re fortunate to have a washer and dryer, but having a dryer is highly unusual. And, given space restrictions, you should see how small most washers are. Back to the photos, the Keaka photos with Ken and with Marlene are in a small Venice restaurant. Marlene couldn’t resist a photo in front of a Sophia Loren picture. Hopefully, these non-travel brochure photos give you a little flavor from this famous city.
More Venice photos coming (if you take them you like to share them), but right now it’s off to Hip-Hop dancing.
The Wilsons
