La Barben

This week is was a visit to see the Chateau de La Barben, which is open, now that the weather is closer to normal.  La Barben, like any good fortified castle is perched up on the hill, and seems to grow right out of the rock.

Gardens, Terraces, towers, what's not to like?

 The coat of arms of the Forbin Family who owned the castle for 500 years.  3 leopards under a crown.

 There is no photography at all allowed inside the castle, as it is a private residence, and guided tours make sure that the valuables stay inside the castle.  Here we are outside on a terrace, looking down on the peasants.

 The view up from the terrace.

 Ok, I broke the rules, and took an inside picture.

And via the wonder of the internet here are some pictures of the inside of the chateau, which is also run as a bed and breakfast.

 This first room is a reception room, the tapestry and every thing else is old.  The floor tiles are a typical provencal clay tile, dating from the 1400s.  I ripped my floor up way way way sooner than that.

One of the bedrooms that you can stay in as part of the B&B.

On the drive to Barben several of the roads were diverted due to a road cycling race, which as it turns out, despite our best efforts to take a route around the cyclists, we took a route right through the peleton.

Cheese of the week

Ok, so cheese of the month is more like it.  We have new cheese every week, but the odds that the camera comes out to take a picture, before we eat it .... small

Anyway here are two cheeses that we tried this week:

 This cheese is Chabichou du Poitou.  This is goats milk cheese (gee could you tell from the goats on the label ?) The cheese is hand-made and uses un-pasturiezed milk (read...yummy).  With the label off you can see why the girls nicknamed it "Brain Cheese".  Very nice, white cheese with quite a mild flavour.

And this little number is Morbier.

You might interpret that line that goes through the cheese as a mould line (like in blue cheese) but it isn't.  Here is the story.  This cheese is made by the same farmers that make Comte.  After the morning milking, they get about 1/2  a cheese worth of curd left-over, so to help it stay fresh they cover it with a layer of ash.  Then the curd from the evening milking goes on top, and voilà, Morbier.  This is a cows milk cheese and has a quite mild flavour.

Nostradamus and Salon de Provence

Wednesday - Castle Day, and we know from last week that the one with lots to see and do (La Barben) will not be open until this weekend (weather permitting).  A book we have in the villa about the castles of Provence shows that the town of Salon de Provence has a Chateau named L'Emperi, which is open for visitation, and was the last home of Nostradamus, and if you happened to be Catherine de Medici, this is where you would come for his counsel.

 The day we came the weather was finally warming up, and there was beaucoup de vent.

 Nice typical medieval style architecture and spots to shoot arrows from the battlements.

 In the summer there is a music festival held in the outer courtyard.

 Here is a statue of our prescient friend, Nostradamus, with the red awnings of the restaurant where we had terrific wood oven pizza.

 Really girls?  That windy is it?

 As part of the chateau, there is a museum of French arms and uniforms, part of which is on loan from Les Invalides in Paris.
Sarah makes a friend, nice Italian guy, bit old for her, and too short me thinks.

 In one of the vaulted chambers of the chateau is a very impressive display of rifles, mostly flint-lock but some later catridge based models.

 No flash photography allowed, so pardon the grainy / shaky photos.  the stuff behind Sarah and Christine are guns, the original hand cannons, which shot 4" rounds, and a rifle that is at least 6 feet long!

 Of course I took pictures of the swords!

More swords, epee to be exact.

 Fireplace in one of the main rooms, a salon perhaps?

 Officer swords of the imperial guards.

 click on this picture, it is a flint-lock rifle.  The stock is embedded with silver and a red jewel (ruby?) near the trigger.  Very cool.

 A fragment of original wall paint, from when the Chateau was decorated for a visit from Louis XIV in 1660 something or another.

 A fireplace in the bedroom of one of the Arch-Bishops of Arles, who used the Chateau as their residence.

 Pointy german helmets

A parting view of the Tower and battlements.
All in all a very nice visit to the living room of Provence.

Mary Magdalene and Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume

Saturday.
The plan ... lets go to a castle that is nearby and do indoor things 'cause it is freakin' cold out.

Reality... We check the castle website, read the French part, not the English part, we take note that on the French part it clearly says, Castle was supposed to open Feb 11, but hey the weather is terrible, so try again on the 18th.  The English part of the site of course says, see you in April...

So we need a new plan, indoors, not too much driving....GOOGLE..HELP.  Google maps shows a town nearby with a ridiculously long name : saint maximin la sainte baume.  Looks good, has Max Min in it, loved Calculus so this could be good, and we can convince the girls there is a patron saint of bums... I'm intrigued.  Wikipedia what say thou?.

I, the great, if not often inaccurate, Wikipedia say unto you, that the big attraction in the town of calculus and bums, is the basilica of Mary Magdalene.  As it turns out this is the largest gothic building in the South-East of France, and only about 40 minutes away.....CALCULUS and BUMS here we come!

The Basillica of Mary Magdalene:  Note the flying buttresses, man I love those.

My Sacred Feminine (s) going inside 

Centre view showing the great arches and the domed ceiling....those flying buttresses are not just for show.

Entry to the crypt.

Sainte Mary Magdalene

 The Reliquary, containing amongst other things, the skull of Mary Magdalene.  Somewhat creepy.

 The sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene with various figures etched in bas relief.  Many are broken and a sign explains that this was from "pilgrims" of the past helping themselves to a souvenir.

 Back upstairs:
The wooden carvings in this particular church are amazing.  This one ordains the top of the Chair in the middle of the church, and shows Mary Magdalene ascending, surrounded by angels.  Apparently it is carved from a single block of wood.

The pipe organ.

Again the wood carvers got their hands on this one also, lots of fine detail including some figures near the top, not sure who they are.  Carved on one of the sarcophaguses in the crypt is the earliest representation of a pipe organ, so it was fitting to include a picture of the one upstairs.

Marseille and Bouillabaisse

Saturday.  Where to go during this cold snap?  How about Marseille?  First off it might be warmer there, and we might be able to sample the local Bouillabaisse.  And either way, the place should not be coated in tourists....except for us of course.  Marseille is the 2nd largest city in France, and the oldest.  We decided to go and explore the old port area.  Specifically there are two forts that guard the entrance of the port, Fort St. Jean, and Fort St. Nicolas.  We also hoped to see the former imperial residence of Napolean Bonaparte, the Palais du Pharo.

We drove the 30-40 min to Marseille - bad news, still cold here (around -2 but windy)  we try to walk the harbour to get to one of the forts, but instead go inland to avoid the wind.  However on the way we did get to see some of the harbour residents. 

 A view across the harbour to the Hotel de Ville the old city hall.  (Nice starter boat blocking half the view)

 Apparently if you boat has teak decks, there are special parking spaces just for you.

 Going inland to avoid the wind turned out to be a stroke of good luck.  On our walk we stumble upon the Abbey of St. Victor.  The abbey is a fortified church with origins in the 5th century.  A bit of research after the fact claims this is one of the oldest places of Christian worship in Europe.

 There was a mass going on in the main part of the church, so we head underground to the oldest parts of the church and the Crypts.  Every wall seems to have an abundance of sarcophagi, with lovely carved fronts etc.  It is fairly dimly lit, and quite humid.  With the sounds of the choir from above, one of the children claims "This place is creepin' me out"

 The carved and inscribed top of  the sarcophagus of Saint Ysarn who died in 1047

 Back outside in the wind, we find a cute little Fiat that would fit nicely in the back of our Volvo at home, Rachel is almost tall enough to put a roof rack on this thing.

We call it quits, too cold, and head indoors to find some Bouillabaisse.  We are successful, it looks something like this, except ours had the addition of mussels around the sides.

We will have to try again with warmer weather and get to more of the highlights of the old port of Marseille.

sNOw

OMD, that's French for OMG.  It snowed, a fair amount here, like 10-15 cm.  For the south of France that's a shut down everything, call the newspaper, kind of snow.  Here are some pictures to give you an idea.  This first one is a shot from the kitchen of the east terrace, if you recall the first few entries on this blog, this would be the same east terrace where we were drinking coffee outside in T-shirts the first few days here.

The pneus on a car in the south of France, are not really up to the task of snow and ice, the way the tires on a car in Northern Ontario are; add to that the inexperience of local drivers as to what it takes to drive in slippery conditions, and you get the French Solution. Park and Walk...aka Stationner et Marche.

On the main road, we counted about 20 more cars, that were subject to the French Solution.

Our gold fish pond, the girls are going to try to skate on it later today,

Our tropical plants in the garden, probably wondering what on earth is going on.

C'est beau n'est pas?

This poor looking thing is our olive tree.

The bulk of the snow fell on Tuesday, and greeted us for the start of school.  Kids were delivered and Christine and I went off to an appointment at the local bank.  At about 11am my phone rang....the school asking for us to come an pick up the kids.  So, no the school was not exactly closed, but only 6 students arrived for the grade 1 class, so they sent the teacher home....YUP, I'll say it again, they sent the teacher home, and put the 6 students in the Grade 4 class, and gave them colouring to do.  So we picked up the kids and that was the end of the school day.  Wednesday - no School.

Today - Thursday, we figure that the extra 1 or 2 centimetres of snow will not be an issue so off we go to school, cars parked in the manner of the "French Solution" all down the main roads.  I drop the kids off to walk the last 200m to the school while I park.  A woman comes to the car to say that there is no school today, that it is running on minimum complement..whatever that means.  

So up the hill to see what is going on...turns out that today only 1 teacher manages to arrive at the school, and is sending all the kids home,  the plan right now is to drop by the school after lunch and see if there are any teachers, but we aren't holding our breath.

This is a wide ranging weather system, all of Europe is cold, and snow was falling in Nice, right on the Med.  Forecast is cold for the remainder of the week, in fact this weekend, it is supposed to be warmer in Thunder Bay than here in Venelles.  My guess is we aren't going to get much sympathy.

Thunder Bay Forecast:

 Venelles, Forecast.

 Official French weather - Condition Orange.  Only Red is higher.