Cannes

Ah, the lovely city of Cannes. Honestly I think celebrities only come here because they have to for the film festival. The waterfront was the nicest we have seen in Europe thus far. That didn’t do it for us though. The main strip was nice enough, but the constant traffic is a huge distraction. We took our van to a Speedy hoping that we could get the lights fixed but they said it would have to be done by an electrician or a VW dealership. Luckily there was a VW dealership just down the street so we made our way there. After waiting around an hour for help they told us we would have to wait about 5 days before they could fit us in. This didn’t work for us, so we made our way to the campsite in Villeneuve-Loubec which is just outside of Nice. We are using the campsite here to tour Nice and Monaco. We were also going to use it to visit Cannes, but since we weren’t impressed with what we saw, it was just Nice and Monaco.

St Tropez

John and Linda told us about a free parking place in Le Lavandou right on the coast. St Tropez is about 30 km from Le Lavandou so it seemed like an ideal place to rest for the night before visiting St Tropez and moving on to our next rest stop. It was a Sunday (Jan 20th) night when we arrived in Le Lavandou, so we called our parents as we have been doing just about every two weeks since we left Canada, and told them about the craziness of the past few days. St Tropez conjures up images of the exotic, well for me anyways. Julie found this stop boring (but she doesn’t like boats). The boats in the harbor were the largest I have seen to date. Strolling along the pier and admiring the large crafts was all there is to do in St Tropez. The cafes were expensive so we skipped this and moved on to our next rest stop, La Mole.

Marseille

The book “The Count of Monte Cristo” has been adapted to many movies and plays. There is even a sandwich called the “Monte Cristo” it’s essentially two pieces of French toast with ham and swiss cheese in the middle. Chateau D’If is an Island Fortress that is located 3 kilometers from Marseille where the hero Edmund Dantes spends 17 years of his life for no apparent reason. The fortress at one time was used as a prison and the story was actually loosely based off a true story. Julie and I decided that since we both liked the movie it was a worthy sight. We did have reservations though. Marseille is not known to be safe and petty theft is wildly expected. The first day in the city proved that Marseille is gritty and grimy with run down buildings and almost every inch of every building is covered with graffiti. We found parking under a highway overpass that was very sketchy but only 2km from our destination. We paid 3 euros for 4 hours and made our way to the port to locate the ferry that runs to If island. When we arrived we were told that all the remaining ferries for the day were sold out. It was around 2pm. So this was a disappointment to say the least. We did not feel comfortable leaving the van where we did and to learn that we had to come back tomorrow and do it all over again wasn’t appealing. There was a free place to park some 20 km from Marseille so we headed out of Marseille as soon as possible. The drive took us around 1 ½ hours because of traffic.

The following day we headed out rather earlier to beat some of the traffic in Marseille. Along the way we stopped for breakfast at a small bakery. We parked in the same spot as the previous day and proceeded to the port. This time the port was lined with a fish market which made Julie happy, until she saw the prices. The ferry ride was pretty short to the small island. Once out we were offered a tour but decided to view it on our own. We learned some interesting things, for example; during the first filming of the Count of Monte Cristo they actually dug a whole to connect two cells (which they weren’t allowed to do). If anyone has seen the most recent movie, they didn’t use Chateau D’If for the prison. The view of Marseille from the island was a nice one. Upon our arrival at the van it appeared to be still safe and sound. But when I went to “unlock” the door, it turned out not to be necessary. Sure enough, someone had broken into the van. Julie and I shocked, started to go through our things to see if anything was taken. Since we brought everything we find irreplaceable with us we had to go down a list of items we have in the van. We did this for about 30 minutes before I decided to move on to our next destination and have a better look after our nerves had calmed down. Before we left Marseille we believed that they had taken batteries and memory cards. Thankfully though, after a longer search we located everything and nothing was stolen. Some theories have come up about why nothing was taken, the first is that two traveling Canadians don’t have anything worth stealing, then we thought they might have been looking for drugs (Dutch plates on a VW). Even though we bring what we consider valuable with us whenever we leave the van, everything we have in the van is important to us and we would hate to loose even the smallest thing.

Avignon

We just had to go here. Julie taught me a French childhood song about dancing on this particular bridge in Avignon. The bridge of Avignon is famous for the childhood song, and the town also had an impressive palace and a few churches. We parked on the opposite bank of the river which provided us with an extremely nice view of the ruined bridge. The bridge itself used to have 22 arches and now only has 4. We were planning on actually walking on the bridge itself but it was 4 euros each to do so. Not exactly what we would call a necessary expense. We had a nice spot, but since it was still early enough to continue on our way, we opted on leaving for another free aires, this time in a tiny town called St Paul Les Durance. Early that day I had attempted to fix our head lights and managed to make matters worse. I have changed car head lights before, but not on an old German van. I accidentally pulled off the glass covering attached to the light assembly. So now we have one partially working headlight that is now covered with a plastic bag.

When we arrived in St Paul Les Durance we took a stroll through the tiny town to a general store to buy some silicone in hopes to reseal the glass to the light assembly. That same night we also replaced the light bulb with much trouble, only to have the entire light stop working (except the high beams). We did buy the silicone but did not use it as we were told it took 48 hours to dry completely and we have a few more stops before we actually get a break for a few days. We decided it would be best to fix the light at the campsite in Nice. After this troublesome event we decided not to drive at night anymore and get our van to a garage to get fixed.

Pont du Garde

We were woken up at 8:30am by the sound of a horse. It was young and was being walked around. The area we stayed at had a great view of the walled portion of the city. House boats were docked right in front of us. It seems that in the off season no one collects fees. So we took our time getting ready. I did the usual van check up, cleaned up the van and threw out what garbage we had collected. Julie took the time to relax and finish reading the book that Freddy gave us back in Marbella. Todays drive was an interesting one. We had both heard about the famous Pont du Gard, but neither of us really knew why it was so famous. We understood that it was a bridge of some kind but that’s it. The drive to the Pont du Gard was rather uneventful. We had to pay for parking at the site, if we had stopped a few km away we could have parked for free (huge oversight on our part, especially since John and Linda had told us parking wasn’t free). The sight itself is free which made us happy and we both found the bridge to be very impressive although not quite different from the one we saw in Segovia, Spain (the aqueduct in Segovia was completely intact and still being used by the town). After that we headed off to our free parking area for the night, which had dumping facilities and free electricity. The drive there was stressful again, as it turned dark almost as soon as we left the parking lot. Driving without any lights feels pretty unsafe, I tried to use the high-beams most of the time, but traffic was heavy with it being the end of the work day. Our free aires in Valréas turned out to be at a farm (and vineyard) and the electrical hook up was French, so we couldn’t use it. We also weren’t alone, which is always interesting for us, because we have found ourselves alone quite often since it started getting colder. We decided to spend the night watching some movies and have a few drinks to help calm our nerves. With most of our movies being stored on our external hard drive the computer seems to burn threw its battery faster. Having neighbors, we didn’t really want to disturb them. Previously, I had checked out the area and I did notice two electrical connections, the French one and what looked like a household German one. Well our van has all German outlets, and we have an adapter for our laptop. So I went outside in the lightly misting rain and charged the laptop. Julie didn’t feel that the laptop was safe alone so I stayed outside with it while she did the dishes and got the bed set up (she joined me outside when she was done). I brought my Ipod and a beer and it was a rather nice experience. The farm was very quite, the stars were out despite the fact it was raining and it wasn’t too cold. I’m actually glad we weren’t able to connect the van.

Aigues-Mortes

The drive here was pretty eventful, but not in a good way. Road construction put us on many detours that actually added 1 ½ hours to our already long drive. It was around 9 o’clock when I was about to enter a roundabout. A taxi had signaled to leave the roundabout and at the last minute swerved back into it, I wasn’t anticipating this. As it was late and there was barely any traffic on the road I was driving faster into the roundabout than I would have if it was during the day. That being said, I had to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting the taxi, which luckily I did. But after the sudden stop the van shut off and would not turnover. There was barely enough power to even light the interior light. Julie and I pushed the van onto the corner of the roundabout, rather then leaving it in a live entry lane. We put out our triangle and Julie adorned the vest and held a flashlight. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out why the dam van wouldn’t start. I even tried hooking the leisure battery up to the main battery with the booster cables to give it a charge to see if that helped matters. It did not. I asked Julie to see if she could flag someone over, so as Julie would tell you, she was waving her arms “as John McClain did in Die hard 2 when he was trying to signal the planes to land” flashlight in hand. Anyway, many cars passed by without stopping until one lady with her brand new car decided to see if she could help us. After a short while of trying to boost the car without any success, she offered to drive behind us with her hazards on so we could roll the van closer to town. We only rolled about 200 meters before we decided that the van probably wouldn’t make it up the hill that was approaching. Because we were convinced that the battery was the problem we started looking into where we could find a gas station to purchase one, however the nearest one was about 5 km away (in a straight line from our current position). Not knowing if it was a good idea or not, we decided to see if we could replace the car battery with the leisure one, it was then that I realized what the problem was. Thankfully the only problem with the car was a loose connection with the battery post. I tightened it and off we drove. Our enjoyment though was short lived, because we noticed immediately that the headlights were not working properly. We had no normal lights, they were working more like daytime running lights, but the high-beams still worked. After an extremely stressful drive, we finally arrived at our destination. We also learned at this time that the spot we had chosen to park at was not free, so we hoped that we might escape in the morning without having to pay.

Gorges de Tarn

Today was another long drive. We were headed to what is referred to as the “Grand Canyon of France”. We both think that’s an exageration. Although the small towns amongst the high valley walls were nice to see and the extremely windy road was fun to drive on, there was nothing “Grand Canyon” about it. That being said, we did stop for lunch at the edge of the road overlooking a small town on the valley floor. The weather wasn’t pleasant either so this didn’t help us enjoy the area. After lunch we decided to head south to the coast again to another aires, in Aigues-Mortes.