-14 July 2011
14th July, 2011
I was just about to say that it's impossible to keep up with ourselves and then looking at the last entry in my book I see that it starts off:
9th July, 2011
It's impossible to keep up with ourselves. I should really be writing about St. Tropez where we spent the last 3 days but I have to jump forward to where we are right now...we just arrived in Liguria.
Obviously I will give you the rest of that entry but first, let it be known that we have been in Buonconvento, Tuscany since Sunday, and when we do finally catch up with ourselves here, you'll understand why we've been so quiet. But first, back to ...
9th July, 2011
We've just arrived in Corvara, high in the hills of Liguria, in a little apartment that is so spare and beautiful and quiet that you really could hear the proverbial pin drop. And yes, we found it on the internet. After hours, mind you, spent surfing and calling various places that looked good to us. What, are we crazy? We want a room overlooking the sea on the Italian Riviera. For one night. Saturday. In July. Of course there was nothing. I don't really remember the trail that led us here, but Joel eventually found himself talking with Elisabeta who owns Albergo Paese Corvara...and speaks 3 languages. Daniela, her daughter, speaks 4. Elisabeta was very sorry but her little Inn was completely booked. However she did have a little apartment up the hill, but she'd have to charge us 80 euro for the night as opposed to 50 for a room in the inn. Sold.
We left St. Tropez at 10 this morning and after driving through perhaps a hundred tunnels for what felt like as many hours, Lady Gaga - our GPS guide for those of you who've forgotten - eventually directed us through some seedy villages that looked like Liguria's answer to "Deliverance." And just when we were beginning to wonder what we'd let ourselves in for, some f..cker comes barreling down a hill and knocks Joel's side mirror to smithereens. I felt pretty sure that within the hour Joel would be buggered by a local while snorting like a pig. (If you've never seen Deliverance you just read a synopsis of it.)
But we carried on and a good thing we did. The village of Corvara is Liguria "proprio" meaning, the real thing: a church, the inn with its restaurant, a few houses and on the hill, where we are, the ruins of a castle.
We take some overnight things out of the car and walk them down to the little apartment, change into our swimsuits and go back up the old stone steps where, across from the car sits an outdoor swimming pool. We feel like we've hit pay-dirt. Not quite. After a few strokes we realize there is no deep end, so you are literally "crawling"along the bottom, each stroke stymied as your hand hits the concrete floor of the pool. Ok. Let's sunbath. Let's not. Horse flies. But let's not be picky. Look at where we are:
At 8 we walk down the hill to the inn and through it out to the garden where we will eat a scrumptious home-cooked meal, surrounded by this:
while being entertained by Daniela who's ability with languages is second to her talents as a stand-up comedienne. There are perhaps 10 tables, with 16 diners from at least 4 countries and she has us all in stitches. Not to mention her husband, who most of the time - while making the most amazing pizzas right there in the garden in the wood burning oven - looks like a surly lout, until Daniela, telling us all how he never smiled until he met her, at which his face is transformed by an ear to ear grin.
We eat one of his pizzas, with tomatoes from the garden and cheese and anchovies and decide to go all the way and follow it with pasta pesto and oh, what the hell, give us the walnut cake with vanilla ice-cream and caramel sauce. We plod back up the hill and fall into bed.
This is what we see upon awakening:
But, back to St.Tropez! What to say? It's everything you imagined...and less...and more. We were here in the spring when it was still a sleepy town inhabited by the natives. Architecturally, it's a beautiful town, but now it's tourist season and like every beautiful spot in the world during tourist season it's hard to see the place during the day and night. But, oh, the early mornings! The streets running with water sluicing the night away. The shuttered peace. Deserted streets, except for locals shopping for produce. By 11 there will be a different kind of shopping going on, for high fashion and jewelry and some atrocious art.
But the mornings were ours. A short walk through soft light took us to La Tartine Tropezienne for the best omelets, pain chocolat and cappuccino. Then a stroll back to La Ponche, our hotel. Oh, our hotel. Situated in the old part of town away from the harbor, we had the Brigitte Bardot room which we had chosen solely for its terrace. I guess we have a thing for terraces and this one was, for us, the quintessential, timeless, St.Tropez experience.
Surrounded by a mad chorus of tiled rooftops and mad chimneys and overlooking the sea, we basically spent the entire 3 days lying on it naked (no, we couldn't be seen, we wouldn't be that unkind) doing Yoga on it and dining on it every night, often serenaded by an accordion player strolling the square below from where the happy chatter of diners at 3 outdoor restaurants (including the hotel's) played like easy-listening, while we, having bought rotisserie chicken, avocado, tomatoes, and cucumber dined above it all by candlelight watching the long evening play across the sky.
After dinner we'd order 2 large coupes of vanilla ice-cream to be sent up, these accompanied by the most delicious chewy macaroons, which we devour all the while gazing out to sea, gasping in delight as an old-fashioned vessel sailed into view...
...listening to the bells from the nearby tower...
...Until, finally, sated by all that is good in life, we'd reluctantly leave the terrace and gratefully sink into bed, our eye pillows redolent with perfume from the lavender we had picked just days ago.
I just want to say a word here, or rather, refer back to the idea of the "cliche." We're aware that much of what I've just described might come across as a cliche. . .if not (hopefully) in the words I've chosen, but in the events and themselves: the tiled roofs, chimney pots, the accordion player, the sail boat etc. But in reality these things are far from cliche...it's the idea of them that is cliche. In reality these things - and so much of what we are enjoying in Provence - are the things which remain of value. As we have said before, we've had to do some hard looking here, to find that which pleases us, but the search always rewards us. When you approach St.Tropez it's quite vulgar with it's highway lined with big-box stores, car and boat dealerships, horrendous outdoor furniture and driving past all this the spirit sinks. Then you enter St.Tropez proper and see it filled with bored tourists looking for something else to buy or stuff in their mouths and your heart sinks some more. But you push on and come to the square, where in the spring the pollarded trees looked like powerful fists but now, leafed out in their summer finery, they dapple the light and spare you from the sun, so that you can quite easily sit on a bench for half an hour and watch the same men playing boules whom you watched in April. And there, across the square, squeezed in between Fendi and Armani is the tiniest of shops where we will buy our salad ingredients and fruit. The woman who owns - or rents - it is perhaps in her mid-70's and proud of her produce, as well she should be, bringing it in from her garden every morning. These little vignettes, or apercus as I like to call them, lift the spirit every time. It's what we love about the French, this willingness to work hard to continue a way of life that is fast disappearing everywhere. And yet they aren't romantic, or sentimental. Far from from it, I would say this is a country of pragmatists: they know you can't stop "progress" but they also know you don't have to, in the name of it, get rid of that which has tradition and value.
The little beach in front of the hotel, which gave us so much pleasure when viewed from the terrace, gave us a different kind of pleasure up close. Unlike the commercial beaches, this one is St.Tropezienne. The first afternoon we spent on it, we were moved to tears by life at its tenderest.
Two grandmothers, sharing their grandson. One of them calling to him when he strayed too far, "Ice, mon coeur." Here, my heart.
And this father, with his blind son, still tending him with all the gentleness given to a frail infant. I'll let the photo speak for itself.
We also enjoyed, the following morning, one of the most divine swims here. The sea was calm and clear, the beach, freshly raked, was deserted. And so we slipped in at 7 and I think perhaps for the first time since we left the Cape Cod bay, that my fish of a husband felt joy and hope that there are other bodies of water waiting to pleasure him.