Trip Report: France 2011, September 29 - Aix-En-Provence

We stayed at the Aquabella Hotel in Aix-En-Provence. It is a modern hotel, but it is surrounded by remains of the past.  The one quirk in our room is that the toilet is in a small closet, separate from the shower and sink. At one side the Tourreluque Tower and part of a 14th Century wall bracket the swimming pool, and the ruins of the old Roman Baths, Thermes Sextius, can be viewed through a window on the side of the hotel.

Tourreluque Tower

Thermius Sextius, through glass

We start the day with a buffet breakfast at the hotel. It is typical of all the breakfast buffets that are to follow, in a trip that I end up dubbing "The Trip With Too Much Food"*. There is a good array of fresh (ripe!) fruit, some dried fruit, dry cereals including muesli, several kinds of yogurt, lunch meat, cheeses, spreads, nut and fruit butters, jam, jelly, marmalade, honey, several types of dairy butter, juice, scrambled eggs, sausage and/or ham and/or bacon, a selection of breads (wonderful croissants), etc...  One appliance mystifies me - a square vat of hot water with handles coming out of it. It turns out to be an egg cooker. You select a raw egg, put it in the wire scoop at the end of the handle, and immerse it in water until it is cooked exactly like you like it. (Or not, my one try resulted in a mess.)

Egg cooker

In the morning our group does a walking tour of Aix-En-Provence, ending up near the Cours Mirabeau. We pass historic buildings and monuments, flower markets and flea markets. Afterwards we go our separate ways until lunch at a local cafe, Chez Laurette, near the town hall.  In different parts of the old town the pavement is marked with plaques or studs indicating Cezanne's footsteps.  A free map indicates 36 places in Aix-En-Provence associated with this famous artist.

Mount Sainte Victoire and snails

After lunch we re-group and take a bus to visit the L'Atelier De Cezanne where Cezanne set up his studio. The house and grounds are filled with tourists, and we have to wait to climb the stairs for a quick peek.  The top floor space is large, and is filled with Cezanne's personal effects, but it is dry and dusty.  There are a few spots of color in the pottery and a bowl of fruit set up as if it were going to be the subject of a painting. A slideshow of his work in one corner seems out of place.  We are asked not to take pictures. Then we take a bus to view Mount Sainte Victoire, often painted by Cezanne. The field from which we view the mountain seems to be filled with small white flowers - on closer observation I see that they are snails!

Dinner with the group in La Crep' Sautiere.

*We usually travel quite frugally, picking up snacks from local markets and very occasionally having a meal in a restaurant.  This trip gave me a new admiration for French cooking.

Trip Report: France 2011, September 27th to 28th

After a leisurely drive to Los Angeles, we left our car at a "Park and Fly" hotel and took their shuttle to LAX. In the afternoon we boarded Air France for a non-stop flight to Paris. I amused myself watching videos on the seat-back entertainment system, and later tried to sleep as we flew and flew and flew.......

The next day we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport, where we were to transfer to another flight to Marseille to join the Road Scholar (Elderhostel) group. Unfortunately my husband had lost our tickets and travel documents at some point and we went everywhere in the terminal looking for them. Finally we were told to "Go to the Lost and Found." The Lost and Found was at the other end of the airport. The Lost and Found had gone to lunch by the time we got there, and when they came back they told us it was "too early".   We went back to the Air France ticket desk in the public area and were given duplicate tickets and told that we might be able to get on the  original flight if we hurried. Unfortunately, we were held up going through security and the plane left without us. We went back to the Air France booth in the passenger area and, while we were getting tickets for the next flight, found that the documents had been located. Apparently they had been paging us, but we had been at the other end of the airport waiting for the Lost and Found to open.

While we were waiting for the next flight I called the hotel to leave a message for the group leader explaining what had happened.  She never got the message, but luckily two other members of the group had arrived late because of a delayed flight and we were able to share a cab to Aix-en-Provence with them.

After checking into the hotel we joined the group for orientation and introductions. We were already famous - "Oh, you're the couple that lost all your documents."

Treasures of the Gypsy Challenge Doll Finished

Gypsy Maiden with Baby Unicorn

Finally! Got my entry mailed off yesterday, and now I'm in the middle of cleaning up all the bits of material and thread that have somehow gotten all over the house. Fortunately it is a small house.

The doll was made from a simplified version of a Joanne Pinto pattern with some Mimi Winer-inspired face modeling. The unicorn was reduced from a pattern by Lois Boncer. This was a good learning experience. I used minke, lame, and velvet for the first time, and learned I could mend a paperclay horn and make tiny hooves with plaster cloth, and that I could tea-dye three different kinds of lace so that they didn't contrast too much.

Until the next challenge!

Prototype Doll Finished

I finished the first draft of the doll for the Treasures of the Gypsy Challenge. I am learning a lot about what works and what doesn't work.  I hope on my second run-through I can avoid making some of the same mistakes.

Felt unicorn from pattern by Lois Boncer

Body from pattern by Joann Pinto

Power Outage, San Diego, 9-8-2011

I guess I take having electricity for granted, because when even when I found out that power could be out for days I was still walking into rooms with my flashlight in one hand and flipping the lightswitch with the other. It is so easy to take things for granted.

I don't have any exciting adventures to report, no severe deprivations. At first we figured this was just a temporary power outage, but when my Mom called to tell us that the power failure was widespread, we got out the portable radios and got the flashlights and lanterns ready. We decided to keep the refrigerator closed to preserve the food inside it, and it seems to have worked, except that I think I will toss a steak that was thawing.

My husband and I react in different ways. After it got too dark to read he listened to the news for a while, then had a glass of wine and went to sleep. I stayed up reading by booklight, and left a few candles burning so that if I got up in the night I wouldn't have to fumble around for a flashlight.  He says he does not understand why I would use up valuable resources just to read, but I think it I'm just trying to maintain normality, like the British in India who maintained the customs and costumes of a cooler climate in spite of the sweltering heat.

from W. H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939)

Excerpt....

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.


Today the electricity is back on.  I am reading Time Magazine's special edition on the aftermath of 9-11 and thinking about how much can change in a few minutes. I think also of Robert Burn's poem "To a Mouse" (translation)


Excerpt...


.....The best laid schemes of mice and men

Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

I will endeavor to enjoy today.  Who knows what will happen next?

An Eating Experiment

About a month ago I decided to see what would happen if I stopped eating foods that contained a significant amount of white flour or white sugar. I was influenced in this by reading Deirdre Barrett's Waistland, in which she states that we are programmed to eat sugary and fatty foods as a survival mechanism. In a hunter-gatherer society these foods were harder to come by, so you stocked up when you could. In our modern society, this kind of food is everywhere, and the admonition "your body knows what to eat" is a lie. I had already pretty much given up fried foods and foods with artificial sweeteners or trans-fat, so this was just another step.


I've dieted for years, with the usual result of diets. Part of my last diet was writing down everything I ate and I started to notice that when I ate foods with white flour or white sugar it seemed to trigger an over-eating response and also, afterwards, I sometimes felt "hungover". 


When I started the experiment the whole idea seemed a little radical. 


I haven't losr a lot of weight, but  I have to say that I feel a lot better since starting the experiment. The biggest problem sometimes is finding something to eat.   I have to read labels carefully. Who would have thought that so many processed foods have sugar in them - like the "wasabi rice cakes"at my local health food store?  


This is not a low-carb or no-carb diet. I still eat a lot of complex carbohydrates, I'm not perfect.
Surprisingly, the things that I have given up - cake, candy, cookies, etc..I don't miss so much. I thought it would be harder. 


I will check back in a few months on this.

Ruffing It

I find researching Renaissance clothing fascinating.  Costume pages abound: from pages that will sell you the proper shoe, to a wiki on the costumes of the tv show The Tudors*.

Here is a compilation of what I found on the web about the history of just one Renaissance accessory, the ruff.

Definition of ruff:  a stiffly starched frilled or pleated circular collar of lace, muslin, or other fine fabric, worn by men and women in the 16th and 17th century. (from answer.com)

Apparently the ruff evolved from an extension of the fabric of the undergarment showing at the neckline. The flash of clean cloth showed you could afford to have your undergarments laundered frequently. At first ruffs were apparently worn attached to a neckpiece or partelet (Think dickey), then someone realized that you could make a ruffs a separate piece entirely. (Think detachable collar).

Ruffs began to be made out of fine fabric edged with lace, which was very expensive at that time because it was all hand-made. Ruffs got wider and wider.  Wearing a lot of lace meant you had a lot of money. The nobility competed to have the most elaborate clothing, but a new middle class was also wearing these styles.   It wouldn't do to have commoners dressing like the members of the court so sumptuary laws were passed to limit certain fabrics and styles to the upper class, for example, to specify that ony certain social classes could wear double ruffs.

Still ruffs grew -- so large that people wearing them had to use long spoons to eat. Some ruffs were made were decorated with silver wire and metallic thread, pearls and jewels. Some got so large and heavy they required supporting structures like portafraes, suportasses, pickadils or rebatos.

The design of the ruff was not the same across Europe.  Different styles were popular in different places and at different times..

At some point the large ruffs became unfashionable and were replaced by flat lace collars. I guess comfort finally outweighed fashion.

More Resources:

Shakespeare's England: A brief history of the ruff
The Renaissance Tailor: The partlet
Wikipedia: The ruff
Yellow Starch and Lace
How to Make a Ruff
Elizabethan Ruffs

*Apparently The Tudors is full of inaccuracies, so do not depend on it as an easy way to study history. For example, the producers decided not to show actors wearing codpieces, which were quite common during that period.