On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
On the Road: Week of January 4 (5 am)
Albatrossity –
UncleEbeneezer – ‘Blossoms of Light” at Denver Botanical Gardens, December 2018
?BillinGlendaleCA – Fall Color at the Huntington
Sherparick – Pets who we lost
Origuy – Road Trip 2006, Part 3On the Road: After Dark: Week of January 4 & 11 (10 pm)
We are back to Paris, with a set of 10 Paris posts from Steve from Mendocino
? And now, back to Steve from Mendocino, for Provence, France
Steve from Mendocino
I’ve been to Provence twice, once int the early 70’s when Anne-Marie, her parents, and I drove from the Pyrenees (in two cars) through Provence and down to Florence and Venice, and once in the 80’s when I spent a week with my then girlfriend visiting my best friend in Mougin. He had rented a house for a month, complete with housekeeper who arrived every morning to clean and prepare lunch. I just didn’t have any family anchors in Provence, so we didn’t end up going there. This group of photos is half of what I’ve set aside for OTR.
I look at a good deal of the architecture in Provence and think “no earthquakes here”. The least little shake would bring these structures down. Growing up in Los Angeles, it’s hard to conceive of a place that can simply ignore any possibility of earthquakes.
“Bac” in French means “ferry”. Loved this funky old ferry that moved along a cable from one side to the other.
These two red “deux chevaux” Citroens were entertaining. I believe those are German plates.
Garlic and Provence kind of go together.
Outdoor seating in an unknown restaurant. Clearly, we ate here, but I have no memory of it.
A Provencal garden. I was going for an impression of the colors and textures. My apologies to you gardeners who’d like to identify the plants.
Provencal balcony with geraniums in planters.
Roman ruins are everywhere in Provence. You can’t tell from the photo just how enormous this thing is. There are no barriers or guard rails, and I got vertigo just looking at someone standing on the top level looking over the edge.
OzarkHillbilly
Cool stuff. I’m a sucker for architectural shots.
sab
Is that Roman thing a bridge or an aqueduct? It reminds me a lot of a picture from one of my high school textbooks ( French or Latin, I forget which) of a Roman aqueduct in France. The textbook picture was taken from a completely different angle but might have been of the same structure.
Kev In France
It’s the Pont du Gard, near Nîmes. Acqueduct (Roman 44 AD). The bridge with the road surface was added later. I live nearby.
Lapassionara
These are lovely. Thank you.
Amir Khalid
Ah, the Citroën 2CV (“Deux Cheveaux”). The two chevrons on the hood give the model its name. It was, like the Third-Reich-era Volkswagen concept, a cheap small car for the masses that became iconic. It stayed in production from 1948 to 1990, and still has a cult following to this day. Those German-registered 2CVs look immaculate.
stinger
Provence…. Snow coming later today here; I may have to haul out the DVDs of Enchanted April and Jean de Florette. Thank you for these lovely photos. I love the closeup of the roof tiles.
stinger
@stinger: I should add, I know Enchanted April isn’t set in Provence, but I need images of warm southern climes. The opening scenes of Much Ado do it for me, too.
JanieM
Oh, the wanderlust….
The textures and colors in the first one and the aqueduct one are as mesmerizing as in the garden one.
All that garlic makes me swoon. Here’s chapter 10, “Foreign Cookery,” of Alice May Brock’s “Alice’s Restaurant Cookbook” in its entirety: Don’t be intimidated by foreign cookery. Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good. Now you are an International Cook.
My Italian grandma always had a pot of greens simmering on the stove, usually with beans and probably a bit of ham, and always with garlic. She called the soup “minest.” (She was from the general area of Naples, though they were country people, not city people, and she grew up in Brooklyn from the age of nine or so. My grandfather said of his own kids, “They’re American, they can talk American” — so the language was not passed down. Sadly enough.)
I feel like I would have been very, very happy eating in Provence, though I doubt I’ll ever get there now.
Albatrossity
Lovely images of a lovely part of France. Thanks!
Barbara
When we visited the Pont du Gard in 1991 it was still just like in the picture, you could crawl all over it. Ten years later, we visited my au pair’s family in the tiny village where they lived in Provence, and made a day trip. My au pair’s maman warned me that access was more controlled, because so many people had done stupid things, like jumping off, sometimes intending suicide and sometimes not. We were really disappointed, but in retrospect, it’s amazing that it was as open and accessible as it was for so long. So, like Stonehenge and the Roman forum, it became a bit too popular to remain unrestricted. There is another aqueduct in astonishingly good shape, in Segovia. Incredibly, it served as a main source of water into the city until well into the 20th century. The Romans knew how to build things to last.
I love all these pictures.
Comrade Colette
Wonderful pix! Thanks for the images and the memories they evoke.
We were struck by the same thought over and over when we moved from San Francisco to France – especially after first visiting Italy, where lots of the building techniques/materials are similar to southern France, and where there’s been immense earthquake damage over the centuries. That’s what seemed normal to us.
way2blue
Great photos. Thanks. I especially love the color & texture of the roof tiles in the first one. And the Monet garden.
Beatrice
My then-husband and I were on that ferry – or one like it – back in the late 70s, in a VW bug that had to be pushed to start. We were at the head of the line and fearful of angering the folks in the cars behind us if we couldn’t get off fast enough, but as I recall, we moved out smartly and felt quite proud of ourselves.
Martin
That is the photographic definition of survivor bias.