Month: September 2018

September 18: It seems that I have a day on every trip when my optimism and enthusiasm outweigh my normally conservative approach to touring. Today was one such day. Before leaving the hotel in Lausanne, I noticed that the bike was low on oil. I found a Honda dealer not far from the hotel and the guy took the bike in, gave it a once-over and then topped up the oil for 6 Euro. A kind gesture, and it restored my faith in mankind.

I left along the shore of Lac Leman toward Geneva and at Nyon, turned inland and immediately got lost. I found a taxi garage and the guy was headed out on a call so he led the way to the route I was trying to find. Score: Mankind 2 Failure 0. The pass over the Jura was really nice. It was pretty and with not a lot of traffic, I started to make good time. All of this put me in an optimistic mood, and I started thinking unrealistically about how much ground I could cover during the day, and I mentally picked a town that was really too far for my own good.

I was following a “tourist map” for motorcyclists put out by the Doubs region. A great idea but the map was essentially hand-drawn and had some roads that were not numbered, and towns that seemed to be in the wrong place (according to my infallible internal compass). So the navigating was a pain in the ass, and it took most of the afternoon to cover a relatively short distance. At this point, a sensible person might have decided to look for a hotel and call it a day, but I was committed and, to make up some time, I got on the Auto Route and wailed up toward Mulhouse.

When the Auto Route became tolled, I got off and tried to follow a cross country route to a pass over the Ballon d’Alsace and, of course, got lost again. had optimistically decided to see if I could reach Thann in Alsace. I’ve stayed in a hotel in the centre of town that’s quite nice but it was a huge gamble whether they would have a room when I arrived.

At this point, there was a huge thunder storm dead ahead and I was pretty sure that I would get soaked before Thann. But, by sheer luck, I found the pass and landed at the hotel. Of course, they had no rooms left. There is one other hotel in town, definitely a step down, but they did have a room and it was fine for the night. It looked like nobody was recently murdered there, and the commuter trains passing by the window didn’t keep me awake.

All in: 300 km, the longest day of the trip so far. Hot, exhausted, stinking and in need of a shower and a glass of vino, my self-imposed ordeal is over. But at least I avoided the rain. Ain’t travel great ?

September 18: Fortunately, the Paris discussed in the following post was not typical of our experience of this wonderful city. Suffice to say that it did not disappoint.

Paris is a city that invites walking, and we certainly did our share of exploring on foot. After figuring out how to use the Metro system to reach our starting point, Kate and I wandered for most of the day through Luxembourg Gardens, past Notre Dame, around Montmartre and Isle de la Cite. at the end of each day we had memorable meals, the first at Bofinger and then on our last night at Restaurant Paul in the Place Dauphine. Paris can be a wonderfully romantic city and having Kate with me to share the city added an exciting new dimension to my time there.

That said, it is also a city that attracts thousands of tourists. We visited Trocadero on our first day and there must have been 5,000 people looking across the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower. Accessing the Tower required running a gauntlet of dozens of people all hawking the same souvenirs of the city: all of it schlock. Understandably, there was security everywhere we went, and crowds of gawking people were omnipresent. While this may add something to the “excitement” of the city, after a while I found it very tiring and irritating. I was ready to leave when the time came.

As Kate, Sava and Christy were flying home, I made my way to Avignon on the TGV and then to St. Remy to get my bike out of its’ brief rest in storage.  I then spent 2 days in Venasque a hilltop town not far from where we had rented the house. There is one hotel, two restaurants, a couple of artists selling their works from galleries, several cats and not a lot more. The focal point of the town is the fountain, and the adjacent small cafe. At night, the only noise I could hear was the steady trickle of water from the fountain echoing through the streets. After the intensity of Paris, it was a welcome relief.

September 15: When I was studying urban planning at Ryerson in the early ’70’s, my family took a trip to England. My Dad was hoping to rediscover some of the places where he was stationed during the war, and I was hoping to visit some of the “new towns” constructed to repair damage after the war or to accommodate growth around London. I’m not sure either of us was successful.

When I decided to study urban planning I was somewhat infatuated with the idea that I could somehow create an environment that would make life better for anyone living there. Don Mills was barely 20 years old, and the ideals of modern design were in vogue: there should be separate areas for different (and presumably conflicting) land use; streets were for cars and separate pedestrian routes were fashionable; the “shopping centre” was the focus of daily life; density was achieved in mid- or high-rise towers; and open space was programmed for specific uses. Fortunately, I was a student when Jane Jacobs was becoming a voice for a different type of planning focused on a mix of uses and activities within a more eclectic environment – planning au naturel if you will – and I soon lost interest in highly structured planning.

You can therefore imagine my horror when I found that our hotel in Paris was on the edge of a huge commercial / residential project that completely obliterated any resemblance to the vibrant, street-oriented Paris we know. There was nothing wrong with the hotel or the location (about 10 minutes on foot from the Eiffel Tower), it was the context that was so disturbing.

As I understand it, Beaugrenelle Paris was a “shopping centre” built in the ’60’s as an experiment in brutalist architecture. When it started to decline and stores closed during the ’70’s, a renovation project was undertaken. That seems to have been mostly completed, although there are obviously still some elements to finish.

The result is pretty awful: The streets at grade are horrid dark tunnels giving access to parking and service areas. The podium level has pedestrian routes but there’s really very little retail space that would provide any activity or interest. All of that is indoors in a mall – the largest in central Paris. There are only a few connections down to the surrounding streets and many of those have blind areas and entrapment points which must make them very dangerous after dark. Many of the apartment buildings are built in a brutalist style and most sit on elevated pillars so that the lobbies are not apparent and there’s little interaction or supervision of the pedestrian level.

All of this was quite alarming and a good reminder that trying to recreate an ideal environment through conceptual planning is fraught with peril. As a Planner for the City I would often think that there was really no magic to the job; people generally know what’s right and appropriate. Many architects I met had drunk the Kool Aid and continued to believe that they knew better.  In a very general sense, the Planner’s job then is to balance the need for a technically astute building with the values each community holds for its’ public realm. I  would say that in this case, Paris missed the mark by a wide margin.

https//www.beaugrenelle-paris.com

August 8: A week has now passed at our rented “summer home” in Velleron, France. What was once an idea and a dream has now passed into experience as we all move on to the next adventure. I’m off to Paris with the running room ladies: Christy, Sava and of course, Kate. During our stay here old friendships have been refreshed, new friendships formed, and relationships given new dimension. Herewith, some tales from Velleron.

When the idea of a group vacation emerged more than a year ago, we scouted destinations including (mostly) Italy and France. Since this was a group of 11 people including only (then) 2 couples, our house had to have a large number of bedrooms. And bathrooms. People really want their own bathrooms. After much scouting around and advanced math trying to figure out the bedroom / bathroom conundrum, we settled on Velleron. It’s  difficult to describe, being part restored farmhouse and part “modern” addition.

In this case, modern is a relative term. There is a date scratched into the facade of the house showing 1929 but that may not be when it was built. It’s been completely renovated and has modern touches like air conditioning ( which we have not used ), and a pool. Two large dining tables – one indoor, one outdoor – are big hits and constantly being used. Eating has been a communal affair with different tastes and skill levels combined at each meal. We’ve also been out to a few of the local restaurants, as seen here in Venasque.

Velleron is in Provence, a lush and lovely part of France. We’ve spent most days touring the back roads and seeing the sights. Many of the oldest towns here and in the Luberon to the south, were built on hilltops for protection and to place the seemingly mandatory church at the highest point of land. This means that many of the towns are spectacularly beautiful. Gordes, seen here, is the superstar and attracts thousands of tourists. It’s Yorkville in the Luberon. Others like Rousillon, seen below are similarly picturesque but less crowded.

I’m off the motorcycle for the week, and that has been a small relief. However, I have had to spend time getting out of its’ resting place and off to a Honda dealer to replace the right mirror which was broken off by a Yamaha rider backing in to a parking space. Interestingly, the entire process cost the same amount as replacing the left mirror in Mannhiem (225 Euro), but took about a quarter of the time.

All things considered, I think our week here has been a great success. Predicted strangulation and mayhem have been avoided and much laughter heard. So we are all off to new adventures and the next stage of our collective journey.