French mediterranean coast best kept secret

Only 60 Km from Avignon, one can enjoy a coastline of remarkable beauty with very quiet beaches - even on a searing hot August day.

We went today for a picnic and an dip in l'Etang de Berre, a salty laguna of some 38.000 acres tucked between tne Camargue and the hills of l'Estaque west of Marseilles. On the north of the lake, between Saint Chamas ans Istres, the scenery is lovely, almost Tuscan in character. Here the northerly wind, the Mistral is always fresh, the water quality rated "average" by the french sanitary autorites, which is a bit worrying, but it seemed very clear to us.And we had a long, empty strech of beach to ourselves. I guess nowhere on the cote d'Azur could such an empty space be found exept at the end of impassable private roads. How to explain this ? L'étang de Berre has recovered from decades of agression by freshwater pollution from an hydroelectric plant. Only 9 meter deep, its communication with the sea limited to a narrow strait in Martigues, and a man-made tunnel near Marseilles, the huge laguna is said to suffer from entrophic sedimentation : in the bottom layers of the lake - the fresh water remains cold and lifeless. Also the southern bank of the lake is more industrial and polluted. But neat Istres and St Chamas, we had a nice swim and the windsurfers were having a great time. Try La Digue in St Chamas for lunch near their main base.

Boney's unpaid icecream bill in Avignon: 50 francs.

Bonaparte had more than one  occasion to spend a few days in Avignon. According to local historians, he got fond of a 'glacier'; an icecream parlour on Place Saint Didier.
He is said to have left once the city without paying a bill amounting to 50 francs - a not inconsiderable sum for the times.

. I checked with my neighbours running the gthe icecream vendor on the square (Le Comptoir Saint Didier, great sherbets and home made cakes served on a terrace under a pine tree.) The lady was well aware of that unpaid bill, through her mother-in-law. I guessed at first that Nabulione ( as he was called when a kid in Corsica) was but a teenager at the time : Sent to study from an early age  in various military academies on the Continent, Bonaparte was only 16 when he left Paris for Valence and Avignon for his first six month  home holiday on 30 octobre 1785.  His allowance, paid for by an uncle, was notoriously small - but then weren't the  prices quoted in livres and in Louis ? The franc was instated in lieu of the Louis during the French Revolution.

Maybe it was during his 1793 residence at Marseilles, when Napoleon was employed as a Captain by the general commanding the artillery of " the Army of Italy", and sent to negotiate with the insurgents of Marseilles and Avignon, (a city where he published in the same year a little pamphlet called 'Le souper de Beaucaire', in which he tried to persuade the moderates of the merchant classes not to provoke the excited revolutionists, who were then fighting a cruel civil war in several parts of France.) In those days again, his income was not nearly enough for his needs, and those of his greedy family. The 50 francs of that bill might have exceeded his means.

Anyway, he never paid them back : in the following years he was sort of busy, what with with Coup d'états, campaigns, treaties, coronations and so on : the lanky captain went on to be  a general, then the Premier consul, then an Emperor, whose military proclivities are responsible for over a million deaths on the battlefields. He did solve his money problem - some say he had become the wealthiest person in Europe.

After his first abdication, in April, 1814,on his way to Elba, Napoleon stopped for the last time in Avignon, where he narrowly escaped being slaugthered by the populace. Actually the whole of Provence hated him. He escaped in the uniform of an Austrian officer. During his famous 1815 comeback from Elba, Bonaparte landed in Nice and followed a more arduous, but safer road to Paris through the Alps. You know how it all ended : Waterloo, exile to St Helens... If I were you, I would think twice before leaving an unpaid bill in Avignon.


Read more: http://chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-8/Napoleon-Bonaparte.html#ixzz1xmwmdm3q
Image : excerpt from the famous " Souper de Beaucaire" painting by Lecomte du Nouÿ.

Jack Kerouac's lone Sunday in Avignon

Jack Kerouac went to Avignon. But he didn't stay that long.  According to his biographer Nicosia*, he arrived by bus from Marseilles via Arles in april, 1957, and got ripped off straigthaway by a defective gum-vending machine at the station. Sulking, angry with the French, he went through the sleepy  sunday afternoon streets of the Popes'city, finding them stuffy and provincial. Then the Dharma Bum left to Paris (by the evening train).

Even if you fancy yourself a lucky traveller, take our humble advice  : don't expect too much from Avignon on a Sunday afternoon. Shops are all closed, including those in the  main tourist streets, where small groups  of disoriented would-be shoppers wander clutching their citymaps and useless wallets. Plan your Sunday ahead, find out about village fairs and shows. Try our local undergroud cinema, Utopia, located next door from our building on 5, rue Figuiere : they  have mostly  English-language movies with french subtitles.  (  'On the road'**,  will be on show there  until June, 26). And... beware of vending machines : those contraptions haven't improved that much since 1957, and nowadays we do have a few cafes open on Sundays !.


( *Gerald Nicosia, Memory babe, chap 11, 1983, Grove Press. )
(**On the road, 2012, from the 1952 novel by Jack Kerouac, directed by  Walter Salles, with Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Sturridge, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Alice Braga, Steve Buscemi, official selection at the Cannes Festival.)
 The picture above is from an ad for the book, not the film.