Welcome to Paris, France

Yesterday morning we said our goodbyes to Jaime. He had just come for a quick weekend visit and needed to get going fairly early to catch his flight back to England. Then we moved to a permanent spot in the marina. We were absolutely delighted to find it was a floating finger dock, although it is a shared berth. It’s funny how our perspective of what is exciting has changed so much. Finger docks make tying up so darn easy. As they seem to always do in the Med, they had us back in.

We were dismayed to find that the shore power wasn’t working. Eric messed with it for a while, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Darn, no power means that our time away from Kosmos was going to be limited to three or four days, max. We signed up for wifi internet and found ourselves glued to the internet all day. We haven’t had internet since Rome, and so much has been happening in the world that we had a lot to catch up on.

We didn’t actually venture out until dinner time, where we settled on a pizza place along the waterfront. We’d seen a lot of people in there the night before, so we figured it was probably good. We got a phenomenally good salad served with warm marinated duck, foie gras, hard boiled eggs, lettuce and tomatoes. The duck was melt in your mouth tender. For those that don’t know, foie gras is goose liver, usually served cold. The texture is creamy, more like a cheese spread than a meat. It has a light flavor, and doesn’t even remotely taste like any other types of livers we have tried in our lives. It is also very good.

This morning we packed up and walked over to the bus station. The skies were gray and it was cool out. Gray skies means the solar panels won’t be making much electricity, but cool out means fridge/freezer won’t suck as much juice, so that probably evens out power consumption. We made a wrong turn somewhere along the way and took the long, scenic route to the bus stop. The town is nice. The old part looks a lot like St. Tropez, with narrow cobblestone lanes and quaint, traditional old buildings painted cheerful colors. The old town is small, much smaller than St. Tropez. The rest of town that we walked through is more modern, with many of the buildings looking very 60’s era. We saw a lot of apartment buildings and a few houses. It looks to be a mostly residential area with not a lot of commercial activity. The houses vary widely in architectural style, adding to the character. There is a lot of greenery around, with many flowering plants in bloom. It is pretty.

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When we did finally make it to the bus stop, we had missed the bus by Continue reading

Welcome to Isle de Porquerrolles, Cote d’Azur, France

Yesterday, Eric went to check in as soon as the marina opened. The lady asked us if we intended to leave Le Lavandou at all. Yes, we told her, we wanted to go to Paris for a few days, possibly as long as a week. She told us we would have to go to the marina on the other side of town. Apparently, the waves can be violent and crash over the sea walls and cause damage to the boats near the wall. She had no “safe” parking spot for us, so we either had to stay with the boat in case we needed to move her or we needed to move marinas.

We had noticed yesterday that Continue reading

Welcome to Le Lavandou, Cote d’Azur, France

This morning we woke to winds screaming at 22 26 knots an hour. The marina was lumpy. The ocean was full of whitecaps. We attached a second mooring line to the bow, even though it didn’t really fit right, figuring something holding us to a second concrete block under the water was better than nothing. We guess we aren’t moving Kosmos today, after all.

We decided to go for the four hour hike along the coast that was supposed to be absolutely beautiful. But after Continue reading

Welcome to St. Tropez, Cote d’Azur, France

As soon as we got up, we started working on getting ready to go to sea. We were only making a short day hop, so getting ready went fairly quickly. When we checked out with the marina, we found out there was a 20% VAT (sales tax) on top of what we had been quoted. We wish they had mentioned the VAT before the moment we pulled out our wallet to pay.

We pulled out at 1100. We are sad to report that the fenders were all covered with a thick black slime that managed to get all over the entire exterior of the boat. It is pretty gross.

The ride over to San Tropez was Continue reading

Hiking the Alps and Visiting a Medieval Village

Continued from yesterday”¦ As we trudged up, we passed through a clearing with two small buildings surrounded by a grassy field. They were well maintained and looked like they were actively used as vacation houses. Christi was amazed that anyone would want to be in such a remote place, with such a long hike down to the closest village. And there wasn’t much of a village there, for that matter. To get to the nearest grocery store was a fairly long drive. Antonio explained that in the olden times, these were summer houses. One building was for the people, the other(s) for the cows and goats. Farmers would bring their livestock up for the summer to graze in the cleared fields. The farmers made cheese and other goods, then would go to their winter homes lower down on the mountain.

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We continued upwards through the forest, and passing through two or three more of these cleared areas. Each clearing had two or three small buildings in the traditional style with a circle of grassy fields around them. They were all abandoned, which Christi thought was no surprise. They were too high up and too isolated to be practical. We stopped for lunch in a shady spot in the forest.

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After lunch, we continued up and came to Continue reading