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Posts from the ‘beach’ Category

Oct 30

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No. 32: Blue-and-White Stripes

One of the many happy surprises of our p’tit week-end down south was our encounter with stripes. I was thrilled to see that particular French cliché alive and well and wandering the streets of Marseille. En fait, les rues were bursting with stripes. Once we saw our first friend dressed in stripes, we started to see them everywhere. It was good fun stalking and photographing the best stripes, turning into un jeu du chat et de la souris. The cat holding the camera while the mice scurried through town.

The more blue-and-white stripes I saw, the more I wanted to learn the history behind the stripes. I always associated the stripes with the French sea and it turns out that the striped shirt was indeed part of the official uniform of the French Navy. The theory was that if there were a “man over board” he would be more easily spotted among the waves and brought to safety if he was wearing stripes. Originally the uniform had 21 stripes, each one symbolizing one of Napoleon’s victories. At the time the uniform was conceived, the majority of the French Navy was located in Brittany, so the shirt became known as the “Breton”.

The “Breton” became popular with the non-military crowd once Coco Chanel, enamored with the sailing shirt, made it part of her fashion line for the modern woman. By the early 1930s the blue-and-white stripes were considered haute couture, and in the decades that followed, the “Breton” featured prominently in French cinema and Hollywood’s motion pictures, until it reached a sort of iconic status.

Today in Marseille you see mostly blue-and-white stripes, with a healthy handful of red-and-white ones thrown in…such a playful break from the black-on-black of Par-ee!

If you haven’t already seen Audrey Tautou in Coco Before Chanel, take a look at this teaser. Moi, j’adore ce film! Maybe you will like it too.

Vocabulaire:

En fait, les rues…  in fact, the streets…

Moi, j’adore ce film! Me, I adore/love this film.

un jeu du chat et de la souris: a game of cat and mouse

 un p’tit week-end: long weekend get-away (literally a small weekend)

Oct 28

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No. 30: Marseille

IMG_8137When Superman first decided we were going to Marseille for un p’tit week-end, I was a bit skeptical. But since he was planning and paying, I decided to just go with it…come what may. After all, my only experience with Marseille was a 4-day homestay in high school when my shockingly mature and impossibly gorgeous chain smoking host sister talked me in to cutting off most of my hair and buying a very expensive pair of pink and black striped pirate pants.

But during the month leading up to our visit, whenever I told my friends (both French and foreign) we were headed to Marseille, most of them asked, “Why?” and several told me, “Ce n’est pas une belle ville. C’est dangereux!” They wondered if I knew about all the crime in the city and was a prepared to fend off the pickpockets.

Feeling a bit discouraged I decided to checked my two “go-to” France guidebooks: Rick Steves’ FRANCE 2009 and Fedor’s FRANCE 2014. Turns out Rick doesn’t even mention Marseille, France’s second largest city, at all (at least in the 2009 version), and Fedor’s 800+ page book only gives the city seven pages, three of which list hotels and restaurants. What the heck??

So I went with very low expectations this past weekend and sadly, upon arrival the city seemed to match those expectations. On first appearance Marseille was gritty, dirty, poor, crowded, and loud, very, very loud. It reminded me of some cities we have visited in Egypt or Israel. Vibrant, but a little sketchy, dingy and rundown.

But within a day, the city began to grow on me because, frankly, Marseille is the real deal, not the cleaned up and polished deal, you find in Paris.

As a port city Marseille was heavily bombed during WWII and then rebuilt in the 1950, serving as an entrance for millions of immigrants during the ‘50s and ’60. There are French citizens from many different cultures, particularly North Africans, mostly Algerians. Refreshingly the people of Marseille come in all different shapes, sizes and colors. There was a lot of smiling going on, while at the same time wizened looks of lives intensely lived. The population looked genuine. No living in a bubble going on there. It seemed to me like hardship combined with ease, the residents taking life in stride.

I absolutely loved the colors of Marseille, from the clothing and cars, to the hair and jewelry and the shoes and the skin. The beautiful Mediterranean backdrop compliments it all.

It’s an active city with lots of runners, cyclists, volleyball clubs and, of course, sailors. The beaches aren’t filled with tourist, but rather local families playing silly games with their children in the surf. People say, “Excuse me,” when they collide. Even the waiters were friendly and kind (always a bonus in France).

I’m so very glad we went.

Bravo Superman and listen up all you travel writers: Marseille is guidebook worthy. Give it another go!

Vocabulaire

Ce n’est pas une belle ville. C’est dangereux! It’s not a nice city. It’s dangerous.

un p’tit week-end: a long weekend get-away 

Oct 27

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No. 29: Autumn Colors in Provence

Oct 27

No. 28: Les petites villes provençales: Cassis

This sweet, low-key town in coastal Provence with soft-hued houses built at funky angles along the seashore is the perfect place to spend an uncrowded and uncharacteristically warm October day.  After a trip to the lively Friday market (filled with the French sweets made best in southern France: calissons, navettes, nougats, candied fruit and sugared almonds), we picnicked on a small-coved beach surrounded by dramatic walls of white limestone. The warm sun, gentle breeze and cooling sea mist were the perfect remedy for our grey-weathered Parisians souls.

Vocabulaire

les petites villes provençales: small Provençale towns

une navette: shuttle service, commute; also a Provençale cookie shaped like a rowboat and flavored with orange blossom, lemon, anise, almonds, chocolate chips and even lavender. For the recipe for these “sugar shuttles”, please click here.

Oct 25

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No. 27: Les Calanques, Cassis

IMG_8352

So, this is how the conversation went:

Superman: “I want to go to the calanques!”

Nancy:  “What are the calanques?”

Superman: “ Fjords.”

Nancy: “What’s a fjord?”

Superman: “Fingers in a bay.”

Vocabulaire:

calanques: a steep-walled inlet, cove, or bay that is developed in limestone, dolomite, or other carbonate strata and found along the Mediterranean coast. This calanque is Port Miou. Located in Cassis, 30 km southeast of Marseille.

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