Creative Life Travels to France: Paris to Rognes
- Janet STRAYER
- Sep 23, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 12, 2024
Creative Life Travels Anywhere and Everywhere
Creative Life includes many creative travels. Ready to go almost anywhere of interest at anytime there's a chance to do so. Sometimes it relies on mind-travel. Other times it travels on more solid geography. This time it travelled by airplane from Vancouver to Paris, where we spent several days. We then drove one long day southward to the village of Rognes in Provence.
Paris - Montmartre
Setting our jet-lagged feet in a Paris we had not seen in many years, we chose a spot we'd loved before. We booked a room at the Timhotel at the top of steep Montmartre. The hotel is very near Sacré Coeur Basilica, a quintessentially scenic spot visible from much of the city. The room was typically small but adequate. And the views were marvellous (see photos). Placed atop Montmartre, our windows opened to gorgeous views of this famous neighbourhood. As a treat for us when wandering through unfamiliar parts of Paris, we could often see the tower and dome of Sacré Coeur and reorient.
Walking outside the hotel door, right beside us was the Bateau Lavoir, studio home to a very young, very poor Picasso and a similar group of not yet famous artists.
What is it about this place that makes Montmartre the vital place it was and is?
Its bohemian, left-bank ambiance? Its steep cobble-stoned paths that were (and still are) dotted with small cafés, busy into the night and filled with an assortment of colourful people? Its (then, not so much now) notorious Moulin Rouge at the nearby red-lit Pigalle area? Its (then, not now) low-rent?
Whatever it was back then,, Montmartre still holds a sense of life and vitality. Its iconic Metro stop down the hill at Abbesses will take you almost anywhere in the city.
Paris- Musée d'Orsay
Paris must be a city on everyone's bucket list. Having visited here several times in the past, we decided not to be tourists rushing to take in as many sights as possible. Instead, we chose to re- visit just one museum: that beautifully converted Beaux-Arts railway station known as the Gare d'Orsay, housing a huge and wonderful collection of paintings and sculpture. We took a cab there in order to pass by the in-progress re-construction of Notre Dame, felled by a disastrous fire. An awfully sad sight for all who recall its grandeur.
Sitting on the banks of the Seine, the museum was highlighting an exhibition of works by Edvard Munch, whose "Scream" painting you likely know. Besides the featured exhibition, you can feast on great works by so many Impressionist and Post- Impressionist artists that your eyes begin to water from the overload. The d'Orsay likely contains works by every renowned artist (especially French) of these great creative epochs in European art. I was surprised and delighted also to see a major painting featured on the main floor by the contemporary African-American artist, Kehinde Wiley. I enjoy how Wiley adapts the poses and general composition of familiar old master paintings, putting new and very different people and designs into these contexts.
Strolling the streets of Paris and stopping wherever we chose was the most important to-do thing on our absent itinerary list. And so we did it. Most of the time, we wandered around the Marais, our current top-of-the-list favourite area to live in Paris. In our dreams, we would live at the Place des Vosges. In reality, we just sat on benches at this very old plaza and looked up at the surrounding apartments, built as a royal residence in the 1600s.
Victor Hugo lived there in the 19th C, and his apartment remains an interesting visit into another time and mind. Not only a famed author, he was also exiled for a time for his anti-royalist and liberal political views. Hugo was also quite a good visual artist (surreal and symbolic) with some of his small paintings on display.
The food, as expected, was fine wherever we went, and we went nowhere fancy. Like many, we preferred the many outdoor cafés and sidewalk bistros to elegant restaurants we probably couldn't afford. Before leaving Paris, I bought a tourist sweatshirt. I had wanted one emblazoned with Edith Piaff's lyrics, "je ne regrette rien." No one seems to have made that one yet, or I never found it. So I bought one with the Eiffel tower on it. We left Paris the next day for our drive to Provence.
Provence in the South of France - the Village of Rognes
After a very long day's drive from Paris, we have settled in Rognes, an ancient village in the Bouche du Rhône, located near the Durance River. It's not far from the capital of this perennially stunning region of Provence: 19 km northwest of Aix-en-Provence (Aix on the map). Rognes is not one of the prized tourist destinations of the region and so, seems to me, an even more welcome spot for just living the local life.
Everyday Sights in Rognes
The town center is pleasant but unimpressive. But it's a busy little place with weekly outdoor food markets for shopping, some wonderful bakeries and butcher shops up the street, a friendly bar near the fountain, and pretty much of what you might need for daily life nearby. We live in a rented cottage nearby -- in the even more rural part of town.
Like so many villages in Europe, Rognes has an interesting history of having been built, destroyed, and rebuilt over the centuries. Known for its stone and quarries that have been used since human habitation, Rognes was almost abandoned after an earthquake levelled it in the early 1900s. A few old buildings have survived, but it's not the architecture that calls one here. It's the setting that rules in this rural landscape of wine and truffles.
We live in a lovely rented cottage, attached to a larger house that overlooks an expanse of open hills. Our neighbour, Marco Polo, is a friendly Bassett pup. Marco lives with a charming and multi-lingual family that owns this property , named Solar de Provence (see its website).
The remains of an old fortress in Rognes sit atop La Foussa, the big hill you climb to get to it. You can see the famous stones of the region (exported for chateau in Aix and elsewhere). The fortress is also famous for its open "window", known as a spot of deaths by defenestration: the act of throwing a person from a window, a rather infamous habit practiced across regions in European history.
It's taken only a few days to get "lived-in" here, and we're still speaking a very rusty and mangled Franglish, but it feels great just being here. Great light and colours, great air, great baguettes, great wine, great little town market on Wednesdays, great scenery, great sitting out on the wide porch and watching or playing with Marco Polo, great venturing out on our own. Not much, really. But the treasure here is learning little things daily. Learning, via the everyday pleasures of seeing and being here,. Learning to let go of that incessant internal engine that keeps driving us to more, more, and more. Sometimes, it may take going a continent away to manage this.... and hopefully bring it on home!
I've set up a studio spot in the house, but I'm not wanting to paint. Not yet. Not wanting to visit big tourist spots either. It's a series of "nots" that I keep wanting to do. The experience of being able to let go of the usual "musts" and "shoulds" is quite satisfying. I'm not wanting to do anything special right now, except to breathe deeply in this clear and fragrant air, see its lovely light and colours, feel the warm moments, walk open- eyed and slowly through the land, and decide with my dear partner: "So, what shall we do today? It's a gift to be able to do so. And I know it.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of Creative Life: En Route. In the meantime, some of the other articles in this Creative Life news blog may interest you. Check in here. Bon voyage!
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