Skip to main content

De Montpellier à Bayonne

Image
By

 [25mar22] De Montpellier à Bayonne:

Easy morning, clean up the apartment,


walk the suitcases to Place de la Comédie, take Tramway one stop to the train station, get breakfast (regional specialties), train first class car #2 to Montpellier, changing trains is Toulouse.  Second class is 2X2 seating while first-class is 2x1 seating with a bit more legroom and slightly nicer seats, but otherwise not much different.  Fortunately these intercités trains have good wi-fi. 

Arrival at Toulouse is a bit delayed; Jeff runs to the ObjetsTrouvés office seeking his eyeglasses.  Fortunately the office is open, the guy helpful; he shows me his box of found eyeglasses.  Mine are not there.  Disappointing, yet it's somewhat reassuring to know for sure that they are truly lost.  I run back to Track #3, where our next train is boarding—we (and others) struggle to identify car #13.  Even other passengers cannot find #13.  Eventually I ask a worker, who tells me the passage through the train cars is closed, just take any available seat in the first-class section, no problem.  That worker later turns out to be the conductor himself, who reassures us: just stay in these seats, no problem.  We are seated across from an elderly gentleman traveling from Toulouse to Bayonne to visit his grandchildren.  


  Fortunately our seats are on the south side of the train, with beautiful views of the Pyrenees and the River Adour, though the higher peaks are shrouded in clouds.  Lourdes is particularly beautiful, and I note that this is the only stop where the announcements are also in English and Spanish!  We pass through the town of Pau, which our companion assures us is beautiful and home to lots of Englishmen.  




Bayonne, to meet Dominique and Maxime Michel: they drive us back to their home in Hasparren, 40 minutes via A63, up a steep hill overlooking the town.  They purchased the house over ten years ago and are still in the midst of total renovation.  We particularly like the light-up bathroom mirror, and the shower controls.  We were hosted in their downstairs independent studio apartment, as the upstairs bedrooms are under renovation now.  

Maxime is the proud chef.  He prepared several gourmet full meals.  Tonight a simpler chopped-veal in a Basque sauce, with of course an earlier entrée, salad, then cheese board and then his own Tarte Tatin apple pie with ice cream.  Fantastique!  Our arrival was fêted with a feast (ed.note the etymological liaison between fête and feast), finally ending at 10pm.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Riding the Bus often

By
From 201010 Saudi scenes It is ironic that this land of cheap gasoline has so much group transport -- buses. From 201010 Saudi scenes Our housing compound has a Toyota-Coaster bus that takes some to/from school (we usually go earlier and return later, on a similar bus that the school provides). Driver Yahya takes residents on the 90-minute trip down to the Big City shopping every Thursday morning. The above picture shows our group one Thursday, usually going to Ikea or the new Lulu's Hypermarket , or the Dhahran Mall. Coleman rides a different bus every day to and from school -- usually 100 minutes there, 80 minutes back.  His bus is evidently an old tourist bus, usually comfortable but a bit dusty.  The air-conditioning usually works too well.  I've ridden it with him several times, to attend business meetings at the district office. From 201010 Saudi scenes There he is, at 5:45am every morning, at the start of the bus run. Fortunately only about 20 stu...
2 comments
Read more

String Quartet Broken String

By
  We attended a marvelous concert last night, at the Porto Museum of Casa do Infante , a beautifully-renovated 1325 building near the river.  At one point it served as a customs house.  The government sponsors Portuguese musicians to return from other European orchestras to perform in their homeland.  We heard and saw this group play a traditional piece – Haydn string quartet Opus 20 #2.  Then the modern Benjamin Britten's Three Divertimenti – the stunning last movement of which they performed as an encore.  They performed (and I recorded) the Shostakovich Quartet #9, during which the first-violinist broke a string (it features several strongly-plucked chords!) and had to retreat&repeat! 
Post a Comment
Read more

Música Tunas e Boémia

By
  We attended an unusual concert last night:  Música Tunas e Boémia (bands and parties) University student folk-music groups — big groups of 40 and more each!  put on a great show of singing, playing, flag-twirling, tambourine-swinging, all at the major (private) concert hall.  The most unusual thing about it was that nobody used any electronic device (except for microphone amplification)—no electric guitar or keyboard, no big drum set…every instrument and prop was hand-held.  The singing was quite good, given the effort to synchronize 40 voices.  
Post a Comment
Read more