Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

We had a really full day in Arles yesterday.

Unlike most of the towns in the area such as Nimes and Avignon, it doesn’t rely entirely on medieval and Roman remains for its attraction as it also has Van Gogh to play with as well. Another big plus point of the town is that all of the attractions are within walking distance so you can cover all the major sites in a day with ease.

If you’re a keen fan of Van Gogh naturally the only place to eat is in the Cafe de la Nuit, isn’t it? It’s still there and decorated in the same colour scheme, but why not eat in the cafe next door and sit just where he was when he painted the other cafe? It’s quite a busy spot at meal times so if you’re planning on doing that, it’s best to get there early.

Within a few hundred yards of that spot you’ll find the Roman arena which is pretty well preserved. A ticket to that includes entrance to the Roman baths.

Sadly you can’t visit Van Gogh’s house as it was destroyed during the second world war. However, it’s now the Hotel Terminus et Van Gogh so you can stay in exactly the same spot as he did.

We’re definitely planning on going somewhere this evening and as we’re going by car it needs to be within around three or perhaps four hours drive of here.

As of this morning, we have three places in the frame:

Valencia, the front runner from yesterday, has now dropped out as it’s supposed to be raining there tomorrow. No big problem though as we had it pencilled in for later in the year when it gets colder here yet is still quite warm there.

Albi, the former haunt of Toulouse-Lautrec and what looks to be quite a charming little village is also out as the weather is looking a little dodgy there too.

Which leaves Arles looking good. The weather forecast is fine for there and there’s quite a lot to see in the general area too. I’m not sure if we’ll have the time to see it but the Camargue nature reserve is supposed to be really good.

If you value your “spare time” then you should be very careful never to pick up a prospectus from the Open University.

Nobody warned me about it and I started reading one in 2001 and it’s been eating up all my spare time ever since!

The booklet looks innocent enough, but then you start leafing through it and find that it’s just filled with all kinds of courses that sound really interesting. The short courses only take a few months and even a half-credit course only takes a few hours per week. Before you know it, you’ll be filling in the application form for one of them. Just to see what they send, you understand, after all you can pull out of it, can’t you?

You’re only planning on doing the one course, but then about half-way through that one they send you a letter about those that logically follow on from that one along with a little sampler of what the next course is like. All you have to do is to sign at the bottom and return the letter and before you know it, you’re walking along to the Post Office.

It’s the same next year, but by then you’re hooked and looking beyond the current strand of courses. You’re thinking “sure, if I do a couple of courses more I’ll get a degree”. That kind of thinking is fatal: you get another prospectus. Just to have a leaf through it, of course, but it never works out like that.

You think that it’s all over when you’re about to start the final course for your degree, but you’re totally addicted at that point and it’s time to get another fix. What about that other course that you were thinking of originally? Wow, they’ve updated it and it sounds even more interesting now, doesn’t it?

That’s what happened to me. I picked up the Diploma in French three years ago and have just completed the final exam for the Diploma in Spanish. That just leaves one English course and I get a degree in Modern Languages. But I always quite fancied their science courses and will be signing up for the first of those a little after Easter next year.

I think we need to start Open University Annonymous: it’s worse than drinking!

One thing that we hadn’t allowed for was that French style barbeques aim to cook the food French style ie very much undercooked from our point of view.

However, we sort-of assumed that they’d fire up the BBQ in the normal manner with food sizzling on the spit and so on. As usual, we assumed wrong and in fact at tonights BBQ they only had the temperature high enough to merely warm the food rather than actually cook it which, of course, means that we couldn’t cook it as thoroughly as we’d be happy with.

Sit down BBQ meals seem a little odd too.

Oh well, another custom that the French have sort-of taken up.

Whilst we had loads of housebuyers staying with us in 2004 and 2005, 2006 saw none of them at all.

Who knows why? The UK interest rates weren’t much higher than they were the year before nor did there seem to be a big difference in the UK house prices.

It’s the same this year too ie no big difference. Yet, we’re just into the main house-hunting season (usually October to March) and already we’ve had three separate house-buying families call in with us. Whether this is the sign of a major buying spree is a good question but at least it’s a sign of the start of a movement in the French market.