Les portes de La Rochelle make me want to paint with watercolors.

But first I have to photograph them, because I’m not even CLOSE to ready to have anyone see me attempting a watercolor. Besides, the French are rather private people and would not be likely to appreciate me camped outside their door, no matter how artsy I looked. So instead I took a gazillion photos (as quickly as possible).

 

I love all the colors against the soft buff and cool grey of the stone. Maybe I will actually get out my paints. I’ll let you know. But if you do first, send me a photo!

Postscript: I know I posted all of the above only half an hour ago, but David helped me realize that the visual metaphor pictured above may be too obscure, and a few words may be in order. I’m ending this post with the photo of an open door with something beautiful behind it, because that’s what this whole experience feels like to us. Between the challenges of the logistics and the language barrier, it really did seem sometimes that it would be impossible to take this journey, yet here we are, and it’s amazing. It feels like we’ve stepped through the back of the wardrobe into Narnia — a completely different kind of place in some ways — with all the essentials of life more richly appreciated, because we’re out of our routine: the refreshment of a perfect little garden in the midst of a stone city, the sensory treat of glowing produce piled in abundance at the outdoor markets, the ambiance of cozy little restaurants in tiny side streets, the laughter of children, the delight of a smile shared.

We are profoundly grateful for this opportunity and hope you enjoy sharing a bit of it with us. Better yet, we wish you your own open door with beauty behind it. We’d love to hear all about it. And don’t forget to send photos!

When you travel out of your home country, one of the most challenging tasks is deciphering signs, and some of them are important, like the sign at the cemetery advising when to leave to avoid being locked in overnight. Seriously. Good to know.

And this one:

Don’t touch this. Got it.

And this one:

Even without knowing French, you’d understand this sign if you saw this on the other side of the fence:

He did NOT like having his picture taken.

Some signs are easy to understand:

I bought un nouveau chapeau in this shop, since we’re spending so much time out in the sun. (And because it’s super stylish, let’s be honest.)

Some signs are sort of inspiring, in a vague, literary way:

“Street of the Brave . . . er. . . Certain-Style-of-French-Poetry”?

Some are just slightly beyond my level of French:

I think this means: “Fashion worn by dogs and cats” but I’m not sure about the à portée de part. Glancing in the door, there seem to be lots of posh pet things, but since I have neither dog nor cat, it’s not really something I absolutely need to know.

Some are cheerful:

It doesn’t really explain what kind of food is offered, but at least they seem to be in a good mood. (It says, “The sun shines for everyone Restaurant”)

Some make you go, “Huh?”

So if you stand here . . . what? . . . you’ll make friends?

How about this one? This means pedestrians yield to traffic, right?

But whenever we wait, the cars all stop (well almost all), just barely in time, it’s true, but they stop, and the drivers tend to look a bit irritated that we’re not halfway across already. But there are just enough cars that don’t stop to make us believe the yield sign is actually for us. Wouldn’t that be REALLY good to know?

Some are completely incomprehensible. Even my French tutor doesn’t know what this one means:

Is it saying: “No cars, no bikes, no pedestrians and all you lawbreakers who are going to come this way anyway, go 20 km/hr”? That can’t be it. The road has to be for someone, and lots of us use it all the time. But today I noticed this exact sign, but without the red stripe a block earlier, so now I have a new theory. The first sign with no stripe is saying, “I don’t care if you’re a car, a bike, or a person. Don’t go over 20 km/hr because you’re all sharing this tiny street.”

At the end of the block, with the red-striped sign, I’m going to go with, “All bets are off. Go as fast as you can.” Based on how these little cars scream around bends, I think I’ve got it.

Onward and upward. Here’s to greater understanding wherever you are!

 

This past weekend was a full one  with Easter, and the Saturday happenings in the Vieux Port. Then on Sunday afternoon, our friends Jacky and Pascale picked us up and drove us down to the Festival du cerf-volant et du vent de Châtelaillon-Plage. Châtelaillon is a coastal village just south of La Rochelle boasting a long beautiful beach with a promenade stretching out alongside it.

Not too hard to see that vent could mean wind, but I love the word for kite, cerf-volant, which would literally be something like deer-flying or stag-flying. How great is that? There was even a team of four guys that performed a choreographed ballet pour quatre cerf-volants, with four kites “dancing” in tight formation to music.

But this was not just for kites, it was really a celebration of the wind and all the beautiful things the wind can send aloft or set fluttering. Like these:

And these:

This was another event for all ages:

I’ve never really liked the wind, but this event gave me a new perspective. There were hundreds of people who were enjoying the wind and grateful for it and I found myself full of gratitude too: for the colors and the smiles and the laughter of children, and especially for our friends for inviting us to share this with them. How can you not love anything that makes you look up?

Weekends in La Rochelle everyone heads for the vieux port, where something is sure to be happening. The waterfront cafés are bustling.

The children are entertained.

The students . . . well . . . today they were engaged in the Nautics Games, which involved wearing odd things and jousting with boats:

Since preparing for the battle seemed to take forever (that may have been the low tide’s fault), the sidewalk performers had a captive audience. They’ll do anything to vie for your euros and centimes.

Some are more successful than others at keeping the attention of an audience. We saw a guy yesterday standing with one of those arm-brace single crutches, who would occasionally lift up his crutch and burst into song, singing into the hand grip part as if it were a microphone. There would be a little enthusiastic singing, then some I-can’t-remember-this-part vocalizing, then a little more singing, all offered with a twinkle in his eye as if he were giving us all a little gift. Okay, the music was not fabulous, but he got a lot of smiles, and a rather surprising number of tips. I guess Elizabeth Berg* is right, metaphorically and literally: “It is never about how good your voice is; it is only about feeling the urge to sing, and then having the courage to do it with the voice you are given.”

Sing on!

*See the Quotes page for some newly posted quotes from Elizabeth Berg.