Rainbows

Not much chance of a rainbow lately since there has been very little sun! Terribly hot in France and Italy these days...guess we have to prefer the West Coast chill to that option.

"Blockhead" sculpture

From a sculpture garden in Nice

Views from our villa

Before we left Carqueiranne I took some photos of various views from rooms in our villa.


View from my studio into the backyard.


View from the living room. Our very leafy wisteria....wonderful shade and starting to need it as we left.


View from our guestroom.


View from our bedroom.

And more pines...

Pines, Pines, Pines

The great thing about digital photography is that you can take loads of pictures and it doesn't cost anything. I probably took a couple of hundred pictures of these pines and it will be great to have them on the laptop so I can paint from them. I'm going to post some of these today and on the next post.

Pins Penches Restaurant

We had two superb meals at the "Pins Penches ("Leaning Pines") Restaurant" while in the south of France. The restaurant is located on a fabulous estate on the water with loads of these wonderful "pins parasols" or "umbrella pines".


Jim petting the house cat.



Jim and I wandering the grounds after lunch.


And some pictures of the pines on the property:

Free Flickr Pro Accounts

Reading over my email when I was in France I realize I have two free Flickr Pro Accounts to give away to people since I was among the first wave of people to get into Flickr. This is a photo sharing site. If anyone reading this blog knows about Flickr and would like an account just give me an email. First come, first served.

As the world turns...

Travel and talking to people who travel or live in other places is always interesting because of the various perspectives it brings.

It was interesting being in France when the vote on the EU constitution was taken. Many of the French were very concerned about losing their wide ranging social benefits and more relaxed way of life. One fellow being interviewed said something like this:

"The English and the Americans work like dogs...we don't want to be like that. I want to go home and drink wine with my wife, dine, go to the theatre, go on long holidays...no, no, we don't want to work like dogs. Life wouldn't be worth living."

The French definitely have a point.

The Dutch also voted no and they were very concerned about the influx country of people, especially Muslims, who don't understand and accept their "free" way of life. They have created a video that depicts the special hallmarks of Dutch society that all potential immigrants must watch....footage of people smoking up in pot cafés, nude beaches etc. Except that the Muslims were outraged by the nudity so they actually made a special Muslim versiion without the nudity. Seems to be a bit of a disconnect there!

And this from a friend who lives in Philadelphia now. The city wanted to pass a bylaw that limited gun buying to one gun, per person, per month. The bylaw was voted down. My goodness, what on earth do people do with all these guns?

And the last of the paintings done this year in France

As I mentioned I really got into tulips since they are so important to Carqueiranne's economy. Again, running out of paint made some choices of colour for me.


"Red Tulips in blue vase"



"Yellow Tulips in red vase"



"White tulips in white vase"

And more.....

"Promenade des Anglais, Nice"....supposed to be from the balcony of the Hotel Suisse but perspective got a bit weird...will have to try to do this again because the view is wonderful.



"Sunflowers with orange background"....sunflowers starting appearing in the markets so decided to give it a go...paint colour choice more to do with running out of paint than deliberate choice...



"Sunflowers with blue background"...I like these ones better.

And more paintings....

"Toulon Bistro"...we loved this little bisto in Toulon amongst very old olive trees. The name "La Feuille de Chou" literally means "cabbage leaf" but is referring to what the pages were called in newspapers in bygone days. The inside of the restaurant has lots of old newspaper pages framed.



"Carqueiranne Village Square"...the city hall with the flags of the European Union, France, and the village of Carqueiranne (red and yellow to represent tulips). Notice the village crest also has tulips and a plow. And our wonderful little bakery that we and all our guests loved.



"Carqueiranne Market"...I certainly miss this Thursday morning ritual! The black dog was a wonderful old Newfoundland dog that was always there lying in the sun....couldn't paint him that way but he had to be in there somehow.



"Carqueiranne Villa"...we enjoyed living there so much...the pool, the wisteria in bloom, Robin the cat, the Matisse print...



"Villa Garden"...it was such a pleasure to look out at the pool, the palms, the olive trees, orange tree, mimosa, etc.
(Robin leaving in a huff after not getting special pate....the only thing he seemed to eat!)

More paintings...

I really enjoy having this record of our time in France.


"St. Tropez"..I love the campanile and tower.



"Mourillon Beach in Toulon"...there was a race on like this one day and I was struck by the single colour spinnaker sails...and there really was a black one!



"Le Pradet Library"...this is where we had the free internet this year thanks to the Mayor. We loved the mural on the wall and actually the boat was a real one mounted on. When I was doing my internet thing I looked out onto the most magnificent pines.



"Pines, Mimosas, Palms"...these wonderful pines again and of course the fabulous mimosas that welcome us in February.



"La Petanque"...I was inspired by all the murals on the walls in Le Pradet...this one didn't actually exist but I wanted to do something with pastis and petanque.

Paintings

I'll spend the next few posts uploading the 22 paintings I did while in Carqueiranne.
All are 11 x 14 acrylic on paper....easy to carry and fit into my standard frames and mats so I can interchange them.

I hesitated to paint tulips since it doesn't quite seem like the south of France but our little village and area is famous for its tulips and they are really wonderful. We passed these spectacular fields of tulips every day in Feb and most of March.


Tulip fields in Carqueiranne.


Then after the tulips these fabulous fields of poppies were everywhere!






We have been in the south of France when the lavender was out but not this time...I still felt I had to do something with lavender since I am constantly reminded of it everywhere in France with various products. Turned out a bit abstract but I rather like it.

Vence, Matisse, and D.H.

The day before we left we were in Vence which is a charming hillside village close to Nice and is the site of the Chapel of the Holy Rosary that Matisse decorated and felt was one of his finest achievements. As always with Matisse, the simplicity and charm are outstanding. I couldn't take pictures of the inside but I have one of the roof and his campanile....lovely, I lthink.
In another church in Vence I did sneak a picture of a sculpture called Virgin Mary 2000...I love the lines. We visited the cemetary where D.H. Lawrence was buried for 5 years...he died here from T.B. and took a picure of the plaque.

Also had a fabulous lunch in Vence...roast beef in pastry with a wonderful mushroom sauce.

Home Sweet Home

It was great to be back home, even enjoyed the rain and typical west coast weather in Vancouver. By the time we reached Victoria it was sunny. Cooler than we've been used to but very nice. Our house was in super shape when we arrived and Kate and Jean who had been house sitting this past month or so left us a wonderful bowl of fruit in beautiful bowl by billie byjornert of "Concretedesign" (woman located on Cadboro Bay Rd who did the tables for Pure Vanilla). It's just perfect as the pale pink tones and material makes it seem like a piece of the provencale houses we love so much. Thank you so much!

All flights were on time although we had problems of some sort every step of the way. Almost missed our plane from Nice because of a taxi mixup....a hotel staffer was going to rush us there in the end but the taxi did finally arrive. Problems again with my electronic ticket but they did manage to create a boarding pass in Frankfurt and just managed to get a seat as they were way overbooked and people with reserved seats from months ago were on standby...used to be impressed with Lufthanza but no more. One bag missing in Vancouver so dealing with that meant almost missing the plane to Victoria. but arrived in the end and delighted to see the Curlings at the airport. We celebrated our return with a pastis....of course!

It was rather sad leaving our little village of Carquieranne since we have spent about 8 months there in the last three years it almost seems like home. We really enjoyed our three days in Nice and got up to Vence on the public bus for the equivalent of less than 2 dollars. It's great....you can go anywhere in the Alpes Maritimes for a local bus fare....Cannes, Grasse, and loads of other places.

Checked the status of our lost bag online and seems it has been located and they are waiting for the airline to verify.
Would have been sorry to lose it as all my paintbrushes, easel, and most of our souvenirs were in that one.

Is this really the last week here?

It is hard to believe we'll be leaving this wonderful little village we've come to love so much on Saturday, then Nice for three days, then home.

We had a super meal Friday at this fabulous restaurant on an estate overlooking a great view of pines and ocean called Les Pins Penches. This was our anniversary celebration and what a perfect place to be. We had been there with the Curlings on a rainy day and that daywere seated in the solariam with the best view...and it was actually the non smoking section. Generally, if they even have them, you are relegated to the worst part of the restaurant. We all really enjoyed the meal and it was a good way to spend a rainy afternoon. This time it was a beautiful day and we were out on the terasse...better than perfect.

Then, Saturday, I started to develop some ghastly mouth and throat infection that was diagnosed as 'champignon' here...Jim thinks it might be called 'thrush' at home.
A reaction from the antibiotics I took a month ago. I hope no one has had the experience. I won't go into the gory details but I'm pretty much on a diet of water, milk, scrambled egges and vanilla ice cream...everything else feels like eating raser blades. Oh yes...supplemented by some nasty disinfectant mouth wash I have to take 4 times a day and some other medicine.

Now I would like to think my friends reading this would be crying crododile tears on hearing this but I suspect that most will be having a quiet little laugh and SOME will be splitting a gut with laughter...and I know who you are and I won't forget it...A.B., P.B. and D.C.!

I can see the humour of spending my last days in France like this....makes a better story than another boring week of la gourmandise but I do hope this will improve so that I can at least enjoy one last experience of that wonderful crusty bagette that no where in the world seems to be able to replicate.

I see Richard has got some more pictures up...Don and Elaine and Jim and I in front of Notre Dame and a couple of paintings. I've done 21 and have now packed up my studio. I think we're actually going to manage to fit everything in our suitcases.

Quel orage!

We had quite the storm yesterday and the pool went up almost two inches and our local little creek which had previously been a trickle was running very noisily this morning so I guess that will help their dry spell somewhat. There was thunder and lightning for about 8 hours...read this morning that an adolescent was struck by lightning and badly burned. Luckily an ambulance was passing by.

Elaine phoned this morning to wish us 'Happy Anniversay' (37 yrs) and give us the surprising good news of the NDP doing very well in the election....wow!

Last Saturday Roger and Jacqueline (Monique's mom) came for lunch and we had a great visit with them. We started with a super bottle of Champagne that they brought for us...I do love the way the French do things. It was so nice to see them and we had lots of good laughs.

On Sunday we went to Sanary to meet a fellow who is doing an honour's essay on 'Huxley in Sanary' (Jim met him at the conference he gave on Huxley's letters).
He had lots of interesting info and showed us exactly where the Huxleys lived when in Sanary (house now replaced). We had found the area but didn't know the exact property. Three years ago a plaque was put up so now people can find it quite easily. We were looking about 10 years ago. We went for lunch at the restaurant on the beach (a 'pieds dans l'eau' 'feet in the water restaurant'...I love that term!)
and overlooked where they went swimming often in the nude...little too busy for that now.

Been swimming most days since May 1...pool 72 to 74 but so warm outside it's just perfect now. Saw my first sunflowers at the market so did a couple of paintings.

Pictures

I see Richard has got some more pictures up...these are mainly of Bandol and especially for Monique! BTW, Monique's mother and Roger are coming for lunch tomorow and we're really looking forward to their visit.

#1 Bandol...I think this is Monique's favourite place for coquillages (shellfish, oysters, etc)

#2 Bandol

#3 Bandol

#4 Interior of the 400 yr old house of our landlords...beam is original but not supporting anything now.

#5 Painting of our back garden with Robin leaving in disgust at us not providing him with the treats he wants.

#6 Fern's magnificent watercolours of west coast scenes...I get pleasure looking at them everyday and they have pride of place on top of our fireplace.

#7 This painting is sideways but supposed to be the view from the Hotel Suisse of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice.

#8 Jim and one of these little motorized bikes he has dreams of tootling around on.

#9 and 10 Bandol