An ongoing series about uprooting our lives in America and moving to France. For what's happened before, see previous Jours of Our Lives entries here.
WE LEFT COLLIOURE feeling like fools. We did manage to have lunch in Perpignan, which was a miracle. With our impeccable timing, we usually arrive at a restaurant right after they’ve stopped serving the midday meal.
Today we were off to the Camargue. On our six-week trip to France a few years back I’d wanted to stop there but we couldn’t fit it in. Now we were making a special visit, even though the Camargue had nothing whatsoever to do with Monsieur Matisse. It was, at least, on the way to more Matisse country—Cassis, St. Tropez, and Nice.
Image by Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr
Driving along La Grand Motte was like driving the Gulf Coast of Florida—heavy traffic, high rise hotels, azure oceans and skies. We knew we’d crossed over and were in French cowboy country when we started seeing one stable after another, with the white Camargue horses pacing their corrals, or saddled up with people taking trail rides. These horses have an Arabian look about them, and the Camargue resembles the American plains—wide, flat, and dusty, though the French West has one thing its American counterpart does not have, and that is tons and tons of salt. (Not to mention the flamingoes.)