Saturday, October 25, 2008

Saorge 3- vignettes of life in a small village





























They are no different than us, I have a water hose in my front yard, but my front door is not so meticulously adorned. This scene and so many others makes me so wistful. I long for the day when I can slow down but with the way the economy is going, that day seems so far away. Anyway I have this trip and many others to console myself with.







A view of Saorge from the back end and from higher up. High up in the hills behind Saorge sits a Franciscan church and monastery. We heard rustling inside the church compound. There was another group visiting inside and I guess they lock the doors when they are busy. Then they opened the door to let those visitors out and asked if we would like to visit. We paid the entry fee and was brought to see the church. She said when we finished to go get her so she can unlock the door to the cloister and also the garden. It is a very beautiful church, the cloisters were beautiful too. No sun has ever entered the room, so the frescoes were still brilliantly colorful as in the day it was first painted. These days they rent out rooms to visiting writers, people who need a quiet place to write. The garden is still being gardened as in its original days when the monks grew their own food and was self sufficient. They set up this elaborate irrigation system and grew enough food for themselves and for the villagers. These days they hired a professional gardener to keep the garden going as a show piece.


















The market street of Saorge, there is a kind of general store run by this nice French guy.










A slice of life in a small village in France. It's scenes like this that is so evocative. That is the reason I visit Europe. Even as I write this, I'm investigating on other remote places to go to. I'm doing research on Romania and the more I read about it, the more interested I am....











A plum tart.....












Sophie went inside the store and took some cute photos of it. I don't have her pictures yet. This is a cute place, sometimes I'm tired of going to the supermarkets here. It's the same old same old stuff.













There's nothing like an afternoon, roaming in the narrow streets of remote French villages. How about a vacation like this? I can do this forever.














This trip would include a lot more little villages in various corners of France. We started our trip in Rome, took the train up the coast into the French/Italian border, hug the coast, go to the French/Spanish border and then headed into Barcelona, flew from Barcelona to London before heading home. I like to scramble my itinerary and try to include as many cute and quaint places as I can before I'm truly satisfied and ready to come home.















1 comment:

paintandink said...

Hello! These are enchanting photos.

I found you through Paris Breakfasts... I quoted a comment you made in my blog entry today and thought you might like to know:

http://iamradiogirl.blogspot.com/2008/10/mapping-story-of-united-states.html