Day 8 Wed. Oct. 22, 2008
Ted and I left at Noon:10 today which is a bit late to accomplish the agenda that I had envisioned.
It was a rainy day. One could say poury day.
I wanted to go to the Monkey Zoo.Now, this was not your typical monkey zoo
It was one where you could actually go in and cavort with orangutans, gorillas, spider monkeys, and chimps.
You were allowed, no ENCOURAGED, to touch them or so they said in their literature.
Could any encounter be more fascinating?
But les Heures d’Ouvertures would make seeing anything else impossible.
Ange, (now Dr. Physicist) said “Mom, Have you never seen Outbreak. What are you nuts?”
“Non, but they say I’m bananas. Heeeheee. - That's a joke. Don’t you get it, Ange, I’m just what the monkeys ordered!”
But she didn’t laugh, she didn’t even snicker. I guess I will have to go back and watch Outbreak again so I’m not tempted to go the next time I am on route to Avignon or Aix en Provence.
Anyway, it wasn’t meant to be.
In fact, not much was meant to be today except traveling in the car or taking in a few museums. The rest of the earth was socked in with fog, rain, and sometimes a sky as dark as night. Not like the last time I was in Marseille.
Not a great day to see the fabulous fountains of Aix, or walk the Papal Grounds of Avignon.Did you know there used to be two Popes? One in the Vatican in Italy (Rome) and one in Avignon.
There are some marvelous monuments, museums and of the course, the famous Pont which you can be “sur” car l’on y danse (People dance there.) Okay, mainly TOURISTS dance there, but it's still a sight to see.
But not today. You would be lucky to find the city through the torrential downpours , let alone dance on “Le Pont d’Avignon” without falling off.
We thought things might clear up, so we took the fast route, the A51 péage which cost 9 Euros. All I had was a 20 Euro bill, so Ted offered it up and the woman attendant gave us 11 one Euro coin pieces in return. Those coins can get a bit heavy and are a devil to dig out when you want to pay for something. I was a bit perturbed but stuck them in my now bulging coin purse. (This seemingly mundane bit of info will be shown to have meaning later).We looked at our Weird Europe Book. (Yes there is such a book, and it has the Monkey Zoo and about 200 other weirdo things to do for those who have been to France 35 times previously and want a look at the under-belly of the country. You can borrow the book if you are that sort of traveler.)
In "The Book", just north of Marseille, is listed La Maison de Nostradamus. While the history of Michel de Nostre Dame is beyond the bounds that even I will drag you through (despite being extremely interesting), that was our chosen destination - “The House of Nostradamus”, which we chose from "The Weird Book.”
It was a good choice.Maison de Nostradamus
Rue Nostradamus - 13300 SALON DE PROVENCE (France)
Phone : + 33(0)4 90 56 64 31 - Fax : + 33(0)4.90.56.33.45
http://www.avignon-et-provence.com/museums/nostradamus-museum-provence/
We drove into the city of Salon de Provence and Halette directed us to Nostradamus' house. Unfortunately, we were unable to get there “her way” as some streets she indicated were one ways (the wrong way) and others had been converted to Pedestrian walk ways.
Now, Ted and I have been known to drive on pedestrian walkways when there are no “other choices”. But just today, we were punished by doing so, driving ourselves into a corner that even with little Grey Ghost was a bitch to turn around when we ran into the dead-end.
I have alluded to the fact that I am a lucky person. Not far from our intended destination (as the crow flies), we found one of the only two parking spots in the city that were “free” for 10 minutes. After those 10 minutes then…. well then on the stroke of the last second of the 10th minute…. I don’t know perhaps the parking place is jettisoned to the neighboring Gendarmes with car in tow. I had no idea what would be the penalty for parking there longer but on such a rainy day, we decided to take the chance.
We had umbrellas, but just when I opened the door to get them out of the trunk, the rain stopped completely. This was the first time that there was a lull in the downpour all day. Hmmmm. Let’s take another chance and not lug those stupid umbrellas as they get to be quite bulky with a jacket, camera case, purse, and hat.We found our way down the back streets and after asking a few locals, located the house and museum.
Just as we walked in the door, the sky opened up and let the held back floods down in a splooch and then continued to pour. It was actually quite nice as a background to the already mystifying, and general daunting atmosphere of the multi-leveled museum.
"Situated in the old center of the the town of Salon de Provence, at the foot of the Château de l'Empéri, the Nostradamus Museum is built up around this enigmatic figure (Michel De Nostre Dame i.e. Nostradamus) who examined the past, the present... and the future up until 3797 (!)"
It was a self guided tour with strange voices emitted from hidden acoustic systems and bizarre lighting that came on, changed colors, and highlighted speakers, in the form of figures - some made of wax, others friezes. The rain, lightening, thunder and pounding added much. In fact, I would strongly recommend a visit during a thunderstorm if possible.
I have CD of the visit and a brochure of the visit. Well, worth it, both in value (it was like.. maybe… 8 Euros each with a Senior Discount – Ask for one if you are close to that category cuz’ you don’t get one if you don’t ask. Probably free to students but you have to have a student ID to prove your status.)
The visit was well worth the drive and the walk.
I dreaded what was to come next. We had left the umbrellas in the car. I envisioned us running over the slippery clay encrusted cobblestones, with me, the Klutz, skidding and falling, and then all broken and bruised; arrive to witness a missing car, or one that had a nasty ticket on it.
But, did I mention I was a lucky person? We took our purchase and got another plastic bag and ventured outside. Upon my first step out, the rain mysteriously again stopped cold, not even a misting.
We carefully walked to the car (which was still in its initial position) and were greeted with a smiling Grey Ghost with neither a ticket on her windshield nor any "club" on her wheel. We got in, started her up, and then the sky opened up and let the held back floods down in a splooch and then returned to pouring. I couldn’t believe it. What luck!
Do you know the term Deus ex Machina?
A deus ex machina ( lat. IPA: ['de us eks 'ma:k'ina] literally "god from the machine") is an ironic plot device in which a surprising or unexpected event occurs in a story's plot, suddenly and completely resolving (in an improbably fashion) an otherwise unsolvable conflict.
I am going to write a whole book on my life time of solutions via Deus ex Machina.
Here’s a short summary of the story line.
You get yourself out on a limb, it can be a small limb or a large one, and as you feel the branch beginning to give, God swoops down and gives you a hand.
An example: A very poor man has done everything he can to provide food for his family and medicine for his ailing wife. Just as he feels there are no more avenues to try, he finds a winning lottery ticket on a toilet seat in Walmart and all of his problems are magically solved.
Now that is a big limb example.
Most of my Deus ex Machina have been small limb solutions. I get handed just the thing I need by God, or luck, or whomever you attribute such things coming from. My percentage of DeM is extraordinarily - way out of proportionately large for the average person. I’m probably on the third, no fourth standard deviation on the favorable side of the bell curve (Gaussian distribution).
But, I don’t win the lottery. Why? Good question… I don’t think I’m supposed to win the lottery. That apparently would be bad luck. I’m supposed to come to fame and fortune (if it's meant to happen) on my own, I guess.
Speaking of luck, then, four or five other DeM solved our problems today (small limb DeM s).Returning to our nest (Jausiers), as we rounded a bend in a village, a small car gave us the “lights”, you know- like- flashed us.
No, not that kind of flashing.
Ted said, “It’s raining out. I have my lights on. I should have my lights on. They are not on High. So what’s the story?” Next came a truck. He too flashed us. “What is with these French? How can they tell we are foreigners?” I don’t have a clue, I responded.
As we parted from the village, so did the clouds and the rain.
Now a relatively clear moment in the day, we sped up to the speed limit, which was 90 kph.
We were still scratching our heads when we saw it just over the next hill.
It was a car in the ditch.
The rain had stopped and clouds faded, but our windshield was quite foggy. Still through it we were able to see an figure in the road right in front of us. It was the car's owner.
It was a woman, standing nearly in the middle of the road. “What an idiot” I yelled.
We could easily have hit her, not seeing her until too late.
I realized she wasn’t in the middle of the road for kicks.
She had prevented us from going too fast and skidding into the huge telephone pole that she had knocked down and was now straddling the road.
We still had to do some nervous driving to avoid the lines that lay on the road hanging off the staggering pole. This woman was out there risking her life so others wouldn’t kill themselves.
I am not sure where we would be today had she not been brave enough to be target and get us to nearly stop.
We realized that the reason that the car and truck in the last town had flashed us was to warn us of the impending danger. We were about to stop and help when we saw the approaching fire truck and police wagon. DeM
More DeM s
1) Remember I talked about being put out by getting the 11 Euros coins in change? Well, there was a purpose for these coins.
When we came to the A51 péage going back (the same way we came), now the price on the sign on the Toll Booth was 11 Euros (not the 9 Euros we paid that morning).
There were no lanes with real human beings. So we picked an automated stall.
There were no lanes with real human beings. We had already tried our credit card with no “puce/flea” on a péage stall previously and we knew that our credit card was not going to get us through.
There were no lanes with real human beings. The cars in back of us were honking and arming (not with weapons- but doing the Bras D'honeur [The full hand finger. ya know])
Furthermore, that far into the line, there ain’t no backing. Besides, now there were about 50 Frenchies honking and making hand signals and cacophony of various styles.
The machine said it took bills, and we tried stuffing 10s or 20s in any and all of it orifices, but it wouldn’t take them, any of them, in any hole.
Then I remembered the coins and simultaneously saw the coin slot. I whipped out the bulging coin purse and started handing the one Euro pieces to Ted. The machine was happy and ate every last oner I had, in fact, just the number that the woman attendant had “foisted” upon me that very morning. D e M. Thank you God.
There were other DeM s that day....
2) When we stopped for a potty break earlier in the day, I saw a nice plasticized map of France with some detail.
On a whim, I bought it.
After we got off the A51, I touched in (you don’t type on a GPS, ya know) Jausiers and Halette was given the reins. However, also on a whim, I checked what routes she was selecting to get us there.
Sometimes, I think Halette is actually laughing at us, picking routes that would be
“memorable” instead of direct. But now she couldn’t be so smug because I had a map to see what her plans were.I faked her out and told her we were also going to a number of other locations that were on roads that looked bigger or more direct than her choices.
This worked great.
She did what she was told and we got home not having left parts of ourselves on the sides of roads or spent the night with the cows. This wouldn’t have been the case if I hadn’t bought the map for some ungodly, (no strike that), some Godly reason. DeM
3) This DeM shouldn't qualify as such. It is sort of a verifying DeM.
We have gone for days at an RCI resort with a kitchen but have found no food stores open that were close enough to home to get the food in the Frigo in time for it not to rot. We were very "lucky" to find open a day or so ago along this same route, at this same time of the day -just the store we needed, when we really needed it.
Tonight we just wanted a bottle of wine to go with our provisions. I guess wine is not reason enough for God to open a grocery store for us. So all places (including the one we found previously,) did not exist or were not open by DeM.
Which makes more clear (at least to me,) that finding the open store when it was crucial was in fact a DeM.
4) Finally, we got home and had no wine AND no dessert.
Dessert apparently IS on God’s list. I noticed that there was a tree with some sort of fruit hanging off of it in our “back yard”. I am sure it wasn’t there for OUR picking but hey, in a week or so, the fruit would all fall off as the nights were 0 degrees Celsius and that fruit wouldn’t be good for anything soon anyway.
It was a simple process. Just shake, catch, and run. Ted used a stick – it was quicker and there was more running time. The "forbidden fruit?" Apples, of course.
They were the best apples that I have eaten in my whole life.
Nobody caught us and we didn’t get shot. DeM
Other than the telephone pole mishap, I’m sure these may seem like very small limbs (limbs you are out on due to problems that need a solution) and in these cases I would agree.
But these small limb DeMs still do not cease to amaze me.
It seems truly as though I can mentally or actually verbally “order” something, and it magically appears before me.
It happens to me ALL the time. Maybe it happens a lot to others too and they just don’t notice. Whatever it is, luck, God’s help, or DeM, I got a lot of it. Thank you, "(The) Force".
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