So we decided another day here would be just right, explore and wander and shop for some stuff and just experience the place a bit.
And we did just that. We walked to the old town, St. Nicholas tower, and had Petit Dejeuner there (breakfast, to you colonials) of croissants and baguette and butter and jam and orange juice and coffee. Just right, energy to explore with.
Then we wandered about in the old, old part of town where a lighthouse still stands that was in use in the 15th century. Wandered through old cobbled street, not a straight line anywhere, all the paths carved out by the wandering dogs or cats or goats I suppose. So many restaurants and shops and fish stores and so much else, all with stone fronts, all in long rows, all in use far longer than Vancouver was anything but an Indian village.
The city was walled on the water side, to discourage invasion I suppose. Pretty forbidding in appearance but excellent raw material for photographs with all the towers and lighthouses and the multicolored city beyond. We took, oh I don't know, maybe a thousand pictures. Each. Well, perhaps I exagerate a bit but we took a bunch. Of which about 5 may be keepers, but you never know which ones when you are taking them.
The leather pants of yesterday weren't unique, they are all over the town. Mostly worn by women (thats nice) and with high leather boots. But it is January here, and cool, so maybe there's a practical side to it.
A couple of sidebars to this story ... The music we hear in the stores is mostly English, ranging from the Beatles to the Beach Boys to '80's rock and roll. Very little in French, no rap music, just stuff from when I was young. Weird, like they were stuck in a time warp. Not that I mind. A Brit expat that we ran into a couple of days ago told us a story about that. Seems that there is a French Language policy here too, just like in Quebec. The French are very concerned about their language becoming redundant, replaced by English as the language of commerce and of choice for the younger generation. So, they require operations like radio stations to maintain the content of songs played in English to be a maximum value of so many minutes per day. The ever-practical French comply, of course, but they play the French stuff in the very early morning hours and the English (or American) songs during prime time. That's called living up to the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law, but that's people and there's nothing else they can do about it.
Our lack of French is becoming less a problem. We shopped in a department store today, bought a hair dryer for Jan and a coffee maker so we can have coffee on the road. Thanks for the thoughtfulness of that big Thermos, Jonathan. And we bought groceries and coffee, etc, and had no problem doing it. Lots of pointing, and waving of hands to illustrate drying hair (while blowing air, as you could imagine) and, don't laugh, it got the job done without a word of conversation understood between us. We have learned to adapt, as the human animal has done since dirt was new. And even us old goats can do it. Leanne and David and Tara and Jonathan adapt without even realizing it, and they enjoy it, good for them. We wondered about us, but we can do it too.
Tomorrow, south again we think. Maybe Bordeaux, but we're re-thinking that. What is it to us except wine, and we can buy that anywhere. Yes, anywhere. They sell wine by the bottle in the fueling stations along the motorways here. It's more expensive of course, as convenience stores are anywhere, but you can buy it if you have to have it. Scary thought isn't it. On the topic of truckers, and their trucks, there are a few differences between here and what we have seen in North America. The truck tires here are very fat, not the narrow ones of home. And they tend to have three axles on the trailers and a single rear axle on the tractor. But these axles have only one fat tire per side, not two like at home. So some monster trailer with 3 axles will actually only have six trailer tires, rather than the eight tires on two axles at home. Better? Worse? Don't know, except the speed limits on the roads we have travelled lately is 130 Km/Hr and I like to think that the rig that I am passing is well protected against blowouts. Maybe I worry too much. Also, in North America the exhaust stacks of the highway rigs come out the back of the cab from the engine and then go way up to above the cab and the exhaust vents out up above the trailer. Not here, the exhaust stack comes out the left side of the rig down low, just in front of the tractor's rear wheel. Better? Worse? Don't know, don't care, its just different.
And the truckers, just to finish off this weird thought at this late hour, yikes are they a scary lot. In North America, the truck drivers tend to be the modern day cowboys, the loners, preferring the company of their big rigs to the rest of society like the cowboys of old preferred their horses. Romanticised, perhaps, but that's how I always saw them. I always wanted to be a truck driver when I grew up. Maybe I still will be, when I grow up. But here, holy cats!!, these guys are really scary, they all look like muslim extremists ready to blow up the world. Any generalization is wrong (see the humor in that?) but the ones we have seen at the truck stops are not the long and lankey 'cowboys' but short and dark and dirty guys who walk about glaring from red-rimmed eyes. Hey, don't yell at me about that! I have to drive next to them every day, and it makes me nervous sometimes. Though, so far, to give them their due, I have seen nothing to indicate a lack of courtesy or capability in their driving. I just make this stuff up to entertain myself.
So, we don't know what tomorrow will bring. We'll let the hood ornament decide, as Vern would say.
