Here I sit for our first morning on the IKEA chair at the
IKEA table. The living area behind me is
furnished with the same IKEA futon that sits in our third bedroom slash my
office along with a chair identical to the two in our living room. The little coffee table and small dresser are
IKEA. The kitchen is outfitted with IKEA
cutlery, cups, glasses, dishes, pots and pans and knives. The beds are IKEA and all the accompanying
furnishings are IKEA. We’re living comfortably
in an IKEA showroom.
The television is a smallish but nice flat-screen LG—an
enormous improvement over the old box in Lagnes that hurt Cindy’s eyes. There are no English stations, so we will be
forced to wean ourselves from Inspecteur Poirot. However, our French will be greatly improved
by the end of the trip.
Cork tree |
View from apartment |
Out the sliding glass doors is a grassy lawn sloping past a
lighted path, towering cork trees, an edge of small shrubs and an almost
invisible fence with the 17th and 18th fairways beyond. It’s off-season here, so the view is further
empty of neighbors and the pool is drained.
Most of the other apartments appear to be empty and closed with few
exceptions here and there. We’ve arrived
in the first week of a school holiday at the end of which, there will probably
be even fewer apartments occupied. We
arrived yesterday on a bank holiday, and there were many people scattered about
on bicycles, walking, running. Many dogs
out for a stroll with their owners all bundled up as the day was damp and
cold.
17th hole |
Today the sky is blue, the fairway
and the tops of the trees are bathed in sunlight and it promises to be a
wonderful day.
Approach to beach |
We’ll explore the area by camera, car and foot, seeking out
the market that was closed yesterday making it difficult to settle in
entirely. By day’s end, however, we’ll
have it down pat. We’ve figured out the
t.v., the heaters, the dishwasher. We’ve
hunted down the closest bar/restaurant along, aptly enough, Avenue L’Ocean, which
leads to the town beach, the nearby local surfing towns (not that we’ll be
doing any surfing), the boulangerie (which was blessedly open when we went
out), and the driving range, which is within walking distance unless you’re
carrying clubs. We’ve walked to the
beach between the two golf holes, and over the hill in the distance to find a
raging surf and vast beach. There will
be many more of those walks.
The Atlantic in all its glory |
Architecture in this part of France is very different from
the Vaucluse. There’s a strong Basque
influence in many of the buildings sporting colorful shutters, large timbers
and stucco. Often at the peak of the
roof on the front, the house is identified with a Basque name. Other houses, often made of brick, appear to
have large footprints with one story and low-peaked roofs. There are even half-timbered houses, the
likes of which we might find in Normandy or Brittany. The names of the towns appear in both French
and Basque. And in this area, the names
are foreign to our English-speaking ears—Hoosegar, Maa, Hondarribia, Irun. There are none of the rows of houses in the
towns that feature so commonly in movies about World War II. Houses are free standing, but humble. More about the architecture in another blog.
The nearby communities combine tourism (much
of it surfing) and fishing. There are
still fishing boats in the harbors near all the fancy sailboats and larger
sleeping boats. And fish is sold along
the quais. Moliets’ old town is not
located on the ocean so we will travel to other towns to buy fish—none of them
distant, and some of them about four kilometers or so away.
I will struggle with lack of internet, but will figure it
out enough to stay in touch and post blogs for those who are interested to
see. This is my opportunity to
concentrate on writing—not blog writing.
The proof will be in the trip’s end.
No comments:
Post a Comment