Encore Provence

There has been no time to play with the camera--probably there will be no time until after next week, so I bringing up another photo from my 2008 trip to France. We left Paris on the TGV, a high-speed train, and arrived in Avignon after about two hours. After spending the night there, we began our whirlwind tour with stops just outside Avignon to see the Roman ruins of aqueducts, then to Arles where we saw the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre, and through Nimes and an ancient Roman coliseum.

Then we turned toward Provence and the villages of Peter Mayle's series of books on Provence. Glenna and I stumbled upon this castle ruin when we took a wrong turn somewhere in the Luberon. If I remember correctly, this facade was across the valley from Gordes.

Glenna was a little worried about getting out of the car and poking around the grounds, but I didn't think we could pass up the opportunity to wander just a bit. Whether the area surrounding the castle walls had been a moat or perhaps an interior garden between an outer wall and the castle wall, I cannot say. But it was a fun little adventure none-the-less!

She and I hope to make our way back to Paris in the next year or two, and maybe we'll be able to wander dusty roads of the French countryside once more!

Kudos

Kudos to all my friends who bravely accepted--and completed the challenge of NaPoWriMo by writing a poem a day, or at least 30 poems in 30 days. As you can see, I was not able to do so, in part because I made my other blog my first priority, and work got in the way.

Because I recently bought a new camera (new to me), my next detour is going to be photography. My Nikon D60 has manual and automatic settings, and I want to practice using the manual settings. Years ago, I used a Pentax 1000, which was nothing but manual, and took some pretty decent shots, so I'm ready to reacquaint myself with shutter speed and aperture.

Today, I'm going to cheat and post one of my favorite photos from France. My best friend Glenna and I were in the Luberon in the South of France one beautiful May several years ago. After four or five days in Paris, we took the train south to Avignon, rented a car, and made a whirlwind tour of Roman ruins in various towns--Arles, Nimes, and somewhere near Avignon where ancient aquaducts can be seen. We then went up into the Luberon to see towns like Bonnieux, Apt, and Menerbes. I was forever asking her to stop so that I could take pictures of poppies. This photograph is from Bonnieux, one of the small towns in the mountains where lavender and poppies bloom profusely along the roads.