different rhythms

James, our landlord, tells us – you know that in the south, there is the siesta, when everything shuts down for lunch? Well, in Sorede, the siesta is rather long – from noon to five.

What a schedule! You work in the morning, you break until five and then you pick it up for a couple more hours (shops close at seven).

I say to Ed – it’s like an agreement between the residents and the shopkeepers. You limit your shopping to these short hours and we’ll give you good service then.
Until Walmart comes along and offers longer hours and cheaper prices.

No, there’s this loyalty going on. People can go to the supermarket outside of town, but they wont neglect the local store, because they value their small shops in the village.

Ed’s not convinced. He’s got the entrepreneurial blood. I have this idea that we can function well despite it.

But this schedule does mess with our typical routines. If I write in the morning, then, when I’m ready to go, at around noon, we face a sleepy town.

And so we do things differently.

Early in the morning, Ed suggests a swim in the sea. Why not – it’s the best way to avoid crowds.

The drive to Argeles sur Mer (on the Mediterranean coast) is delightful...





...and short. Ten minutes and we’re in the town itself – predictably a touristy one, with the trappings of a vacation destination (though no big hotels here – the Languedoc coast is spared the Riviera nonsense north of here). We drive the narrow streets, getting lost, getting found, getting lost again. Finally we meander toward the beach. Truly hard to miss as it extends for a long stretch up the coast.

The “sand” is really coarse here – tiny pebbles rather than the powder one’s used to. And at least now, at 8 in the morning, the place is nearly empty.





But the water is bracing. And the drop here is quite significant. The water is absolutely clear, but within a few steps your feet do not touch the bottom.

We take the plunge.

Women can swim topless you know.

Ed has heard me say this, but he doesn’t really believe it until we notice an older couple settling in – both in bottoms, both without the burden of a top. Further down, a young man is airing his bottom.
Now that's unusual -- I comment. No one will say anything, but on public beaches, you're to keep your bottoms on.


Slowly people trickle onto the beach and claim their favorite spot for the day. With friends, with children, settling in, picking up the thread of an interrupted conversation.





Ed and I walk up the beach to where there is a small commotion.  Swimmers, in warm suits, doing laps as part of the Catalan Triathlon. We join the supportive onlookers.





It always strikes me as remarkable how sporty the French are – especially when you leave the big urban centers. They seem to love to watch sports and they equally love to participate. And they do so well into their older years. On a Sunday, the roads are always dotted with cyclists of all ages, racing at speeds I would not regard as normal. Here, too, dozens and dozens of men and women are racing in and out of the water,  some of them dragging a bit, but still going back for that extra lap, as if the idea of not finishing hasn't occurred to them.






Walking back to the car, we pass a small group of men and women of various ages being coached in some jumping exercise.





A Sunday morning in the south of France.



We can’t linger too long as we are to meet with James (the landlord) and go over the details of our rental. (He and his wife packed their bags some six years ago, left England and moved to Sorede with their two sons.
Was it a hard adjustment? Ed asks.
It took a good year to get comfortable with it. Our boys are now fluent in French, but my wife and I are still struggling, though we can get by now with basic French.
What made you do it?
Well, the climate of course. And wanting to experience a different culture...)


It’s noon when we settle in for a breakfast on our patio. Pain au chocolat for me, baguette and cheese and tomato for Ed. The weather prediction was for some showers, but they’re staying away somehow. The air is warm, pleasant.

We can’t help but take a nap right after.

In the evening, we walk to the village just to the west – Laroque des Alberes. Past olive groves and vineyards.









The vineyards of Languedoc dominate the landscape further north, but even here, they appear as a surprise around a bend or up a hill side. But the grapes share space with apricot and cherry trees. This is fruit country alright. And we’re in the glorious season of perfect ripeness.


The village of Larocque is even smaller than Sorede. There is a tower in the old quarter up the hill...





...and from here you can see the dark clouds over the Pyrenees, the flat plain of the Rousillon and finally the sea itself. Pretend this is your panorama: looking south, then west, then north, then east.

















We stay a while, hoping that the rain keeps to the mountains.

It does.

We walk down the twisting street, quiet now, except for the occasional parent taking a child out for a walk...








Back in the Sorede, we sit down for a meal at Ma Maison. We take a corner outside table and watch the place slowly fill up. But even though there are a couple of empty tables still, monsieur, the extremely efficient waiter, starts to turn customers away.

Why? I ask.
Oh, we have a Sunday crew in the kitchen. They’re working at full capacity now and they want to go home soon. It would be unfair to them to bring in more customers.

Across the street, a waiter at another restaurant has an entirely different idea. His small eating establishment fills up as well. As potential diners show up, he brings out more tables to seat them, putting them out along the sidewalk, in front of garage doors, anywhere at all.





The village of Sorede will support both eateries – one can contract, another can expand. Everyone seems content for now. And more importantly, there’s enough good food to please the patrons.

I start my meal with the local anchovy dish. This is a Catalan specialty and I am a real fan of the Mediterranean anchovies – packed in olive oil, not nearly as salty as the ones we eat in the States – they are a delicious starter.





The loup de mer follows...





... and we finish off with a trio of wonderful ice creams – dark chocolate, cassis and of course, the local apricot.





Again I am delighted with the cheap house wine of the region. Ed tells me it’s all subjective. In my head. But each time he tastes the wines here, he nods. Not bad, he’ll say. I don't disagree.

all things Catalan

She’s like that wickedly fun and feisty aunt you wish you’d had in your family. The one you can count on to make everyone grin. The one who doesn’t care if people comment on her wardrobe or style of speech. It all hangs together anyway and you love her for being so damn brazen and perhaps even more for her fastidious love of good food and bubbly wine.

Barcelona.

We have just a morning to see her, although we’re bound to stop here again, on the last day of June, just before returning home.

A morning is plenty of time to discover at least some of her quirky, colorful habits.

But it takes us a while to figure out how to get to her bosom. There’s the matter of the train schedules (we’re by the airport and can take any number of trains into town). And the matter of making our way into the center of it all.

Alighting from the underground station, it doesn’t take long to see that Barcelona is fire and stone, a wave of freshness and audacity. I wont do a history lesson here. That’s not an Ocean habit. Besides, most people know that Barcelona is the capital city of Catalonia – that part of Spain that wishes it had more autonomy, that even now, through referenda, pushes for greater (if not total) separation from the rest of Spain. That it has a population that speaks the Catalan language and prefers to use it in daily discourse.

I’m sitting at a counter at the Mercat La Boqueria – the largest food market in the world, I’m told. It’s noon and we haven’t had breakfast yet. I’m looking at what others are eating. I want wild mushrooms and fried eggs and Cava – the bubbly white wine that comes from this region and is both inexpensive and delicious – a stellar combination. We’re trying to remember how to say mushrooms in Spanish. I ask the older woman sitting next to me.

I don’t speak Spanish, she answers bluntly (even as I know she is from Barcelona). Catalan is my language. Here. This is how you say it in Catalan. She writes on my placemat. "Bolet." She is speaking to me in French.





The mushrooms are exquisite – prepared with onion and balsamic – exotic, woodsy, heavenly.

People in Barcelona care deeply about food. Eating locally foraged foods is important and unfairly easy: they have it all here.

At the fantastically colorful market, we discover just the tip of the spectrum.






























And the people watching. Just a sample: of the quiet, the animated, and the tempted:













Ocean readers may also know that Barcelona is the place of fantastically different architectural styles. Where the modernistas lived and worked at the turn of the nineteenth century. Transforming Catalan society from a traditional one, to a place inspired by new forms and ideas.

And so you see buildings, many designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi (too original to be labeled even something as original as a Modernista, I read) in the early 1900s, incorporating elements from the natural world which he so deeply revered.

So, you may know all this, or you may be new to the Gaudi world, but in any case, let me throw out some photos of the buildings that are so eye catching and unique.

















On the main strolling boulevard (Las Ramblas), there is enough theater to distract you from the press of time and from the mundane issues of schedules and obligations.

Take, for example the painted people -- clever and oftentimes performing brilliantly to the steady stream of people:









There is, of course, also the conventionally colorful. The flower sellers...





...and the bird sellers. Who will also sell your kid a caged dancing furry tail that moves around crazily on the power of, most likely, a battery. No need to clean the cage here.





All this, and still, there is so much more...


 










We catch our breath at a tiny shop where the waiter offers me a Catalan cappuccino (sweet, with chocolate and cream) and Catalan biscuits and even Catalan water.





It’s Saturday and there are many many people out and about and though we only have these three or so hours, we are mesmerized by the city. And I say we, because even Ed, who generally does not like places with crowds, is pulled in just a little, making enemies and friends by speaking good Spanish in a place that would like to avoid it if it can, even as the reality is that it cannot.



We have a car waiting for us somewhere in the area of the airport. Ed rented from Sixt – a company that gives phenomenal discounts and fantastic service, a company that does not mind that we are almost two hours late for our pick up, a company that gives us exactly the teeny car we ask for (a Smart car – the only car that utterly delights me when I drive it).

Ed takes out his wallet to finalize the rental agreement. Can’t seem to find my credit card... Where did you last use it? Last night, at the pizza place...

Sigh... Sometimes I think we are getting rather on the older side of the things.

We Skype the pizza place (being the only travelers here who will not charge up a cell phone) and the lovely people there ask for his name as they rifle through all the abandoned cards and cell phones (you’d be surprised how many people leave these with us), and sure enough, it’s there.

The trick now is to get to this place. It's next to our hotel, but we’d used free airport shuttles thus far. We get lost – of course we do, but people are as helpful as in Ireland and within an hour or two we find the right combination of streets and byways to get us there. After all, it’s all of 3 kilometers from the car rental.


And now it is almost four and we are speeding north in our little white Smart with the sunroof, the cheapest and best rental on the planet. We cross the Pyrenees Orientales (the “lesser” but also, according to me, the most beautiful of the Pyrenees) into France and immediately get off the highway and follow the little roads with tall trees and the ever beautiful vineyards against the backdrop of the formidable mountains (with some formidable weather, even as here, it is lovely and warm)...










...to our home for two weeks: the small and lovely village of Sorede.





Our landlords warn us that things will be mostly closed on Sunday (except for the bakery of course) and so we stop at a supermarket to purchase the essentials for the next few days: cheese, tomatoes, coffee, chocolate and lovely, delicious, heavenly rosé wine from the region of Languedoc (we are in the southern most tip of France’s Languedoc).

(At the parking lot, you can see two cars that I love to admire: our Smart, next to the Citroen 2CV.)





I’m sure I’ll say more about Sorede, but this post is already long and the day is almost over anyway, so let me leave you with just a few comments. First of all, Sorede sees itself as Catalan, with French habits. On the main square, the flags are of the European Union, of France, and of Catalonia.








Then, too, Sorede is small. Fewer than 3000. But it has a half dozen good restaurants, two bakeries, a grocer, a market twice a week – in other words, it is, for me, ideal.

We eat dinner at the Auberge de Margau:





(We take a good half hour to study the menus and decide. I am in the mood for grilled large shrimp, Ed likes his mussles.)





The food and wine – well, it need not be restated: the people of this region are fanatically devoted to good eating.

We stroll back to our apartment – a small two story place with a terrace for those breakfasts outside. I’m thinking of where to start tomorrow. So much to choose from! The Mediterranean Sea is less than ten minutes drive to the east of us. The mountains are right there, to the south. There is art. There is good warm weather. Where do you begin...

That’s tomorrow’s post. We end our day now with a pause at an outdoor café. I have a glass of sweet local Muscadet. The TV us placed outdoors. The evening is warm, the breeze is delicately playful. The US is playing against England in South Africa. A handful of expats is watching. We stay until the end of the game.

In case you haven’t been following it, the American team came in from behind and the game ends in a tie.