Left my apartment in Villefranche with some sadness, as it had been such a luxurious pad. And yet, it was so hot in there that I was working up a good sweat just gathering up my things, then full-on full-body sweat when it was time to get my things down my little staircase then up the stairs of the pedestrian street to my car (for the record, Shelley DID come help me, which was splendid, although I had done the worst of the job already). So while I was sad to be leaving this cute little village, I was also psyched to get into my air-conditioned Panda and hit the road.
My itinerary for the day was to get to Pertuis, find my cottage and get settled in, then head to the home of Phillipe, who is the organizer of the chamber music program I had hoped to attend but which was cancelled due to a problem getting use of the music school. However, Phillipe said that several players would be around and that we could get some playing in, and why don't I just come by around 4:00.
Travel was generally uneventful, and the ham sandwich at the highway service area was delicious. Tolls on the highway were more than I had expected, so I was left with just enough to pay the cash-up-front cleaning fee you need to pay for your home rentals. There was one traffic jam, but it didn't last too long and had cool scenery.
(note huge butte-like structure in the background)
And the radio stations seemed slightly better as I got closer to Aix-en-Provence. Still a wasteland, but with a few more oases.
I'm not sure if this is the European way of giving directions, or if it's just coincidence, but both of my directions (one for finding the cottage, one for finding Phillipe's house) were very, um, imprecise. Like "you get into town, go through a few traffic circles, then turn right at the light, then go a couple miles and look for an intersection sign", or "get to this town then follow the road toward the next town for 1km, then look for four cypress trees and 4 mailboxes." I'm kind of more like a "give me the exact address and/or longitude and lattitude so that I can find it on Google maps, print out the instructions with turn-by-turn maps." I couldn't even get the owner of the cottage to give me an address or even a street name, but now that I'm here, I'm not sure there is one. Anyway, armed with their descriptions and my best attempts to guess at where these places where and get Google directions (which so far have been excellent), I only got moderately lost finding my to the cottage (good thing I had looked over the general layout of Pertuis AND reviewed the list of road signs and their meaning that Rick Steves includes in his book -- the sign for "intersection" is an X not a +, and with no words, and in my particular case, paired with another sign that said the equivalent of "flood risk", which initially made me think that the X just meant to stay the hell away). Fortunately it is a lovely cottage, and Pietro and Sylvie showed me around fairly well considering my weak French and their complete lack of English.
Once I unloaded the car and took a moment to catch my breath, and once I learned that the wifi in the cottage is totally unreliable (major argh), I grabbed my cello and got back in the car to look for the road out of Curcuron toward Cabriers d'Aigues and the four cypress and four mailboxes. Well, after much travel up and down the road to Cabriers d'Aigues I eventually landed upon the home of Phillipe, where there were several musicians about. Phillipe did not have wifi but was kind enough to let me hop on his laptop (a Mac, which I can barely negotiate on a good day, with a French keyboard, which I don't think I'd ever seen before), so I just took a moment to email Jim and let him know I had arrived in one Then Nick said "shall we play some trios", and so I got out my cello and played through some Mozart trios with him (an Englishman who lives in Paris) and Werner (I didn't quite catch his country of origin, but he's a professional violinist who lives in Nice and is usually one of the teachers in the chamber music program). Normally I would be kinda nervous in a situation like this, playing with total strangers, sightreading music I had never heard nor played before, but after spending the bulk of the day in the nervewracking world of routefinding without a navigator and in a foreign land, I was completely unphased by the idea of playing music. Certainly I was worried that I would suck and they would politely dis-invite me from any further musical activity, but I figured if that happened I could just laugh it off and go exploring the Luberon region. Turns out they were perfectly happy with my playing, invited me to stay for dinner (I had to decline, fearing that I would never find my cottage in the dark), and invited me to come back and play during the week. I did stay for a little refreshment on the poolside patio, which was very pleasant -- and nice to converse in English, as everyone in the group was either native English-speaking or very fluent. The mistral winds (which I had only recently read about in my travel guide) were picking which was dramatic but also really nice afster the still heat of the Riviera. Phillipe's wife was generous enough to send me home with a few things to eat, as it was too late to hit the grocery store, and the following day was Sunday, when everything would be closed. A lifesaver! And so I headed home as the sun was setting (absolutely beautiful -- I really, really should have pulled over for a Kodak, but the edge of not knowing for sure if I could re-find my cottage was just too sharp), and made it to my cottage before dark. Enjoyed some bread and fruit along with the parmesan cheese I still had from Florence (now I'm really glad that I bought a big chunk), and off to bed. (A really hard bed with a lumpy futon, but hey there's air coniditioning so it's a reasonable trade-off).
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