Hi Gene, if your still in France, have a look at Carcassonne. Its a mediaeval 12th century cathar fortified city.
You can stay in the city itself, there are 2 hotels, the best western is the cheaper of the 2. There is also secure parking for the bikes.

This is really well worth a visit.

Rob

Thanks! Happy New Year to you too!

Thanks for the tip, Rob. Unfortunately, the weather didn't work out for us..

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Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/191.html



We left Nice in the rain to continue our march across Southern France. This was going to be a wet ride and we knew it, so we headed back on the highway to try to make short work of today's journey. We're headed to Marseille, second-largest city in France.

It's only three hours away, but the rain did not let up for the entire ride. At a few points on the Autoroute, I could feel the bike hydroplaning on top of all the standing water collecting on the highway. We eschew road etiquette and ride in the middle lane, staying on the crown of the road where there was less water.

No pictures, obviously, as both hands were white-knuckling the grips the whole way!


Marseille was the French Empire's most important port city

We're staying a couple of days at an AirBnB, great place, but still not as cheap as we'd like it.

To help ourselves negotiate around here, I dust off my Français skills. In Ontario schools, it was a mandatory course up till Grade 9, at which time I promptly dropped it. It's times like these when I wish I had stuck with it longer because the French words feel rusty like nails crumbling out of my mouth - painful to watch and listen to.

Normally Neda is very outgoing when it comes to talking to strangers. However, because she doesn't speak any French at all, I found myself having to carry all the conversations at hotels, grocery stores and gas stations. It was so interesting watching her shirk away from having to talk to anyone. Whenever somebody approached her, she would immediately tap on the communicator or tap me on the shoulder, "Uhhh.... Gene!"

What a complete role reversal from Latin America! I got a little taste of what it was like having to take point for all communications and I respect Neda more for it.


Notre-Dame de la Garde church, built on a hill
can be seen from anywhere in the city

The first day in Marseille we got rained in, so we spent the day cooped up watching the water fall from the skies. The weather co-operated with us the second day and we took a stroll around the port area of Marseille to get a feel for the city.


Monument aux morts de l'armée d'Orient et aux héros des terres lointaines - what a mouthful!


Looks like our Arc-Friend from Nice, Bernar Venet, has been busy in Marseille as well. I still don't get it...

Right on the Bay of Marseille is a nice spot called Pharo Garden where you can see the harbour and most of the port. On the lawns of the garden sits another modern sculpture called Désordre (Disorder). I'm renaming it "The Graveyard of Giant Three-Ring Binders".


View of the harbour from Pharo Garden. Fort Saint Jean on the right, Bulbe à Clochers Church on the left

Walking through all the war monuments and forts, reminded me of just how influential the French Empire was. It had such a huge role in the colonization wars in which it raced against Spain and Britain to claim territory in the Americas and all around the world. It struck me that in all of our travels across Latin America, we marveled at the imprint of Spanish invaders on the land, when back at home, we could've seen that same imprint that France left on Acadia and French Canada.

Our journey across the ocean to Europe has been like coming back to the source of history in the Americas.


Monument aux héros et victimes de la mer (Monument to the heroes and victims of the sea)

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Peugot's three-wheeler, the Metropolis, is France's answer to Piaggio's MP3
and is the most popular scooter in the French Riviera


Look! Up above! It's... us.


Seems like every city in the French Riviera has to put up a ferris wheel for Christmas!


Bear-Nice (Sauce?)


Les Oiseaux en Colère!


Walking around the old part of Marseille - called Le Panier

We were walking around a part of the town called "The Sidecase". hehe. We visited the Givi Hotel, Hepco Becker Boulangerie...


Laundry day

We've seen a lot of people wearing hijabs and thobes in the French Riviera. About one third of the population is Muslim, the city was liberated from German occupation at the end of WWII by soldiers from Northern Africa. The last time we we were here, it was the summertime, so we stayed mainly on the beaches and back then we thought only pasty white (and lobster red) British people lived here!

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Gene - http://www.RideDOT.com

Brown farms on the French Riviera. This must be so colourful in the summertime!

We found out that Trevor has settled into a little French villa in a small town called La Cadière-d'Azur on the coast between Toulon and Marseille and to return the favour, he's invited us to stay for a few days. So that means we're going to kick back and relax and not worry about hotels, AirBnB or Français for the next little while! Très bien!

We doubled back on the coastal road - D559. I've been staring at this road on Google Maps and my GPS with dread for quite some time now. Just an hour east on this exact same road from where we're staying is where I had a bad motorcycle crash 7 years ago that left us stranded in Côte d'Azur for a week... on this exact same bike I was riding now.

I could feel my bike underneath me taking the turns with just a hint of hesitation, a touch of tentativeness on the throttle...


Parking in Trevor's little French villa


View from our patio. Beautiful!

We've been very fortunate that we've had access to a kitchen for the last few days. Neda has been on a strict non-gluten, non-dairy menu for almost a week now and her gastrointestinal problems have abated somewhat. We're going to give it a full week to see if goes away completely.

"Hey Neda, you know what they say? No grain, no pain!"
She rolls her eyes and shoots me a distasteful look: "That's terrible."


Grocery run! Essentials like French wine and lots of gluten-free legumes and lentils for Neda.

While browsing the grocery stores we've noticed a lot of Rosé wine on the shelves. Seems that Rosé is the specialty wine in the French Riviera because of the ambient temperature and soil conditions. We also scour the shelves for food that will fit Neda's new diet.

"Hey Neda, I guess you're wheating out all the bad foods!"
"... you are the worst person that has ever lived!"


The new diet

This is what she makes pretty much everyday and since I'm so lazy, I end up just eating what she cooks instead of preparing my own meals. I've never eaten this healthy before in my life.

I don't like it.

"Hey Neda, looks like I'm a gluten for punishment!"
"I hate you."


I find D minor is the saddest of all keys

To undertake this trip, we've stripped ourselves of all our belongings besides what we can carry on our bikes. It's been two and a half years and we've carried no more than a weeks change of clothes suited more for hiking than entertaining. No cars, snowboards, dirtbikes. No house, no fridge, no drawers full of the bottles and jars of liquids and goop that make men smell manly and women look pretty.

We've realized we don't miss most of it. But during all this time, it becomes glaringly obvious which things (besides the people) we've left behind that leave a hole in your life. For me, it's music. I look forward to the day when I can have a room and fill it with guitars, a piano and a drumkit in the corner.

Neda wants a room too. She wants to fill it with shoes...

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Gene - http://www.RideDOT.com

27 pages of pure joy, great photos, good prose. Much to enjoy.

Thank you.

Morning Sickness ?

I fully agree with XS904. It would be such a pitty if you missed this beautiful mediaeval city.
While in Carcassonne, I stayed in Hotel Astoria on 18 rue Tourtel in Carcassonne. This hotel is a member of the "Relais Motards" so bikers are very welcome and there is a big garage for the bikes. It is on walking distance from the mediaeval fortified city.

Here are some pictures of Carcassonne on my weblog;
http://jkrijt.home.xs4all.nl/trips/n2g2/page11.shtml

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Jan Krijtenburg

My bikes are a Honda GoldWing GL1200 and a Harley-Davidson FXD Dyna Super Glide

My personal homepage with trip reports: https://www.krijtenburg.nl/
YouTube channel (that I do together with one of my sons): motormobilist.nl

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/193.html



It just won't stop raining in the south of France. We wanted to see a little bit more of this country before heading to warmer climates. Neda had researched a great medieval town called Carcassonne, not too far away but the forecast showed heavy rainfall for the next few days. Not good weather to explore castles or go riding around. It'll have to wait for another time.


Preparing to leave France. In the rain...

I feel like we're just single-cell organisms responding to stimuli. Too cold? Too wet? With no sentient thought or plan, we just swing our flagella and move somewhere drier and warmer.


Pit stop in Perpignan

On our last night in France, someone stole my motorcycle cover. Or so I thought. The next morning, we hopped on our bikes and headed to the border. We were immediately kicked around by strong cross-winds that threatened to blow our motorcycles off the side of the road. I was hit worse than Neda because of how much luggage I've piled on the back of my bike: my side-profile looks like a giant sail. It was so bad, we had to get off the highway and putter ahead on the backroads riding 20km/h under the speed limit with our 4-way flashers on.

I realized then that my motorcycle cover wasn't stolen. It was the wind that whipped it off last night. I felt really bad about blaming some random French person for something that didn't actually happen, meanwhile some tree is probably wearing a really expensive rip-stop nylon winter jacket right now...

I hate losing stuff, especially the things you can only get online. Where do we even get it shipped to when we're on the move all the time?


Skirting south of the foothills of the Pyrenees

Once we got west of the Pyrenees, it was like someone waved a magic wand and the skies cleared instantly. It was a colour that we hadn't seen for a very long time. Neda's mood was visibly improving. Perhaps it was the weather. Perhaps the Nutella mourning period was over. Maybe it was because her stomach is feeling a lot better and she doesn't have any more washroom emergencies, but the instant we crossed the Spanish border, it was like she came back to life. Like she was reset. Re-animated. Rebooted.

She radioed me: "I can speak Spanish again!" Ah, that's the real reason.

I think with all the Français she was feeling a bit removed from everything. Now she was finally able to break out of her cocoon and be herself. Time for me to relax and let her drive the bus once again.


A new tankbag hobby

Neda gave all the seashells she was collecting in her tankbag to her niece. She's moved on to collecting leaves now. This one is from Switzerland. Somehow, I don't think her collection is going to survive intact as long as the seashells did...


We've stopped in a sea-side town of Calella, about half-an-hour outside of Barcelona

And just like amoebas, the minute the conditions start becoming favorable we stop moving and enjoy the sunshine and lack of rain. Calella is a weekend beach destination for a lot of Barcelonans, and is absolutely packed with tourists in the summer, but now we're in the off-season and it's a ghost-town during the week. Nice and peaceful, just the way we like it.


Can you imagine this beach packed to gills in the summer?

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Gene - http://www.RideDOT.com

Too cold to suntan

Although the sun is shining, the temperatures only climb to about 15C during the middle of the day. Still a lot of people wearing thick layers walking around town. It's not raining so we really don't care.


Namaste on the boardwalk


Some rock climbing on the outskirts of town


Better view of where the rock climbers were hanging around


Calella has about 3kms of beaches, some open, some secluded. There's even supposed to be a nude beach around here somewhere!


Either Neda is really enjoying the sunshine or she's spied the nude beach...

The cold and wet weather makes for a very draining ride. It's not just having to bear through the elements while on a motorcycle, but all the gear you have to put on: base layer, protective layer, waterproof layer. I really missed just throwing on a riding jacket to go out for a spin. Everything seems like such a production when you tour through these conditions!


This guy has the right idea

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Gene - http://www.RideDOT.com

Birds eye view of the coast


Parallel to the beach is a nice tree-lined promenade where families go for a stroll during the day

We've rented a small apartment in Calella with a nice kitchen so we can make our own food once again. I think we're going to stay here for a while.


This is the market that Neda goes to every morning to get fresh groceries


This is our fish lady. Neda buys fish from her every few days so we're regulars now

She's cutting up something called "sepia". Neda knew what the Croatian word for it, but couldn't tell me what it was in English because she's never prepared it in Canada. A quick SpanishDict search: It's cuttlefish. Very tasty! Our fish lady asks what the English word is and we tell her. Apparently "cuttlefish" is really hard to pronounce for Catalans...

Calella and Barcelona are in a region of Spain called Catalunya. The people that live here don't really consider themselves a part of Spain. They've been trying to separate for a long time. Kinda like Quebec in Canada. Catalan is also different from the Spanish spoken by the rest of Spain. Same as Quebecois being a different kind of French that's spoken in the rest of the world...

We're having to get used to different phrases here. A "Buenos Dias" will automatically give you away as non-Catalan. Here it's "Bon Dia". "Hablas español?" Nope, it's "Que parla català?". "Please" is "Si us plau". It almost sounds kind of French! More Quebec parallels!


Checking up on our bikes one evening

The apartment complex we are staying in wanted €10 for underground parking. A night! Whatevs! We'll just park for free on the streets like the rest of the Europeans do. I get a bit nervous and peek outside every couple of days just to make sure the bikes are still there though...


On the weekends, all the Barcelonans come into town to wander around the stores here

We're staying in the old part of town where 14th-century buildings are mixed in with modern storefronts on a pedestrian-only street called Calle de l'Església (street of the church). The lights are all up for Christmas and we mingle with the weekend crowd one evening.


One night, we spied Roman Centurians marching down the street!


They were part of a Christmas parade. The Catalans must really not like being Spanish... No Conquistadors here!

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Gene - http://www.RideDOT.com