In sterling act of courage we dragged ourselves away from our home for the last six days at St. Jurs near Riez and embarked upon 80 miles or so towards Les Alpilles. The Chaîne des Alpilles is a small chain of rocky outcrops, hardly large enough to be called mountains, just south of St Rémy de Provence, birthplace of Nostradamus. Carol had earmarked a couple of possible campsites one of which irritatingly closed its reception between midday and 3:00 PM, our typical band of arrival times. Since our journey was likely to take about 2½ hours, we were on the road by 9:00 AM.
As it turned out we arrived with time to check out a different campsite, one that was said to close on Sept 15th but which sounded excellent. Sure enough it was both very appealing being terraced in an olive grove and would, indeed, close on Sept 15th. Sept 15th is a magic date in France for some bizarre reason best known to the French. It seems to mark the end of everyone’s holiday/vacation season and many of the camp sites close, regardless of the day of the week. I’ve even seen speed limits on roads around La Palmyre on the west coast that end on Sept 15th. Nonetheless there are several folks here and we decided to join them for maximum of four days.
Later we drove a circuitous route through St. Rémy de Provence towards Arles in search of a McDonald’s and their McWiFi. Sure enough Arles was advertising Ronald but on a rotating board which rotated before we could see precise directions. We got horribly snarled up in what appeared to be Friday rush hour around Arles and frustratingly failed our find our target. We returned deflated but a couple of pastises soon fixed that.
I wonder if Nostradamus knows where McDonald’s is?
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