Tag: Cultural Highlights

October 16, 2019 Tropea IT

Ton read my account of entering Tropea yesterday and said it sounded a little whiny.  Ton thought Tropea was a really beautiful city, and felt I should have spent more time talking about how beautiful the town was, about our fun encounter with a young clerk in a food shop and that the water off shore was a beautiful emerald color.  So I apologize to Tropea for not giving it it’s due yesterday.  

Another picture of Tropea to make up for my whining.

As usual on these trips we start to panic when we realize that there is more to see than we have time for.  Today we are two weeks into the trip, and have a lot more to cover.  I had hoped to spend more time in the far south, but we both agreed that there was a lot to do around Naples so we made the decision to have a big travel day up to Naples.  It helped that it was our first rainy day of the trip so we headed up the excellent and mostly free Autostrada to Pompeii.  Tonight we are parked in the Spartacus Campground across the street from the entrance to the Pompeii archeological site.

The A2 Autostrada in Southern Italy is quite an engineering feat, we must have passed thru more than 50 tunnels from 100 to 2500 meters long.

Since there is not a lot to talk about today I am going to tell one of my favorite stories from Sicily.  As we were walking around Sicily we kept seeing these flower pots of a male and female head.  The male head looked Arabic, and was often black.  We finally dug up the story behind these pots. 

These flower pots are all around Sicily.

Once upon a time in Palermo there lived a fair maiden who was extremely beautiful, but she was a loner, and was not interested in suitors.  One day a Moorish Prince landed in Palermo, and spotted the fair maiden and fell in love.  He boldly entered her home and professed his love.  The fair maiden was taken by his forwardness and agreed to allow him to become her lover.  One day she asked when he planned to marry her, he then confessed that he must return to Africa tomorrow, and that he had a wife and family at home.  The maiden said nothing, but that night she murdered him in her bed, cut his head off and turned it into a flower pot so he would be with her forever.  How very Sicilian!

Another set of flowerpots.

May 6, 2019 Eguisheim FR

Today we shifted a whopping 10km’s to Colmar.  We did make a side trip to another Alsatian town on the way to Colmar.  

We both woke up about 5 am smelling smoke.  I lay there wondering if something was burning when Ton also woke up and asked if we were on fire.  This motivated me to get up and check to see if anything was burning in François.  It turns out that we were not on fire, but the smoke from the wood fires in the town next to us had settled into the little valley the campground was in.  Once we determined we were safe we went back to sleep for a couple of hours.

We finally got on the road to our primary target for the day a town called Eguisheim.  In 2013 it was voted the most beautiful village in France.  I had punched in a free parking site on the soccer field, but when we got there the town had blocked access due to all of the rain, so we headed over to the municipal parking.  The parking was brand new and high tech with bar code readers, but the area designated for RV’s cost €6 for 4 hours.  It seemed excessive but I didn’t see any other options, so I gnashed my teeth and ponied up.

The most beautiful village in France in 2013 is full of wineries of course.

Eguisheim is indeed a lovely village.  Originally a double walled village.  It is built in a circle which is unusual in France.  We walked the space between the two original walls, over time when security became less of an issue the space between the two walls was built up with homes and work spaces.  These half timbered buildings are really well preserved.  The colorful paint is from the 20th century.  Up until then the buildings were earth toned.  We had a great walk enjoying the variety of buildings.

The road between the two walls .  The houses on the left are built into the old outer wall.  The houses on the right are between the outer and inner walls.
Another view of the circular road around town.

Many of the towns we have visited in the last few days still have Easter ornaments up.  Apparently the Easter Bunny is a big deal, and in addition to a lot of bunnies the French decorate trees and bushes with colored Easter eggs. The displays remind us of the Christmas and Halloween displays we see at home.

Easter bunnies overlooking the entrance to a winery.
Not an Easter theme, but a home with nice decorations,

As we were wrapping up the walk thru town we came around a corner to finds a very imposing man dressed in medieval clothes and doing a vigorous sword dance.  It turns out he was the owner of a coffee shop who had no customers so he was filming himself in the ally.  We decided we would have a coffee.  He was an interesting character, originally from Germany, I asked him if it was a traditional dance, he said “nah, I just make it up as I go, maybe in 100 years it will become a traditional Alsatian sword dance.”

Our final stop for the day was at a nice winery recommended by the sword dancer.  

As we went to pull out of our expensive parking I inserted the barcode paper I was given when I purchased the ticket to the machine that controlled the gate.  It said reading and then did nothing, I repeated this several times without the gate opening.  Finally I got out and tried several more times figuring it might work if I was standing next to it looking irritated.  As I was about to give up and go looking for help, a guy in a parking attendants uniform walked up and took the paper, he tried a couple of times, then punched my code into his electronic device to make sure I was not trying to get away with something.  He finally started muttering about technology in French while he worked on getting the gate to open, it finally did and with a Voila and an apology we were on our way to Colmar.