Monday, December 04, 2006

Grasse






Another of our day trips from NICE was to Grasse. This is the village where the perfumes comes from, or a lot of perfumes, or the start of perfumes, well, you get the idea. Fragonard, Molinard, etc, have factories there but we went to just walk around the village. it was empty! No quaint little galleries or shops in the old section, very little open, but then it was autumn and the flowering fields weren't flowering. We enjoyed the little streets and the views from top. We had a great lunch at a little place open for locals. The chef and a friend, and us, and some good Motown music. When we left I said--"le musique de notre jeunesse!" and he said, "oui, moi aussi." There was a public toilette that looked kind of quaint, with a somewhat rustic door, however, inside was a large room, all metal, complete with toilet, sink, mirror, hand drier, but when you exited and the door shut, the entire room got sanitized! It was totally wet when I stepped in and wondered "why is this room all wet?" On our bus ride back to NICE, a group of little children, maybe 7 years old, and their teachers got on at a stop in the country side. They'd been on a field trip and were all sweaty smelling. They were very good, spoke quietly. We were so amazed that they used public transportation rather than school buses, but then we never did see any school buses anywhere. In Paris, we'd see entire classes of children on the Metro with their teachers going on field trips. Ah, I get it. That's how those kids get so savvy about manuevering on public transport!!

1 comment:

Le Synge Bleu said...

nyc kids use public transportation too, at least for afterschool programs etc.

How did I get into this?

I was asked when I started doing Mailart. Good question. Like many artists, I was making and mailing art without even knowing it had a name ...