ALAN WALKER in FRANCE
Alan Walker joined CBC TV in 1958 and was a studio technician and later a coordinating producer in the Transmitter Booth (Studio 50) at the old Georgia Street location. Alan left CBC in 1973 and is now a semi-retired lawyer specializing in Wills and estate planning.

                                  VRBO AND FUN IN FRANCE.
Many will know of VRBO – Vacation Rentals by Owner – the leading website for finding somebody's home to rent in distant or even close-by locations. Spending several nights or even several weeks in a well-appointed, well-located house is a wonderful and often less expensive alternative to staying in a sterile hotel room with annoying mini-bar temptations. My wife and I have successfully used VRBO to find homes for rent in Tuscany, Provence, several places in Ireland and in Paris, in Santa Fe, San Diego, Puerto Vallarta, and even as close to home as Bowen Island.
We have never found a VRBO misrepresented. Of course, we do our homework and make sure the home is what we want – especially location, so we know how far it is to walk or drive to local services, and where it is in relation to tourist destinations. Extra facilities are also important – and very common – such as high-speed internet connections and free Skype phone calls back to North America.

This year we had two VRBO experiences, one in the small town of St. Remy de Provence, and one in Paris. Our rented house in St. Remy we shared for a week with our daughter and son-in-law. St. Remy is only a small town, but famous for, among other things, the birth place of Nostradamus, and the location of the asylum where Vincent Van Gogh spent much productive time in his last years. Our rented house, only a two minute walk to the boulangerie, and five minutes to the town proper, was large, modern and private, with a huge back yard with a beautiful patio, a large garden with flowers and olive trees, and a large size swimming pool. Our stay was enhanced with warm Provence weather in late May when at the same time Vancouver was experiencing unseasonably cold and wet weather. We would go there again in a heart beat.
St. Remy's location (about 10 miles south of Avignon) made it easy for us to go on day trips such as to the famous market at Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. My wife read about this Sunday market in a magazine years ago and has been wanting to go there ever since. It is worth the trip and probably one of the best outdoor markets we have ever been to. In fact the entire town in one big market: antiques, food, crafts, jewelry, linens, ceramics, olive wood, and everything else imaginable, plus all the shops are open as well. Lots of people, lots of dogs, lots of fun! After the market we drove about 30 minutes to a village my wife had read about to have lunch at an excellent restaurant called the Auberge de Langnes. We sat outside on a beautiful terrace while the staff ran back and forth across the street to the Auberge where the kitchen is. A perfect and delicious two and a half hour lunch was enjoyed - the people who ran the place were very hospitable.
It so happened we were in St. Remy on Whit-Monday (the 7th Monday after Easter for the other heathens amongst us) and the Fete de la Transhumance. This is a festival about taking the sheep, goats, and donkeys to the higher pastures during the hot summer weather. In the past, all villages in southern France would have done this by walking the animals but in modern times almost all villages transport the animals by truck. In St. Remy they hold onto the tradition by having a fete where they parade 3500 sheep, goats, and donkeys around the village three times. They then of course load them onto the trucks for the actual transportation to the summer grazing fields. It was a one of a kind tourist experience and at times we felt there were 3500 people watching 300 animals. The whole village was packed and there was a special market day with all the shops open and vendors all over the town and squares. The street cleaning trucks were busy for quite a while after the animal parade.
One side trip was to the medieval hilltop village of Les Baux-de-Provence (from which the aluminum ore "bauxite" gets its name) where there were spectacular views and some boutiques that even a man would enjoy. In the past, the castle at Les Baux belonged to the Grimaldi family and a guide pointed out to us the house of Princess Caroline of Monaco far down below in the valley. It was an impressive estate with lots of grounds, swimming pools, and of course the flag of Monaco waving in the breeze.
We drove north of Nimes (where the original denim fabric was invented) to the 2000 year old Roman aqueduct Pont du Gard which is amazing to walk across and is one of the most remarkable Roman ruins anywhere. We also visited the hilltop village of Menerbes in the Luberon which was made famous by Peter Mayle and his book A Year in Provence. We had an excellent lunch at the Restaurant Veranda. The guide book we had with us gave directions to the Peter Mayle's house (which he has since sold) so we drove by on our way out of town. It looks exactly as described in the book.
On our last full day we drove to Cassis which is a beautiful town on the Mediterranean. There just happened to be a market in progress (I swear my wife can find a market anywhere), so parking was a bit of a nightmare. The seaside promenade had great shopping and fun restaurants.
An amazingly comfortable trip on the TGV (high speed train) took us from Avignon to Paris, and a short taxi ride later we were in our VRBO flat on the left bank, near the Latin Quarter and on the corner of the wonderful Luxembourg Gardens. This was our second rental experience in Paris. On our first visit, our flat was located on the Isle de la Cité, literally a stone's throw from Notre Dame. On that visit we learned what it was like to carry food and bottles of wine up four flights of stone stairs, and hear the bells of Notre Dame – every 15 minutes! We weren't insane enough to drive in Paris (they say at any one time, there are only two empty parking spaces in Paris), but there's really no need to drive as almost all tourist sites are reached by the fast and efficient Metro. Even Versailles, some 18 kilometers from Paris, can be reached by a fast suburban train. So, we visited among other places, the Louvre, Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élyseés, the museum called L'Orangerie, and even took an underground, behind the scenes look at the Eiffel Tower. We didn't bother going to the Musée d'Orsay, because the best of the exhibits were on loan to the Vancouver Art Gallery (and still are as I write this in August, 2010)!
Our VRBO flats in Paris were large enough each time but in each case compromises were made with the bedroom being part of the living room, or in our first place, where we shared a two bedroom flat with friends, the kitchen was part of one of the bedrooms. Both places had free internet, and free long distance calls. It was fun making ourselves understood at the open air markets and in the mini-supermarkets when we elected to stay in and cook for ourselves. One afternoon returning from the market, our friend, Gary, fell while crossing one of the main streets and his load of potatoes and onions went rolling down the road. Lo and behold, all three lanes of traffic stopped, and allowed us to pick up our runaway produce. As some said later, if Gary himself had fallen on the roadway, the Parisians probably would have just run over him, but the French would never run over food.
One observation on differences in Europe – appliances. Because of an apparent attempt to save on energy and on water, appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers (and the worst of all worlds, combination washer-dryers) seem to take weeks rather than hours to go through their cycles, and that's when they're not leaking or not working properly. Tip: Laundromats in Paris are an efficient and inexpensive alternative. On our first laundromat visit, a helpful French woman who couldn't speak English nor could we speak fluent French, explained by gestures how to operate the equipment. When she left us to ourselves, we noted with some embarrassment that while we had looked at the wall with instructions in French, another wall had the instructions in English! We always found the French, and the Parisians – helpful and friendly, and often fully bilingual (to our shame).
Our third week in France was on a river cruise, but perhaps that should be an article for another time.