Verdun is Gorges
‘Of course, you look so refreshed!’ the woman, whose name we learn later is Allison, remarks. It’s a bold statement for me at 8am, a minute or two late to make it downstairs just in time to meet our tour guide.
We are heading to the Gorges du Verdon, Europe’s largest gorge, and Lac Sainte-Croix, France’s third largest lake. We are taking a circuitous route, up winding mountain roads through Grasse to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie first. I already have my motion sickness bands in place and will wait until we turn onto the mountain roads to decide whether to take dramamine (ed. I end up not needing it). We would otherwise get to stop and visit the finest quality lavender at the highest elevations, but they are cutting it early this year because it has been so hot.
Our guide Raphaël is a former rally car driver from Dijon, and I can sense his prowess as he deftly navigates both city and mountain roads. He tells us not to be alarms if he drives over the white dashed line in the middle of the road; the road is winding, and in order to reduce the chance of motion sickness, he’ll be trying to drive in as straight a line as possible, watching to see whether our heads tilt from side-to-side to judge how well he’s doing.
We’re taking the racing line.
As he drives, Raphael provides an informal crash course on the rules of the road here in France. Up in the mountains later he points out blue-and-white striped poles and says they warn of twists and turns up ahead. Most of the road signs in France are the same as in the States, but I like this blue striped one best.
Raphaël charms us as he drives us out of Nice, ‘I love jokes,’ he says, ‘And history.’ And it shows.
‘When you go to the mountains,’ he starts, ‘You enjoy life. You look at the trees, your husband, your wife…’ I turn around to wink at Caleb, seated behind me, the last two passengers to board the 9-passenger Peugeot.
‘And if you don’t like them, look out the window!’ Raphaël finishes.
Along the way his love of history shines. He gives us tips about French culture and cuisine. (Rather than pay for the Veuve Cliquot brand name, look for any other Reims appellation, which will be the same terroir; similarly, rather than Moët and Chandon, try any other Epernay house. Both name brands are owned by LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) and wouldn’t you rather be supporting small businesses? Or drink Franciacorta, which is produced in Italy, but you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between this sparkling Italian wine and champagne.) He explains some of Monégasque culture. (It’s where both old money and new money who want to live a normal live move, and you’re not considered a millionaire until you’re worth at least 10 million; someone with a million is simply someone with a million. But if you’re rich and you want your kids to grow up able to walk themselves to school, Monaco is excessively policed and there are no paparazzi.) He even warns us to look out for deer jumping into the road after lunch. Why? ‘They’ll’ve eaten too much fruit!’ I chime in. Exactly—they act drunk after having eaten too much fermenting fruit. We might expect to see deer, wild boars, rabbits, fox, sheep, goats, eagles, vultures, and donkeys in the countryside.
Caleb jokes to me that we’ve never seen a wild boar in our backyard. Raphaël overhears some and notes we might see wild boars in Saint-Tropez, where they swim on the beach.
Rather than visit fields of lavender, we stop in Grasse instead, the perfume capital of the world. Raphaël still explains to us the difference between lavande et lavandin, where lavande is true lavender with the best quality at the highest elevations, and lavandin occurs at lower elevations (apparently lavandin is a natural hybrid of true lavender and spike lavender).
Before sending us on our tour of the Fragonard perfumery, Raphaël explains why perfume and smell are so important to us humans. ‘Perfume is memories,’ he tells us. ‘When babies are young, they cannot tell who their mother is. But they can smell her safety.’
In the car Raphaël had kept prompting us to ask questions, and I was embarrassed to have thought of none. During the tour, however, at the soap-making machine, I ask one, ‘Why the egg shape?’ Some soaps are produced in the shape of an egg, and sold by the half-dozen.
‘Because it’s fun!’ our guide Sophie explains. ‘Someone asked for a speak order, and we kept producing it because it’s fun.’
I buy fun egg soaps to give as a gift.
After the tour, back on the bus, Raphaël teases our group, ‘OK let’s see if you were paying attention. I’m going to give you a quiz. It’s very easy; there are only three questions. If you answer all three correctly, you get a free tour. No one has ever answered all three correctly.’ I don’t even have to turn around to tell that Caleb has piped up, too.
Q1. ‘What date was perfume invented?’
17… 14… What years did Louis XIV reign?
Q2. ‘Why was perfume invented?’
This has to have something to do with nobility, but what? And why don’t we know from the tour?
Q3. ‘Why do you put perfume on your pulse points?’
So others can smell your perfume, rather than you…
Extra credit for how many kilos of rose cinquefoil petals are needed per litre of perfume, and how many years it takes to train for the job of a nose.
Raphaël explains we are headed to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie where we can grab lunch—stopping for photos along the way—before heading down into the Gorges and Lac Sainte-Croix for a swim or water sports if we would like. All tour he has done a wonderful job managing expectations: Letting us know how long a drive to our next stop, how long we will stop there, and what time and where to meet back up in order to continue. It sets me at ease to feel like I’m not forgetting something important, and won’t be forgotten myself for getting distracted or pulled into a chat. And of course, with Caleb I am never forgotten, and rarely forgetting.
The Gorge delivers, and as we wind up the road towards Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, we stop for a photo op. We’re so high and the drop is so steep it triggers my fear of heights, that visceral feeling that turns my ankles and knees to jelly and spikes my adrenaline. I inch my way towards the edge to take pictures.
Caleb, confident on cliffs and not fearing heights, hops up to stand atop the stone wall separating the shoulder from the street, joking as he does, ‘Don’t tell my mother.’
‘I’m taking a picture.’
We walk along the street—in the street, really, as there is no other option, and walking on the shoulder risks kicking rocks down the cliff that could land on people in the lake. When Caleb hops up on the stone wall again Raphaël tuts at him and explains he can’t save him if he falls.
Caleb climbs down, saying to me as he does, ‘I’m not going to fall…’
‘Rule-breaker,’ I tease him.
We bop about Moustiers-Sainte-Marie and enjoy some wonderful gelato—lavender-honey and mango for me, and lavender-honey and chocolate for Caleb. I might like his better; the chocolate having that wonderful cocoa powder taste of high quality confections.
At the lake, our tour group splits up. Allison and Chris haven’t brought swimsuits. The two American girls go to rent a paddle boat. We don’t know where the Dutch pair goes. Caleb and I change into our suits in the back of the van, then pick our way down the embankment to the little rocky strand that serves as a beach. I peel my cover-up off up over my head and hang it on a rock in the wall, a new linen number we had picked up at local linen atelier Lin du Sud Caleb had found in town. I was elated to find natural fibres dyed vibrantly enough to be in my palette, the colour called Capri. My tranquil is the sea.
We go for a swim, and Caleb, the stronger swimmer, checks in with me before heading out deeper himself. I head back to the rocky beach, happy we are both happy, enjoying ourselves, and doing what we want to do. I take pictures of the lake, but mostly of my husband’s happy head, bobbing about as he swims his way around paddle boarders and electric motorboats. There are no petroleum-powered engines allowed on Lac Sainte-Croix.
On the two-and-a-half-hour-long drive home most of us sleep. Allison, Chris, and I chat with Raphaël a little longer before even I drift off, waking myself intermittently when my head lolls particularly abruptly in that way all humans sleeping sitting up do.
Raphaël answers how often he works, and why. ‘This is my job, where I make my money to invest in my project.’ A sports psychologist by trade, Raphaël wants to work to combine the Paralympic Games with the Olympic Games. ‘Maybe in America in a few years, you’ll see me!’ he posits. We’ll be watching.
‘I have the best job. You, you are all happy. You are on holiday. And if someone is sad, I change their seats at the next stop!’
‘Everyone is different every day, he continues, ‘And I love to learn languages; I have the best teachers to practice speaking languages with. I see my boss once a month, and it’s when I collect my pay check!’
His phone disconnects from the music. ‘Pfft, French cars,’ he mumbles, trying to wrangle the Bluetooth while driving, ‘Peugeot. Never buy. You know IKEA? Peugeots are like IKEA. Nice from the outside, but if you use it, it breaks.’
Allison puts on a playlist that drives us home, lots of Wings and a few more contemporary tracks interspersed here and there.
I wake up to the Dutch woman excusing herself from the back row. ‘Can we stop? We have someone back here who is not so good…’
I whip around, worried Caleb is feeling carsick. But it’s not Caleb; it’s the Dutch woman’s companion. We receive a tutorial on motor vehicle safety in France and the importance of not stopping on the highway as the poor man pukes into a plastic bag.
‘Thanks for letting me just swim earlier,’ Caleb says, as we’re walking to dinner.
‘Of course,’ I tell him. ‘Have you had experiences where it wouldn’t have been OK for you to just swim?’ I wonder.
He pauses, ‘I don’t think so.’
Either way, I’m happy we’re both happy. I’m happy he felt comfortable swimming out into the lake while I waited on the beach. We can just be, together, even when we’re not together.
As I’m writing this on the beach in Nice, I’m looking up at intervals to watch Caleb swimming in the sea. I see his head disappear and his feet appear above the aquamarine waves, and giggle as he dives down.
I tried to explain to him the other night that it makes me feel more comfortable being myself when he does the same. I don’t have to worry either of us is compromising when we can both do what we want, even when it isn’t the same things. Sometimes I just want to sit on the beach and read, or write; sometimes he just needs to swim out. We’re both exactly where we want to be, doing exactly what we want to do.
A1. 1474
A2. Grasse was originally a leather manufacturing town; if you ask the French, Jean de Galimard invented modern perfume to mask this smell (I’m not sure whether we buy that it was to perfume the leather gloves destined to be used by royalty, rather than cover the smell of tanneries themselves)
A3. Royalty was kissed on the hand rather than the face, and perfume was applied to pulse points at the wrist to enable others to smell it there (and possibly to improve the smell of leather-gloved hands)
EC1. 1,000 kilos
EC2. 2 years in school and 7 apprenticing