Chapter 21

Riding the Rivieras

 

About 15 miles north of Valencia, I saw my first palm tree.   At 12 miles, I caught the first scent of sea breeze.  Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, looked deserted.  El Cid liberated this city from the Moors in 1094 and died here five years later.  I rode on and soon found myself staring at the Mediterranean.   It was magnificent!  The longest word in the Spanish language said it too: superextraordinarisimo! (extraordinary!)   It was a expansive silken sheet, dark turquoise, undulating under a perfect blue sky. 

There was that expansive oceanic look about the Mediterranean that suggested it had always been here.  But that was apparently not the case.   A mere six million years ago, the collision of drifting continents – the African Continental Plate drifting north, periodically grinding against Europe – closed off what is now Gibraltar, cutting off the flow from the Atlantic.  Rapid evaporation caused the formation of a salt lake, more like a series of salt-encrusted pools in a vast searing desert.  As the land once again shifted, 5 million years ago, the straight broke open and water rushed in at 10,000 cubic miles per year, in cascades 1,000 times the size of Niagara Falls.   (Now that would have been one hell of a tourist spectacle!) Even at that rate, it would have taken 100 years to refill the basin.  The Mediterranean now contained over one million cubic miles of water, making it the world’s largest inland sea.

Melawend and I were riding along a stone wall.  I saw men in short sleeve shirts, fishing.  Leaning against the wall, I caught my first sight of a girl in a bikini.  I felt conspicuously overdressed in my thick riding jacket and scarf.

Melawend and I left the built up area of Valencia by the Puente de San José over the Turia at Tabérnes Blanques.  At Sugunto we passed under the Montes del Cid.   I saw a huge castle perched atop a high hill overlooking the sea and I promised myself I'd come back and see it someday when I had money.  We rode on through a continuous succession of villages.

This was the region of Valencia, a former kingdom of southwestern Spain, comprising the present provinces of Valencia, Alicante, and Castellón.  As we passed through it, we saw Valencia’s famed orange groves.  This reminded me of those Minute Maid orange juice commercials that featured Bing Crosby telling you that Minute Maid was made with Valencia oranges (albeit from Florida) and saying, "Well, there's no doubt about it."  There truly was no doubt about it: I was falling in love with the Mediterranean.

But now Melawend and I had left the sea.  The coast road passed through endless acres of orange groves.  The repetitive scenery, though so new to me, soon became boring except for the sight of a couple who were passionately kissing each other in a tiny car that was parked on a lane in one of the groves.  I had arrived at the Mediterranean but where had the sea gone?  I was anxious to put my backside blessedly to sand.  I found the sea once again at a place that had a rather suggestive name – Peñiscola.  The sun was getting low I searched for a campground.

Peñiscola had been founded by the Phoenicians and was well known to ancient geographers.  It had served as a Carthaginian bridgehead in the Iberian Peninsula.  The wide arc of the beach was studded by the usual row of hotels but the most impressive feature about the place was the Papal Palace and its 16^th century fortifications, which rested along the length of a promontory at the west end of the beach.  Part of El Cid was filmed here. There were also houses with terraces huddled together on a bluff separated by steep headlands.

My timing was more fortunate than purposeful, but I was now glad of it.  Touristy places along the Mediterranean could be pleasingly vacant in the off season, and it had only just begun when Melawend and I arrived.  Peñiscola was a small touristy city.  Behind the city were the barren Sierra de Irta Mountains with a few houses clinging to them, and there were orange groves, new high-rises and, in town, small cafés and restaurants.  I found a side road that had many campgrounds and I chose one with a plaque, a campground called "El Cid".

A low, white-painted block wall surrounded it.  It had trees, a swimming pool, a restaurant, a bar and a store.   Only the pool was open – the others were closed for the season.  There were separate charges for the camper, the vehicle and the tent: total, about $5.00 per night.  I met the manager, a round-waisted fellow in shorts, who was standing with a gray-haired man whose head reminded me of a bear.  The manager spoke German, Spanish and French.  He lived in one of the caravans.  He showed me prices.  I showed him my articles and explained my journey.  His wife spoke German and French.   They and another other middle-aged couples occupied caravans.  There were two deserted tents set up on the open grounds.

Just then, two French girls came in.  They were students of agricultural commerce from a university in Tours.  They were about eighteen.  Katrine was a busty girl who was about five feet tall, had dark hair and was deeply tanned.  Her face reminded me of a fish, but in a cute way.  She was pleasant.  Patricia had a soft look and was taller with long brown hair and hazel eyes.  They spoke English and Spanish and translated my offer of a campsite for two nights in exchange for any publicity I might be able to give the campground.   The stocky manager was quite agreeable.   I set up camp and found that I had left my waterproof flashlight, which I had bought back home at a Canadian Tire store, at Hotel Sur in Tarancon.

I spend much of the next morning at the campground writing a long letter to Girve Fretz (remember Girve? our happy representative in Ottawa?).   I wanted to determine if I could apply for a government grant for my global project-in-progress.  I thought that by now, I had proven the seriousness of my commitment.  I also caught up with my journals.  It was sunny and hot until mid-afternoon when it became very comfortable. I went into Peñiscola and finally found my first Mediterranean beach.

I parked Melawend at a waterfront café and walked around to the beach.  I sat down and marveled at the Papal Palace.  Peñiscola was a seaside resort and I saw the usual cabanas, cots and paddleboats along the beach.  It was late September and the beach had perhaps a quarter of the people you might have seen in the peak season.  Terrorism in Europe was also undoubtedly a factor.

I was distracted by the sight of a middle-aged woman about twenty feet away who stood up with a pink towel and wiped sand from her bottom.  She was topless.  She had blond hair and was deeply tanned except for swoops of lighter flesh around her erect nipples.

I swear I tried to avoid it but the lonely voyeur in me came out and I grabbed my camera.  I hunted for naked breasts.  But I also wanted to put my images in context with the place and would look for women with a backdrop of either the palace to the right or the curve of hotels to the left.  There were a few more topless girls most of whom were laying sunnyside down.

There was one exception.  She was off by herself, lying on her side on a towel with her back to me, reading a magazine.  She was tall and blond with her hair held back by several clips and a pink ribbon.  Her skin was smooth and flawless.  I walked nonchalantly toward the palace and glanced back.  She had large firm breasts to make the animal in a man (or the man in a nudie bar) slaver and howl, "Hooters!"  I guessed that she was German as I remembered what Uwe had said in Lahr.   She wore a one-piece striped bathing suit that was rolled down so that it covered only her pubic hair and the part of her rounded bottom.  A man that lay on a towel nearby seemed to be staring at her.  I took a few candid photos and then stood by the café, summoning the nerve to go over and talk with her.

I reminded myself that I was a serious photographer.  I was not only titillated by a girl's body but loved the exquisiteness of the female form and the play of light and shadow over its shape and texture.   I had admired the sensitive, evocative nude images produced by photographer David Hamilton.  This girl had it all and I was desperate to try some nude photography.

I clomped over to her.  I did not see her look up at me but at that moment, she rolled over onto her stomach and continued to read.  I knelt beside her.

"Hello," I said.  "Do you speak English?"

She shook her head without looking up from her magazine.

"What are you reading?" I said.

She did not respond.

"Beautiful day," I said.

She did not respond.

"This is a pretty setting."

She did not respond.

I was beginning to panic.  I cut to the chase.

"I'm sorry to bother you miss," I said.  "I'm a photographer." I fingered my camera nervously.   "I couldn't help noticing that you are such a beautiful girl.  I was wondering, may I photograph you?"

She shook her head no.

I said something corny like, "Okay.  Have a nice day."

My heart was racing with embarrassment.  I wondered if the people at a nearby beachside café were staring at me.  I stayed on the beach long enough to grab a shot of the high massive walls of the palace fortifications that stepped down to the edge of the sea.  Palm trees swayed above the top of the walls.  As I was about to shoot a composition that included the palace and the sea immediately between it and me, a girl walked shoreward from the surf and into my viewfinder.  She was tucking one of her big breasts back into the bra of her bikini.

As I headed back to Melawend I met a pretty Spanish girl in sneakers, cut-off jeans and a black T-shirt with "Copacabana" written across the chest.  She posed with me beside Melawend in front a coat of arms of Peñiscola, recessed into a wall of the café.

I was hungry so I went into a store to get bread with the intention of pigging out on peanut butter sandwiches.  It was not good to go food shopping on an empty stomach.  Instead, I splurged on pastry and an ice-cream cone.  Partly as self-imposed penitence, I went back to "El Cid" and did laundry, a win-win choice, I thought.

It was time to move on.  In the morning, I packed up, bought a loaf of French bread in Peñiscola and left the city.  Melawend and I headed up the coast toward France and Italy.  We rode through town after pretty little town: Benicarlo (pop 10,000), the chief town of small farming region (vines, olives), and Vinaroz (pop 10,000), with an artificial harbor in the Plana de Benicarló.  Now we were riding at the foot of the Sierra de Montsiá (2,500 feet) through to San Carlos de la Rápita.   We rolled past Amposta on the right bank of the Ebro, the chief town in the large Ebro delta (200 sq. miles), which was developed during past century as rice growing area.

We were now leaving the Levant and entering Catalonia, about 110 miles from Barcelona.    Tortosa honored brave women: in the reign of Ramón Berenguer IV, the women of Tortosa repelled a Moslem attack.  As a reward, the sovereign bestowed upon them the insignia of the Order of the Battleaxe and the privilege of preceding men at official ceremonies

(Order of the Battleaxe – sounds like a club for domineering wives.  Just kidding!)

At Amploa, we were at the foot of the Fangal Pass.  But again, where was the sea?  Finally, near Hospitalet de Tarrangona the road returned to it.  Melawend and I rolled smoothly along the Costa Dorada, which was being developed as a tourist area.

And more towns: Cambrils, about 12 miles from Tarronga, was a fishing village and a bathing resort that had ancient ramparts and a massive battlement tower.  Salou had a great beach and an old watchtower on a promontory.  Tarragona was on a hill overlooking the sea and had several large beaches.

On we went through La Rivera, Torredembarra and San Vincente de Calders.  About 30 km past Tarragona, we came upon peaceful Vendrell, the birthplace of Pablo Casals (1876-1973), the Grammy-winning Spanish cellist, conductor, composer, pianist, and humanitarian.  In an effort to promote world peace, he composed the oratorio El pesebre (The Manger, 1960), and conducted it around the world.).  The main road split here; Melawend and I stuck to the coast.

Onward we rode under sunny skies beside the blue Mediterranean through the resorts of Calafell and Segur.  We skirted north of Stiges, a resort town that was noted for its white houses, flowers and palm-fringed beach and which reputedly one of the best climates in Europe.  Around it were the mountains of the Garraf and the Ordal massifs, protecting it from cold north winds.  The road kept to the coast through to Barcelona.

We arrived in sprawling Barcelona in mid-afternoon.  I asked a few times where I could find the via Augusta but no one understood me.  I found it on my own and just caught sight of the Canadian Coat of Arms the doorway of a building.  I did not see the customary flag.  A fat guy who did not speak English explained with a note that the consulate was open only from 10:00 to 1:00.  I could not conduct business here.  This was terrible.   I had to get my letters out.  It meant that I would have to rush to our next office, in Marseilles.  I sped out of Barcelona.  But there was one particular place in between that I would not forego – because of my quest for Her (we’ll get there in a moment).

Just as Manhattan could be intimidating to a newcomer, so could it be to non-Spanish-speaking rider on a heavy-laden scooter arriving in Spain’s main commercial and industrial centre and one of the Mediterranean's busiest ports.  Traffic was intense.

A decisive battle of the Spanish Civil War was fought at Barcelona in 1939 when the Nationalists defeated the Loyalist occupiers.  An eyewitness wrote of the horror surrounding a school that had been bombed by Franco’s forces:

"We managed to extricate only ten complete bodies.  All the others had been blown to pieces.  It was atrocious.   I saw one of the attendants recover a small blond head.  Others picked up what might have been the feet of little angels.  Not a single child who had been in the school was still alive."

(But you could not judge a place by its past.  Every place, it seemed, had its tragic histories and there was no accurate predicting of its future.  For example, take once-beautiful Sarajevo, in the now former Yugoslavia.  It had hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1984.  Who then could have imagined the city shattered just a decade later by Boznia’s civil war?  Or believed the world’s ineptitude in dealing with it?  Barcelona would be the world’s happy host of the 25^th Olympic Games in the summer of 1992.  But these things were in the future.)

I was simply intimidated by Barcelona’s traffic and frustrated by my lack of planning for my visit here.   I wanted to speed out of Barcelona and get to France.  I told myself that I would come back to Barcelona someday if only to spend a day admiring Antoni Gaudi's masterpiece and the posthumous continuation of his life's work – the towering Sagrada Familia Temple.  Gaudi had spent the last 35 years of his life working on it, until he was struck down by a trolley car at the age of 74.  (He was unidentified for some time and died in pauper's accommodations at the Hospital de Sant Pau i de la Santa Creu, near his beloved temple.  He is buried in the crypt.) As Melawend and I rolled on the straightest path through the city, I could see the extremely ornate spires of the Apostles rising up over 500 feet into the sky.  In this 124th year after its beginning (it was begun in 1882 – he took over in 1891), Gaudi’s masterpiece remained unfinished.

Onward we rode, finally reaching the desired place – Lloret de Mar and the beginning of the Costa Brava – the “wild coast” – sharply indented, rocky, with many steep promontories.  Much of it could not be reached by car, only by boat.  It stretched for 125 miles from Lloret de Mar to the estuary of the Riu Tordera near Blanes to the French Border.

Peñiscola had given me the first taste of the uninhibited Mediterranean and a reminder of Uwe's postcards of Lloret de Mar, this Catalonian resort on the Costa Brava.  Lloret de Mar was a congested tourist city of 15,000 that had a seasonal population of about 100,000.   It looked like an exciting place with lots of nightlife, but for me, this time, it was too busy and looked too expensive so Melawend and I rode on.  I found a fantastic campground that switch-backed its way up a steep forested mountain to terraced campsites that overlooked the sea.  This was Camping Canyelles.  It had its own disco, bar, huge store, pools, cottages, and villas and was pleasingly landscaped.

I talked with a beautiful blonde-haired blue-eyed assistant manager who looked like Anne Murray.  She was wearing a wedding ring.  Her English was fair.   She was friendly and explained that I could ask the manager about a publicity/campsite exchange when he returned.  She left and I kept company with two girls: dark-featured Teresa, who had come in with her infant son and Carmen, another girl who worked here.  We talked about American television.

"Have you heard of the TV series The Colby's?" I asked.

"Oh yes," Teresa said.  "Mr. Heston is a very good actor."

About an hour later, the manager drove in.  Carmen called his office and he came to the reception room.  His name was Antonio Rodrighez and he looked like a Spanish version of Gavin Macleod who played the captain on the TV series, The Love Boat.  He marveled at Melawend, liked the concept of my journey, and wanted to know how much helping me would cost them. 

I would stay two nights.

"If you come back this way on your journey around the world, you are welcome to stay here again," he said.

Camping Canyelles was to close in two weeks, and it was crowded with what I determined were mostly German tourists.  I found a high campsite near the pool with a fine view of the sea.  I set up camp and began to drift off, listening to sea breezes whispering through the pines.  How I wished I had Her to share this with.  But I was beginning to wonder if my personal longings would compromise the overall purpose of my journey.

I was low on money and I placed a lot of hope in my grant-seeking letter to Girve.  I had completed 23 exchanges so far and felt the mission was beginning to prove itself. 

(Nothing would come of this application.)

As Fort Erie was also a waterfront quasi-resort town with a big seasonal population difference, I decided to try for an exchange with Lloret de Mar.  This was also the largest hotel and residential centre of the Costa Brava.  I packed up and headed into town try to meet the Aculda (mayor).  I found the 19^th century Casa de la Vila (Town Hall) and learned that he would be in during the afternoon.  I walked along the normally bustling, promenade Passeig del Mar, which was thickly lined with palm trees.   I walked down to the beach. It was overcast and windy but there were still many of people here.  I parked Melawend, bought an apple pastry and shopped for nudie postcards.  I walked along the coarse sand of the beach to the rocky headland and along the much traveled path to a rock where upon which stood the bronze Dom Mariana, a full-figured girl who seemed to be forever looking out to sea for her lover.

On the way back, I saw a couple walking in the heaving surf as it swept up from an azure basin over a steep slope of wet sand.  The couple smiled and jumped as the waves buffeted their legs.   They saw me aim my camera at them and I shot them in retreat.

Back on the main beach, I saw several topless girls lying on the sand.  I saw girls stripping off their tops with the same nonchalance as you take off your socks to walk on the sand.   Most of them were fair-haired, from northern Europe and Scandinavia.  Two girls were particularly attractive.  One rose and slipped on a terry top.  The other was lying on her stomach and was virtually nude, with only a two stings emerging from the crevasse the most voluptuous derrière I thought I had ever seen.  The lonely guy in me was horny wanted to preserve this image, but before I could raise my camera, she sat up and put on a robe.  I was the only person on the beach carrying a camera, a rather obvious black one made bulky with the attached motordrive.  A few people stared at me.

I sat for a time on the low concrete wall behind the beach and looked at the topless girls.  Uwe had been right about Lloret de Mar.  I considered just how horny a guy could become sitting here.  And how lonely.  Seeing so many naked girls relaxing in these beautiful, if touristy places only reaffirmed feelings I got in strip bars.  After a while, all you saw were a lot of anonymous tits and asses.  The experience teased your fantasy but blunted the edge of true desire.  Or maybe it served to reinforce it – seeing part of what you were missing. 

I returned to the Mayor's office and joined other people who were waiting for him, bearing gifts.  He had several appointments.  I waited for over an hour.  There were tall two glass display cases filled with previous mayoral offerings from dignitaries of other cities – cups, mugs, plaques, statues and etched pewter plates.  Three people people were waiting to see the mayor, bearing a plaque of Essen, Germany.  I felt rather silly with my letters, postcards and town pin.

"Do you get many North American visitors?" I asked the Manager for Tourism.

"No.  It is because of the cost of getting here."

Maybe North Americans had not truly discovered Lloret de Mar, I thought.

He took my signature book into the mayor's office.  Though I never saw Aculda Josep Sala i Montero, my book came back stamped and signed by him.  I saw of photo of the boyish-looking mayor and his signature in a tourist booklet – the signature in The Odyssey Book was the same. 

The weather had worsened when I left the mayor's office.  Winds swept the sea into whitecaps and there were only a few people left on the beach.  There were no more bare-breasted girls.

I sat for a time on the beach.  It was late afternoon and people were leaving, though the weather had improved.  Just fifteen feet away, there was a pretty girl with shaggy blonde hair, wearing a white top and shorts.   She was lying on her elbow alone of the sand near the water’s edge, looking obliquely back toward the town.  It made for a nice image.  Click.  I had just about summoned the nerve to go over and talk with her when she spun completely around and smiled.  But the smile was not for me.  She rose abruptly and left.  She had noticed her boyfriend who was waving to her from the promenade.

Being in Lloret de Mar was also one of the lonelier times yet on the journey.

At a beachside shop I bought my nudie postcards.  These cost about ten cents each.  British-made Kodachrome cost about $13 a roll.  I stopped at a grocery store and bought bread, jam, chocolate spread and fruit.  I returned to Camping Canyelles.  Teresa smiled and said there would be no problem in my staying for another night.

I set up camp on the same high terraced site as the wind came up.  It was brisk but mild.  It put me in mind of riding on Melawend and I thought of how her name has an appropriate sound, like "mellow wind".  I thought of how beautiful the Mediterranean was.  No nudie postcards, no brochure, nothing prepared me for the experience of actually being here.  It was a bit like just seeing images of a beautiful naked girl and actually touching her.  The tingling feel of the sea air, the deep saturated colors of the sea, the human architectural touch that clung to the edge of it like a necklace of pretty shells.  I felt so lucky to be here.

Most of the campsites were taken but were presently vacant.   This made you wary of anyone who remained in camp.  Three "Italian stallions" came over to my site as I was taking some self portraits in camp with the Canadian flag I had been given in Lahr hung from a light pole as a backdrop.  They spoke in broken English but their eyes looked greedily at Melawend and my gear.  A black nylon cover concealed Melawend but they were determined to see her.  I felt like I was lifting my wife's skirts for some leering assholes, but how could you feel that way about a machine?  They smirked and commented to each other in Italian.  Their attitude seemed to suggest – Ah, mucho lire!  And where do you keep your money?  It was someone in Germany who had said to watch out for Italians: "They will rob you blind."  The guys went on their way.

I had wanted to check out the nightlife in Lloret de Mar.   Regardless of the perceived motives of these visitors to my camp, I knew theft was not limited by nationality – I always feared for Melawend and my belongings.  I stayed in camp.  I had not felt this way when I left Melawend unattended for over two hours across from city hall.  But in this virtually deserted campground, I felt handicapped.  I resolved to find ways during the journey to secure Melawend and the gear so I could get out more.

During the night the wind blew harder.  It began to rain.  The rain softened the gravel and Melawend toppled against the side of the tent.  To stabilize Melawend, I put the feet of her center stand inside my running shoes.

It was still raining in the morning and the Mediterranean was gray under the bleak sky.  The high wind blew up huge waves on the beach at Lloret de Mar.  Large stones had been hurled up on the beach.  As my feet crunched in the gravelly sand, I did some beach combing; collecting shells that had been washed ashore.  I was soaked but I loved the mildness and the caress of the swift air.  There was only one other soul on the beach – a girl who was holding a pink umbrella tight to her head, watching the breakers smash against the rock headland where the Dom Mariana kept her timeless vigil.  It was time for me to go.

I rode east along the rugged coast, weaving up and down high switchbacks.  The sky broke heavily as I rode beyond Canyelles.  Red soil rivered across the road and I swerved around rocks that had tumbled down from the slopes.  When I could, I took in the magnificent vistas of the Mediterranean.

The rain subsided when I reached a high viewpoint that looked high over the pretty little resort town of Tossa.  I parked and took photos of the sea and the breakers smashing against the rocky headlands that cradled Tossa and its 12^th century fortifications.  A car pulled up and after a moment a beautiful blonde-haired girl got out.

"That is a very large load you have on your scooter," she said with a German accent.  "Are you going far?"

"Around the world."

"That is amazing!" she said.

She waved at someone in the car and a man got out.  But as he headed toward us, rain poured down and they hustled back into their car.

I continued along coast road, whose rugged beauty was awesome even in the rain.  At San Feliu de Guixois, I left the sea and promised myself I would drive that coast again.  We passed through Gerona, the "town of a thousand sieges".  As we rolled on through the rain along the main highway toward the French border, I felt I was back in Ontario, again on some featureless green swath of highway.  Near Figueras, I sheltered under a busy overpass and ate bread and jam.

I passed through two checkpoints as I left Spain for France.   On the Spanish side, I was simply waved through.  Going into France, I went through two booths and at the last I was asked for my passport.  "Vous allez?"   I changed the rest of my Spanish and British money.  I was in French part of Catalonia.  The region was split between Spain and France by the Peace of the Pyrenees, 1659 when the main ridge of the Pyrenees was declared the boundary between France and Spain. At Narbonne, the sky cleared.  My destination was Sète or thereabouts on the coast.  I took the N112 at Béziers and headed for Cap d'Agde.

Between the Cape and Sète, the map showed a strip of land no wider than the red line that marked the road.  To the north was a body of water called the Elg de Thau and to the south was the open Mediterranean.  I was not prepared for what I encountered.  The road was just a few feet above sea level.  There were no trees on either side of the road.  Wind roared in off the sea at about 50 miles per hour.  It whipped up salt spray and sand so thick it looked like a golden version of a winter "white out" across a road in North America.  Melawend and I started across.  I was forced to lean her heavily toward the Mediterranean.  At times, I could not see ten feet in front of Melawend.  All the 15 miles or so of this terrestrial tightrope, I was afraid the wind would pick Melawend and me up and hurl us into the Elg.  I felt I was fighting the force of a massive sandblaster.  The biting sticky spray plastered Melawend, my clothes and my visor.   But Melawend held the road and we reached the shelter of Sète.

We rode through Sète.  The city was pretty and touristy but it seemed cluttered and busy and it reeked of fishing and industry.

Camp was found at last at Camping D'oc, a walled compound just off the main road outside Frontenac.  I met the manager; a 50ish man with red-gray hair combed back and a moustache.

"Un nuit?" he said, in exchange for some publicity.  "Oui."

I set up under trees by the washrooms and did laundry.  I saw a girl's towel, bikini and panties drying on a line nearby and felt hopeful.

I was lucky to pack up a dry tent the next morning.  The overcast sky held until I reached Montpellier, and then it broke.  Just northeast of the city, I jogged west toward Arles and rode across lands as flat and open as the Canadian prairies.  There was no evidence of crops in the stony soil.  There were some sheep by barns of stone.

I reached bustling Marseilles.  As in most cities, it was an ask-point-and-go process – I would ask directions of someone who did not speak English, they would simply point and I would go.  By noon, I found the consulate on the Avenue du Prado.  As in Barcelona, all I noticed was a Canadian Coat of Arms in an entryway at the consulate, there was no flag.  Fabienne Cordera made some photocopies for me.  Madeleine Castelluccio, Public Affairs Adjointe de Programe talked about her time with the CBC in Montreal and Ottawa.  She got married in Canada and then moved here.  She did not like Marseilles but she loved France.  I was allowed to make a collect call to Dad but his answering machine would not accept the call. (Inventors: an answering machine that will selectively accept collect calls is still needed).  I wanted to use a typewriter so I could send to Girve a more formal application for a grant, but I was not allowed into the secured areas of the consulate.

I told Madeline about the German and Canadian Friendship Association in Lahr and asked about its counterpart in Cannes (Denise had told me about them).   She pursed her lips.

"They are a rich and snobbish group, mostly rich retired French," she said.  "There is a division between us because we could not send a delegate to a large function the association was holding.  It was a very busy time for us.  They were quite put out.  But the only reason they called us is because they could not get someone to come from Paris."

I learned the name of the wealthy founder.  I had the name of the president and decided I would still like to meet them.

I thanked Madeline and Fabienne and left to mail some letters: to penfriends in Malaysia and Japan, to two families I had visited along the way, and I sent a package to Melanie and Wendy.  I left Marseilles in late afternoon.  The sky had cleared and I rode in golden light along the D559 through beautiful coastal mountains.  Melawend and I passed through a canyon of white rock that reminded me of Dover.   We rode on to Toulon.  I would love to have stayed in this pretty city but the sun was setting and I needed to find a place to camp.   Just east of the city, we came to Hyères.

I found Le Vallon du Soleil Tennis Club, a sprawling complex that had a large area for camping.  The manager was in the office/house.  He did not speak English but through a young guy who translated, he welcomed my journey and said I could camp anywhere.

"He says perhaps he will see you later at the clubhouse," the young guy said.

I found several trailers set up on stony ground and decided to camp near them to have the security of company for the night.  I set up and walked down to the dimly lit clubhouse.  It was perhaps too early to be there.  The manager was behind the bar.  A man and a busty woman sat on stools at the bar.  Otherwise, the place was empty.  I said hello to the manager who simply smiled and nodded.  I was glad of this because I had felt obliged to meet him and talk about the journey, to justfy my being here.  And I was simply tired out and hungry.  I drifted back to camp.

There was a family living in a mobile home across the stony lane from my tent.  The home was on a foundation.  There was a child’s swing set beside it and a dog was leashed to a wooden deck.  The father came by my tent.  He had gray hair combed back and a moustache.  His teenage daughter was with him and she spoke some English.

"My father says if you have any problems, you come toute suite."

Later, the father came to my campsite.

"C'est tres froid!" he said.  He gestured shivering, then eating, "Mange...tomato."

He left and returned about three minutes later with a plate full of macaroni with tomato sauce, a big piece of chicken and some bread.  He gave it to me, smiled and returned to his mobile home.

It was sunny the next morning and I drove along another superb stretch of mountainous coastal road.  Melawend and I rode stately into the elegant resort town of St. Tropez, the place the ancient Greeks had called Athenopolis but now carried the name of the saint who was beheaded by the Romans.  I had seen TV commercials advertising the "St. Tropez tan" and it was here to be seen on the bodies moving amid the huge flotilla of expensive yachts and cigarette boats.  An international race was to be held and the harbour was full of spotless sailing yachts with young tanned crews.  These were the bronzed "beautiful people", the "jet set", and the "idle rich" I had heard about. 

Melawend and I rode along narrow streets just off the harbour.   We passed tiny restaurants fronted by sidewalks that were only one-person wide.  I parked and then photographed Melawend among other scooters, motorcycles and curbside flowerpots just to say that I had been in a more intimate part of St. Tropez.  A silver Porsche whizzed by.

I parked Melawend by the harbour with other motorcycles along a black-painted chain-and-post barrier.  This side of the harbour was a forest of masts.  I dug out my cameras and photographed the flotilla of sailing yachts.  They were magnificent creations.  The wood craftsmanship on some of them was superb.  I could only imagine how much these boats were worth.  Many of the crews sported uniforms of designer shirts and shorts.   And there were several girls sitting alone by the gangways, just looking at the boats and the men.

When I returned to Melawend, a beefy, bearded young American in khaki shirt and pants met me.  His name was Kenny Baker and he was from Cincinnati, Ohio.  He had brought his shiny red BMW from the US.  His wife had flown back home a week ago.  He was going to ride back to Paris and fly back home.

"It's great to speak with someone who understands English," he said.

He said that a Canadian airline had flown him and his bike to Europe, on a return ticket, for only $1,000.  He said he owned a dealership that serviced Mercedes, Volvos and other luxury imports.   He also had an elegant 38-foot Riva, a polished mahogany "dream boat" made by the Moroccan company in the late 1930's.

We walked around, looking at the yachts.  He pointed out a sleek cigarette boat that was powered by twin 12-cylinder Lamborghini engines.  The harbour was studded with wealth.

"I'm going to stay in St. Tropez for a few days," he said.   "Are you going to be around?"

"No, I'm heading on to Cannes today."

"That's too bad.  It's difficult not having someone to speak English with."

Melawend and I followed the narrow, twisting and sometimes bumpy coast road.  You were often back from the sea but there were many vistas to behold – the road winding along the shoulders of the hills of red rock and greenery, the coastline studded with exquisite villas with soothing views, and the craggy headlands and always the dramatic deep color of the sea.  These were the Esterel Mountains, the red porphyry rocks of the Estrel Massif, rising up from the sea between St. Raphael to the west and Cannes to the east.  The road here was called the Corniche de l’Estrel.  It ran through the resort of Loulouris, past the impressive Cap du Crammont and the village of Agay.

On one sharp curve, just beyond a place where a speeding train hugged the high road, we came upon a white two-seat Bugati that was parked on the narrow shoulder.  A large trunk was strapped to a rack just behind the seats.  I took photographs of it but saw no one around.  I imagined a couple, attired in loose silky clothes, had scrambled down the slope to a sheltered nook over the azure inlet for a picnic of some bubbly and some caviar…  I envisioned that Robin Leach and his Lifestyles and the Rich and Famous crew had scrambled down there with them to record their private getaway so as to inspire our own “champagne wishes and caviar dreams”.  

Ah, the good life!

I continued along the coast road, riding through layback villages and past beaches where topless girls walked along as carefree as the Mediterranean sun.  If a lonely guy did not keep one eye on the twisting road, I thought, he could get mangled in an accident here.

At last, I reached Cannes, home of the world’s most famous film festival, and playground for the rich and famous.  I was a vagabond on a heavy-laden scooter and at once I began to feel terribly out of place.

I rode along the Allées de la Liberté, a pretty tree-lined street along the north side of the Vieux Port (Old Port).  On the far side of the Vieux Port, I saw the cream-colored Palais des Festivals where the stars landed on earth.  Inside there were 3 large auditoriums, 11 conference rooms, 2 exhibition halls, a casino, a nightclub and a restaurant.  The toast of movie makers boasted the most modern technical apparatus including sound studios, simultaneous interpretation arrangements, audio-visual equipment and large projectors.

(I would see none of these, but the Palais would play a key role in my stay in Cannes.)

At the western end of the Allees I found the Hôtel de Ville (built between 1874-76) and the office of the Cannes Chamber of Commerce, but it would be closed until 12:30.  From here, I called the founder of the France-Canada Society but he spoke no English.  A dark-haired girl named Anna was standing nearby she obliged me by acting as translator.  He said I should speak to the president of the club, Mr. Mouling, the one I was told about in Marseilles.   Mr. Mouling was agreeable to a meeting, and suggested he could meet me for a drink at the club at the new harbour on Saturday.

I would love to have stayed for weeks in Cannes.  Vagabond though I was, the elegant relaxed ambiance struck me immediately.  I toured the old harbour and rode past the Palais des Festivals.  Melawend and I rolled stately along the elegant Boulevard de la Croisette.  It was soothingly lined with palm trees and gardens.  We rode past shops with names that included Cartier and Gucci.   A more daring crusader might have sought a sponsored stay at the gleaming white hotels, like the Carlton.  One could have imagined a ruffled Indiana Jones striding confidently under the clock above the columned entrance, go up to the manager with the casualness of familiarity and say, "Hello Jacques, I need a room."  The manager would snap his fingers, bellboys would escort Indy to an elegant sea-view suite where he would shower, shave and emerge in a tux, just in time for a night on the town.  I was not Indiana Jones, nor was I a famous actor like Harrison Ford.  Though I saw a few backpackers walking on La Croisette, I felt conspicuously out of place with the many people that were walking around in designer clothes by these wedding-cake hotels and the expensive cars that were parked along the boulevard.

I left Cannes and secured a free camp in near Mougins, which was once home to Pablo Picasso.  He loved it here.  But we may not have had Picasso had it not been for one of his uncles.  A midwife who thought baby Pablo was stillborn had abandoned him on a table.  The uncle noticed the baby struggling for air and saved his life.

Picasso had also been a "struggling artist" – so poor early in his career that he burned some of his drawings to keep warm.  Maybe that was one reason he became so prolific.  As the artist who became the most famous artist during his lifetime, moreso than any other artist in history, Picasso produced 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints, 34,000 book illustrations and 300 sculptures and ceramics.  A 1980 exhibition filled New York's MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and he was the first living artist to have a showing at the Louvre.  When most artists lived in poverty, Picasso enjoyed a wealthy lifestyle.  It was said that if he wanted to buy a house, all he had to do was draw a picture of it – the print would be more valuable than the house.  Picasso died in 1973 in his villa, Notre-Dame-de-Vie, near Mougins.

At Mougins, I found myself at an elegant villa estate campground, Les Lentisque.  It had shady lanes and a swimming pool.  I felt extremely fortunate when I obtained a sponsored stay here.  But what could I do in a place like Cannes?

The next morning, I rode into Cannes and confirmed my meeting with Mr. Moulins at three o'clock.  We would have a drink at the Porto Conto Club.  I had time to look around.  I parked Melawend and walked along the fabulous palm-line Boulevard de la Croisette. 

I took photos of the yachts moored in the old harbour.  I took photos of the Palais des Festivals and the old hotels.  Cannes was itself a movie set, but whole and real.  I took photos of retired people who were sitting on benches, watching youth strut by.  I walked out by Porto Canto, the new harbour, and took shots of the yachts, wondering what it would be like to own one and to cruise the coastline of the Mediterranean. 

Along the edge of Parc de la Roseraie, I took photos of two virtually nude shapely girls who were sunning themselves incongruously on large rugged rocks that lined the shore.  The backdrop was the deep blue of the Mediterranean and the elegant curve of beach and hotels along la Croisette.  One of the girls lay bottoms up, while the other lay sunny-side up.   What a frustrating yet hopeful sight this was for the poor and lonely guy to behold.  I sat there for a time and then went back to the main part of the boulevard.

The main hotels had beachside restaurants, cabanas and lounge chairs on the beach.  There were legions of umbrellas anchored in the sand: pink ones, yellow ones, ones with white and blue panels, each legion representing a different hotel.  And everywhere there were topless women of all ages: fat ones, skinny ones and big bouncing babes who looked like they just stepped out of a Playboy photo session.

I wanted a break in my diet and what better place than in such a gastronomic haven as Cannes.  I had been eating either bread with peanut butter or bread with jam (to stretch them out).   I splurged and bought a slice of pizza for $1.50.

I found a spot on the sands of the Plage de la Croisette, a public beach between the Palais and the diagonal boundary of the Parc de la Roseraie, and sat on the sand behind a statuesque girl with satiny brown hair.  She was lying topless on a towel.  Her ears were wired to a walkman.  She leaned up on one elbow to see a huge white yacht as it pulled up near the beach and drop anchor.  In front of the girl was an old gentleman in a cap who was sunbathing on a towel and reading a magazine.   My camera lens brought the three images together as one composition. 

Click.

Seated on a towel about 20 feet to my right was a trim, pale, dark-haired young guy.  He was wearing a gray bathing suit and a stern expression – Jan Michael Vincent with black hair and exceptionally hairy armpits.  He watched as new girls came to the beach and removed their street clothes, and he looked particularly at the statuesque girl who lay in front of me.  He had the look of a troubled young executive or a truly "serious" actor.   Whatever, his look made him seem not predatory but stoical to the beauty that surrounded him.  Why was he here?  But this was only a superficial impression.  Perhaps he had just had an argument with his girlfriend.  Maybe someone close to him had died tragically and the cruelty of life had left its mark.   Maybe he was a mean son-of-a-bitch.  Who was to say?  After half an hour, he got up and walked away.

I saw all these people baking themselves in the sun and perhaps taking on the heavy price for tanning that was skin cancer.   But this could also have been an entrepreneurial single’s gold mine if he or she came here with bottles of expensive sunscreen and offered to apply it for a fee.

I met with Mr. Moulin in the parking lot of the Porto Conto.   I had come expecting a similar welcome and maybe even such hospitality as I had received from the friendship club in Lahr.  What a hell of a letdown this was!   We stood by Melawend and I asked him questions about his association.   His answers were brief.  Their get-togethers were for parties, dinners, dances or monthly meetings.  I had to ask questions just to keep conversation moving.

I had been told that this group was mainly a bunch of rich snobbish French retirees and that there were perhaps only six Canadian members out of 130 members.  Their objective, it appeared, was to get freebies.  In the beginning, the Canadian Embassy helped fund their activities, including free trips for all to Canada.   But when the funding stopped, membership dropped to 16.  To me, this said something about the club's true motivations.  It was said the club was started by someone who wanted to see Expo '67 in Montreal in the worst way but did not have the money to go.  He determined that if he had had Canadian friends he would have been able to go.  So he started this club.  That was what I had heard.  I wanted to learn for myself.

But it was obvious I had little to offer the club.  Our brief conversation began and ended in the parking lot.   Mr. Moulins walked away and into the club.   The invitation for a drink was not honored.

This left me feeling a little insecure about being in Cannes, in the same way I had let Denise’s comments make me feel in Paris.  It also made me a bit prejudiced against the wealthy citizenry of Cannes.  This was unfair, of course, but it left me a little shy to pursue my diplomatic mission.  Cannes attracted the world's elite, the people who had earned or at least lived a life that most people around the world only dreamed about.  Its famous film festival represented one of the two top venues of recognition for creative achievement in movies that touched the whole world.  Megabuck movie deals were also made here.  I felt that I was Sonny NoBucks.

People came here to get noticed.  I wanted to hide. 

Cannes was the film world’s busiest marketplace.  You had true cinematic artists, B-movie hawkers and topless starlets all seeking recognition.  It was the naked stage of the cinematic play.  But it was also serious business and the Festival that hosted this play, in July, had staged its 39^th production.

I should have been here the next year, 1987, for its 40^th anniversary.  It had been a grabber.

Elizabeth Taylor, her restored hourglass figure sheathed in red, arrived fashionably but irritatingly late for the red-carpet ceremony marking the festival’s 40^th anniversary.  The crowd booed her when she alighted from her limousine.

French director Maurice Pialat caused a scandal at the otherwise gentile 40^th anniversary.  He was among the most professionally revered and personally reviled of France's movie auterus.  Amid the derisive whistles and catcalls when accepting the award of Palme d'Or from presenter Catherine Deneuve, who pleaded futilely for the mob to give the director a chance to defend his honour, Pialat was delighted.  'If you don't like me," he proclaimed, "I can tell you, I don't like you either."

On the day that Princes Diana and Prince Charles arrived for the festival, it was announced that American screen legend Rita Hayworth had died. This was poignant reminder that the only immortality was on the screen – these icons, created by the roles they played and the media that promoted them, were flesh and blood, like the rest of us.

I would also not be here for the festival in 1987 that bore elements of peace promotion.   One was the Japanese director announced; "I would like to work for peace."  William Wenders, who picked up the director's prize for his daunting, sentimental fantasy The Wings of Desire, gave another.  He said, "If we can improve the images of the world, perhaps we can improve the world."

Well, I had missed 1986's festivities and things seemed relatively quiet in Cannes.  There were no obvious celebrities here.  I decided to stay one more day because the 13^th Annual Congress of Energy was to be held at the Palais des Festivals the next day and both President Mitterand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac would be flying in by helicopter.  10,000 policemen were on hand to see to security.

And I wanted a day just to be anonymous in Cannes, with no meetings.  I just wanted to be a tourist and soak up a little of its outdoor atmosphere.  I also wanted to approach one of the topless girls here to see if one would model for me.  I was given another night at restful Les Lentignes.

I had a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings in Cannes:

·         feeling that I was so white on a beach when a bronzed topless girl looked at me such that I felt out of place and that I needed a tan to acclimatize myself for hotter countries;

·         feeling like I ought to send extra clothes back to Canada, and that I needed light colored clothes;

·         on taking pictures – feeling that I needed to conserve film yet needing to get the scene because I’m here now, and things often enter a scene moments after a shot and makes it better and of course requires another shot;

·         thinking that in Africa and India I should join up with a group, like the Red Cross, in exchange for security and transport;

·         thinking of Iphegenia in Athens (yes, another penfriend);

·         needing a place to prepare Melawend and myself for Africa;

·         remembering Scotland, and northern Europe and how I dreamed of being here, and now here, the pervasive feeling that I had to keep moving;

·         thinking of sponsors, what they had given and what they would get out of this;

·         feeling my loneliness and listening to my pre-recorded music to keep me going.

I had a lot on my mind.  I thought of the beach and of seeing a lot of people alone, of seeing a lot of well-tanned people so nonchalant about their nudity.  I saw one couple get up to go for a walk, he in very brief trunks, she in a string bikini bottom and nothing else.  There were all those different shapes and sizes, hard bodies and flabby bodies – one woman old and fat and all rolls; another woman was completely nude, perhaps in her forties, her man was blocking her from behind; and one particularly beautiful blonde who wore her hair up, perhaps to show off her high firm breasts as she strutted along the beach.  The atmosphere was rich, uninhibited and layback.  I spent a lot of time just looking, thinking, taking photos and making notes.

I began not to care if I was rejected here.  I saw lots of scooters parked everywhere, any place you could fit them, pulled right up beside a phone booth and such.  I saw people riding scooters, old and young (including some very beautiful girls).

And being in Cannes, I realized how much I missed movies – I had not gone to a cinema since I left Canada.

(And I would go without for almost a year – until I reached Singapore.)

I looked at yachts: many were from England: London and Southampton.  I saw one from Kuwait, and many from Riviera: Nice and Cannes.  I saw a huge blue and white one off by itself beside a breakwater – the Carinthia VI.

I returned to Porto Conto the next morning. There was a skinny mustachioed old man sitting on the rocks by the port, fishing.  He suddenly stood up and swore.  A snorkel diver with a speargun had just surfaced where his line was in the water.

I made my way toward the old harbour to photograph the yachts there.  Standing on la Croisette across from the Carlton, I saw an old sailing ship coming out of the haze over the sea.   It was a pirate galleon!  On its prow was a huge full-body figurehead of, I guessed, a nearly naked, bearded and crowned Poseidon, so huge as to be a grotesque caricature.  But the ship was magnificent, a ghost of the past, coming out of a fog – the look was pure Hollywood.  It headed for anchorage near the lighthouse on the old harbour.

As I walked behind yachts along the Old Harbour, I saw a middle-aged woman wearing a loose white top that had a delicate blue pattern.  Fleshy cheeks extruded from her bikini bottom. 

"Bon jour,” I said in passing.

She smiled and we exchanged introductions and pleasantries.   I was struck by her immediate friendliness.   Her name was Genevieve Rey and she was a dressmaker from Nice.  She had short graying hair, a deep tan and a vivacious smile.   She put me in mind of the actress Anne Baxter.  

"You luke like a schoolboy," she said.

Her comment warmed my heart.  

We walked over to the pirate ship to take photos of it.  The ship had been used in Roman Polanski's movie, Pirates, which starred Walter Matthau.  It was a futuristic swashbuckling romp.  (It would become a commercial flop, though it garnered an Academy Award Nomination for Best Costume Design).  Polanski was still a fugitive from U.S. justice since 1977 when he admitted having sex with a 13-year-old girl but had jumped bail and fled to France.  In 1968, he had also been linked the heinous murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate, along with other members of the Charles Manson cult.

His pirate ship was now berthed at the harbour and you could tour it for 25 francs.  I settled for exterior photos, some of which featured this bubbly French woman in the foreground.  We walked back toward the Palais des Festivals.  She said she was staying on the yacht of a friend.  She told me that she had roughed it in travels through much of Africa and India, often staying at YWCA's.   She said she had received much hospitality along the way.  She wanted to treat me to lunch.

We stopped at the yacht, Lady Cleopatra, and met the owner, the Baroness von Kirchoff-Lintner.  She was a tall attractive redhead and wore big-lensed tinted glasses.  Her informal name was Gerdi.  Her husband was a businessman in London.  She had a son who was in a boarding school somewhere.  We had a drink at a table on the rear deck under a little sign that read, "Welcome Aboard".  I waited there while they went below and got dressed.

We went to lunch at a self-serve restaurant called Restaurama.   Though Gerdi considered the food mediocre, I savored every bite of my gravy-drenched steak, french fries, tuna fish salad, and sponge-style desert made of eggplant covered in a caramel sauce.  Genevieve insisted on paying. 

World-traveled Gerdi said, "There are nicer places here where you get better food and better service for the same money." 

I was not going to complain.

We returned to the Lady Cleopatra and had drinks on the padded front deck.  We were not alone.  There was a blonde-haired girl sunning herself on the deck.  She was topless.  This was Olivia, a student from Heidelburg who was living with Genevieve while studying French in Nice.

The Lady Cleopatra was birthed beside the Palais des Festivals.  It was now about the time Mitterand and Chirac were to arrive in Cannes by helicopter.  Police were everywhere.  Parked about every twenty feet around the Palais were dark green busses that had carried police who now surrounded the building.  A little after 4:00 p.m., a helicopter came in over Porto Conto.  It was a huge military craft.  As it came in low over the beach, the props blew the mattresses off the Majestic Hotel's lounge chairs.  Balloons tied to the Palais began to rub against its textured walls and several exploded.  Several nearby police drew their hand weapons until the nature of the culprits was determined.  Other potential noisemakers were promptly arrested.   Odd it was to see big burly police officers taking balloons prisoner and carting them off.

I decided I had better go to the spot across from the Carlton where I had parked Melawend and bring her over to the Lady Cleopatra.  Olivia had gone swimming so I thought that while I was over that way, I would look for her.  She was on the beach across from the Carlton.  She was sunbathing, wearing only black bikini bottoms.  Her hair was matted from swimming.  We talked about Cannes and how uncomfortable she felt here, feeling she was imposing on Gerdi.  She missed her boyfriend who was at home in Germany.  She spoke in broken English, explaining she had not used English since she learned it in high school eight years before.

I was amazed at how oblivious she was to her nudity while we talked.  And it bothered me to be looking at the breasts of another guy's girlfriend, imagining myself if I were he.   But it was her casualness and the ease of our conversation that gave me courage.

"Olivia, who you mind if I took some photographs of you?'

She shrugged with the same indifference, then she said, "Yes, I would like some photos for my boyfriend."

My own morality was twisted again as I thought how upset I would be if my girlfriend showed me nude pictures of her that some other guy had taken.   But since I did not have a girlfriend, I shrugged off my hesitance.

Though there were several people nearby, we took several poses as if no one was around.  They were simple poses and a few were rather structured as I nervously moved her by the shoulders so the setting sun would cast its golden glow on her face and shadows would highlight the texture of her skin and the soft curves of her breasts and her erect nipples.

When it grew too dark for more photographs, she invited me for coffee at a café.  Afterwards, we rode Melawend over to Polanski’s ship.  It looked peculiar at night, like an illuminated ghost ship.   We sat together on the pier and looked at the lights of Cannes.  I savored the feeling of sitting next to a girl in such a splendid setting as Cannes at night, while feeling awkward about doing this with another guy's girl.

"We trust each other," Olivia said.   She explained that she and her boyfriend had this peace of mind when they were apart.  But I thought it was also her subtle way of telling me, "Don't get any ideas."

We returned to the yacht.  I had told Genevieve and Gerdi that I was going to get Melawend and would be back shortly.  It was now a few hours later and I returned on Melawend with Olivia holding my waist.  They were dressed up –  and they had been waiting.  Olivia slipped quickly into a blue gown.  Gerdi gave me a pastis; a yellowish aniseed-based aperitif that she said had the same liquorice-taste of Ouzo in Greece. 

I envied the older gentleman, whom they greeted on the walkway (he was skittish of boats and would not come aboard one, even when it was moored).  This was Gerdi's rich uncle and he would be taking them to dinner.  Gerdi said that he had bought five mausoleums for himself because he was undecided where he wanted his final resting-place: Geneva, Paris...  I wondered if perhaps the spirits of the dead rich could also have more than one home and be chauffeured between them.  They left to have dinner with the rich uncle.  I watched them as they left with Gerdi on her uncle's arm, the three ladies looking so elegant under the evening lights.

I was left to relax on the yacht.  It was one of the most splendid times on the journey so far – me on a yacht in Cannes.  Across the harbour, I could see the lights of Le Suquet – the Old Town – on the slopes of Mont Chevalier whose summit was crowned by an 11^th century watchtower.  The moored yachts, the lights of the city dancing on the softly undulating water, the warm air and the gentle breeze, and me in a deck chair, drink in hand, taking it all in.  Me without Her.  

Where in the world are You! 

I busied myself with the technicalities of taking night photographs of the city from the deck of the yacht.

I was leery about having left my gear in camp, about six miles away.  I had heard that rich people were sometimes robbed outside hotels.  But I looked around at all these yachts, many of which were vacant.  Cannes seemed safe.  And Melawend had been parked all day on La Croisette and was untouched.

The girls returned around 10:45.  Gerdi gave a short blast of Lady Cleopatra's horn.  We sat in the white chairs on the foredeck.  Their conversation drifted into French and I was eliminated from it.  They sang some German songs.  Olivia was as chummy and as bubbly as Gerdi and Genevieve.  They were a threesome.  The alienation Olivia had felt had now transferred to me.  I savoured the nighttime atmosphere and then slipped quietly away, hardly noticed, around 1:00 a.m.  

I left and got lost on the twisting, climbing streets of Cannes.  It was cold.  I asked a gendarme for directions but I ended up going the wrong way.  The way I knew was 16 kilometers while a more direct route may have been 7.   Arriving back at camp at 2:15 a.m., I found the gate closed so that I had to climb over a wall to open it and walk Melawend in.

I went into town the next morning to work an exchange at the local office of Chamber of Commerce.  A pretty girl explained that the main office was in Nice.  "You could try at the Hôtel de Ville."

I went to the Hôtel de Ville and met the receptionist who sat beside the mayor's office.   She said there was no one would be available for me to see until 3:00, but that I could leave my information with her for the time being.  I went over to the Lady Cleopatra.   No one was up.  I went for a walk and came back later.  Olivia was up but was more interested in resting on the front deck.  I walked around some more.  I walked on the shopping street that parallels La Croisette.  I looked for country crests.  The only one I found was Monaco.  Film was about $20 a roll.  At noon, Gerdi and Genevieve were still asleep and Olivia still wanted solitude.  I walked along the beach promenades and took more photos of topless girls – I felt that I was becoming a little too preoccupied with looking for bare breasts.  I took photos of the Palais des Festivals.  I took photos of the Carlton, the Martinez and the Majestic Hotels. 

I went back to the Hôtel de Ville.  Out of an upper rear window, I took photos of the shops and the apartments with wrought-iron balconies along the Rue Félix-Faure, one of main shopping streets of the town.  A young lovely dark-complexioned girl named Martine came over from the Palais to escort me back to it where I met her boss, the Palais’ press officer.   His name was Dan-Antoine Blanc-Shapira.   He explained that his much-hyphenated name was so because his parents had each held to their own choice of a name for him.  He was a dark and trim, a good-looking young guy with bushy black hair.  He welcomed my journey.  He took copies of my papers and called a journalist.  He loaded me up with souvenirs, which included a flag of Cannes, a canvas bag, matches and T-shirts.  I was to meet him again tomorrow here at the Palais for the interview with the journalist.

I returned to camp for a fourth night and caught up with my journals.  I thought of Gerdi.   She was a baroness but she would soon be going back to her maiden name as she was getting a divorce, her second.  She was German and spoke German, French and English.  She seemed friendly, philosophical and worldly but a little hard-bitten by it all.  She was anticipating a messy divorce, especially over finances.  She got along with her first husband and the son they had who was now in boarding school.   Her current husband, now about 45 years old, had been married eight times (Mickey Rooney, move over).  Gerdi was several years younger younger than he.

In the morning, I packed up and thanked my hosts as Les Antiques and rode into Cannes one last time.  I went one last time to the Lady Cleopatra and saw only Genevieve.  We talked more about travel.  We said goodbye and I wandered around La Croisette.  Martine, Dan-Antoine's lovely assistant, secured permission for me to take Melawend up to the same entrance that Mitterand had used.  Dan-Antoine came over.  He said had already sent exchange information back to Fort Erie.  I held the flag of Cannes as I sat on Melawend and a news photographer took a photo.   A journalist named Jean-Pierre took my story.    We all shook hands and they went their way.  I took one last look at Cannes from the promenade in near the Palais.  My last images of Cannes were of a pretty artist who was selling her watercolour portraits of Cannes on la Croisette.  She wore a pith helmet and seemed to be sheltering her face from me.  It was time for me to go.

 

Melawend and I rode under the noon sun toward Nice along the coast road through Antibes and beyond.  There were more lovely beaches, and more topless girls.  I determined that the French Riviera was the most dangerous place in the world to drive if you were male, unattached and lonely.  At the very least, you would get a sore neck from having your head cocked seaward most of the time.

I rode into pretty but bustling Nice.  The beach I saw there was stone.  Melawend and I rolled beside elegant buildings along the pretty, palm-lined Promenade des Anglais.  I stopped in Nice only long enough to buy cookies, crackers and a replacement canteen.

After Nice, the road rose and twisted up and up to the heights above Monte Carlo.  You rode past splendid villas that overlooked the Mediterranean and the huge developed promontory known as "The Rock of Monaco" (the rock of the Monoikos, a Ligurian tribe that occupied the rock in the 6^th century, and gave the Principality its name).

I knew that if I went too quickly, I would miss much of Monaco – it had the shortest coastline of any sovereign maritime country, a mere 3.49 miles (5.61 km).  With its 27,000 people (mid 1985) living in an area of just 473 acres (191.4 hectares), the principality also had the world’s densest population (38,179 people per square mile / 14,750 per sq km).

But you were made aware mainly of one person.  Everywhere you looked you saw that Monaco’s Princess Grace, the former American actress Grace Kelly, was memorialized.  Monuments, streets and buildings bore her name or her likeness.  She had died in a car crash on these twisting roads in 1982.

She had been at Roc Angel, an old farmhouse on a green ledge high up on the slopes of Mont Agel above Monaco.  She and Prince Rainier had bought the property as a refuge from the formalities of the palace and Monaco and they referred to it as “the ranch”.  Prince Albert and Princess Stephanie were soon to be off to school.   Princess Grace had been depressed at the beginning of September – she was fighting bronchitis and there had been rows with Stephanie, but as the time approached for her to leave Roc Angel, she was more optimistic.

Princess Grace got into her brown Rover 3500, an 8-cylinder automatic that for ten years had been one of her favorite cars.  She had an appointment with her couturier in Monaco for last-minute alterations to a dress.  She would never make it.

Below the hill town of La Turbie, the road was tortuous, a series of sharp hairpin bends with the mountain dropping steeply away on the outside.  It was always crowded with traffic. A truck driver was following the Rover as it negotiated the first right-hand curve so sharp that you almost had to stop to get around it, then round the left-hand bend past the Monaco Aero-club.  Suddenly, some two hundred yards from the last corner, concealed by a projecting bluff on the mountainside, the driver saw the Rover zigzag, almost scraping the side.  He sounded his horn and the car straightened up for the last stretch down to the sharpest curve of all, a right-hand bend with a crash barrier on the outside, beside which a dirt track led off to the left at right angles to the main road.  The truck driver did not see the car slow down, nor brake lights, "she did not even try to turn and I had the impression that she was going faster and faster...it disappeared over the edge..."

It propelled Princess Grace to her tragic death.  The tragedy was that she had suffered a mild stroke, which, if she had not been driving, would not have killed her.  It was a type that many people suffer and not even know it.

These were indeed dangerous roads.  In many places I saw auto debris that had been swept to the side of the road: broken taillights, headlights and mirrors.  I heard an accident.  A car pulled out from a side road too soon and hit the car ahead of me.  They stopped and a girl got out of the car that had been hit.  She was furious!  I had not witnessed the actual impact and no one was hurt so I rode on, slowly.  In Monaco, I noticed quite a few cars that had been scarred by accidents and I was reminded, from my youth, of the banged-up cars that you saw being driven around the city of Buffalo, New York.

In a line of a dozen cars on one of the high roads, a man in a red Lamborghini stuck out into the oncoming lane, impatient to pass the cars ahead of him, going uphill.  If you were riding a heavy-laden scooter, the outlying roads of Monaco were a risky venture.

But Monaco’s economy was based on risk – gambling. In fact, the principality had been entirely supported by gambling since 1961.  The famous Monte Carlo Casino made an annual grant to the government that was so big that there was no need for income tax.

One of Monaco’s most famous stories was of “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo".  This was Charles Wells, a paunchy, bald cockney who had made a fortune selling false patents in Britain.  His daily winnings were so high they were published in newspapers around the world.  Each roulette table carried reserves of only 100,000 francs – he "broke the bank" by forcing a cashier to go to the vaults for more money – three times in 1887.  On his second visit, he took a 120-franc stake and got 98,000 francs with an incredible run on the number 5.  His third visit was a disaster – he lost his backer’s money as well as his own.  Back in London, Scotland Yard investigated him.  He was jailed eight years for fraud.  He died in Paris in 1926, broke.

But of course Monaco’s most endearing stories was about Princess Grace.  It was the American fairy tail about the beautiful girl who runs off and marries a prince.  This had also been good fortune to Elizabeth Taylor.  Grace Kelly was to do Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but she ran off to marry Prince Rainier.  The part went to emerging child star Elizabeth Taylor, launching her career as an adult actress.

(It is also a poignant irony that one of the loveliest people to attend the funeral of Princess Grace was another uncommon common girl who also married a prince, and would also die in an auto accident – Princess Diana.)

Of course on entering Monaco, I had to take a self-portrait under the huge sign that told you had arrived in the Principaute de Monaco.  On it were the emblems of international clubs: the Lions, the Rotary, and the Kiwanis.  The sign was also a marquee for things that were going on – the Programme des Manifestations; a congress of French veterinarians; a semiconductor seminar; a basket ball game; concerts by Walter Weller and Malcolm Frager; and a play at the Princess Grace Theatre.  From the café on the hillside terrace beside the sign you got a splendid view of Monte Carlo – all ivory-colored buildings with red-brown roofs by the blue Mediterranean merging into a blue haze.  I rode through the elegant palm-adorned city, taking shots of a terrace of eleven tennis courts that overlooked the sea, and of a Rolls Royce that was parked in front of a theatre.

That was my Monte Carlo.  It was nothing more than a longing glimpse.  In yet another city that unabashedly displayed its wealth, I felt the poverty of my finances and my knowledge.  I vowed that if I ever became rich, I would come back and explore Monte Carlo in style.  I would not gamble again on spontaneous shoestring experience, not here.

I would spend one more night in France.  At a campground pasted onto a jungly terraced gorge in Menton, I was shooed away by a grumpy middle-aged woman who had short blond hair and wore an apron.  "No, no, you go to municipal."  She seemed angry at life.  At Camping St. Maurice, a 65ish woman, initially wary of me, broke into a smile and agreed to a sponsored stay.  "Oh sure, no problem."

Hemingway had spent a night in Menton, returning from a bachelors’ tour of Mussolini's Fascist Italy.  He was still praying and weeping over his recent divorce but had found Menton “cheerful and clean and sane and lovely.”

Secure in my tent in Menton, I realized that I had been away from Canada for exactly three months.  The trip seemed to be taking so long and again my impulse was to get moving (recall that my original schedule was for one year).

I thought of the next country – Italy.  I grew up with Hollywood images of Italy – movies about the Mafia.  Italy was Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.   It was also 1983's National Lampoon's European Vacation with the Griswald family.   My first real girlfriend’s mother was Italian.  Italy was my barber, Ernesto Aquilina.  After a generation in Canada, his accent had remained as thick as the Italian who just got of the boat.   (Listening back in time from today, Ernesto’s accent puts me in mind of the zany Italian actor Roberto Benigni who just two nights ago, won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Actor and for Best Foreign Film for his movie, Life is Beautiful.).   My overall impression was that Italy was populated by complex and fiercely loyal intermarried families and that you did not cross them or refuse their hospitality.

 

The next morning I crossed into Italy.  I was passed through Italian Customs with only a brief glance and my passport.  Italian soldiers in light brown uniforms seemed amused by the load on Melawend.  I did not look like a terrorist. 

I changed money.  We rolled under a railway overpass just as a train thundered over, seemingly as loud as a 747.  Melawend and I rode through a couple tunnels and into a rugged high coastline drive, particularly after Savona.  The first thing that struck you was that the Italian Riviera was more rural, subdued, and less opulent than the French, except for some splendid seaside villas.  At Cap de Noli, the road was perhaps 200 feet above the sea, gouged into a vertical rock wall that shot up out of the water.  To get a photograph of this, I stopped at a curve, climbed over a guardrail onto a crumbling cliff and sat just inches from such a drop.  Later on, such an effort would cost me dearly.

I was in a hurry to reach Rome.  Our embassy in Madrid had called ahead to the embassy in Rome to advise that I was coming.  I had not allowed enough time for explorative travel and so I had unintentionally imposed more haste on my ride through the Italian Riviera.

Genoa had significance to me, as it did to anyone who had learned in elementary school that in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America, so the story went.  He had gone on his theory that the world was mostly land and that Asia could be easily reached by sailing west.   What amazed me was not that he had convinced Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of finance his trip, but that he had had the tenacity keep trying for seven years to gain their sponsorship.  Could I have waited so long?  

About 250 years before Columbus’ time, Genoa had meant prison for the great Venetian explorer, Marco Polo.  He had been imprisoned for going to war against Genoa in a ship he outfitted at his own expense.  He wrote his way out of prison by dictating to a fellow inmate the story of his Asian odyssey, a story that became so popular that his captors let him go.

Now I was in Genoa, but I had no time to seek out the port from whence Columbus departed nor the apartments in which he resided.  I could not seek out any evidence of Marco Polo’s sojourn in Genoa.  I could not afford to be a tourist or an explorer here.  Genoa, for me, was a heavily trafficked, sprawling city that threatened to hem me in.  The crowded coast road required all of my city driving skills and I imagined Columbus too would have had a time navigating the streets of 1986 Genoa.

My destination was a place about 20 miles beyond Genoa that was known to Hemingway.  This was Rapallo.   He was here in the winter of 1923.  He was forlorn over his meager productivity, saying later that "I did not think I could write any more."  He sent off a plea to Gertrude Stein saying he had been trying to follow her advice on writing: “Begin over again and concentrate.”  It was here that he met Edward O’Brien who was gathering material for The Best Short Stories of 1923.  He asked Hem if he had anything on hand.  Hem produced a crumpled typescript of “My Old Man”.  O’Brien read it in the monastery where he was boarding and, in making an exception by using a previously unpublished work, decided to include it in the book.  Hemingway was euphoric at having, at last, something that would be published between hard covers.

I came to Rapallo to find a camp because I would seek out another destination nearby the next morning.  I was fortunate that a local policeman, dressed in a brown uniform and riding a blue Vespa, pulled up beside me at a busy intersection in Rapallo.  I gestured that I was looking for a place to camp and pointed straight ahead.  He shook his head no and pointed off to the left at the intersection.

I turned up that way and found it even busier.  I was behind a white tanker truck with a few other scooter riders.  I mentioned camping and they said yes and something I could not understand.  Further on, a 40ish scooterist rode beside me behind the tanker and we road rose up and out of the city.  He pointed to a turn off and I waved appreciatively. 

I found Camping Miaflores high in the Apennines that cradled Rapallo.  It was almost full night when we pulled in.  There was no one in the office.  A man and woman pulled up in a car and the woman said in very good English, "Have you been waiting long?”  I barely got into my spiel when the woman said, "Uh huh."  She knew I was after a free campsite.  This was the off season anyway and the campground was virtually deserted.  A couple pulled up in a car and took over conversation with the manager.  I left to set up in the illuminated tent area near the washroom.  As I was pitching my tent, the couple came over.   The girl was a pretty blond.  They were students from Freiburg, near Lahr, Germany.   That night, I was comforted by the shadow of Melawend that was cast on the wall of the tent.

My destination the next morning was a place Loretta Swit had loving described from the deck of a yacht as "a painting" in a segment of Robin Leach's TV series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.  This was the fishing village of Portofino.  The drive there wound around shady headlands above crystal aquamarine waters and through the resort villages of San Marcherita and Paraggio.  The village of Portofino was nestled below steep forested slopes at the end of the road.  The tops of the slopes were dotted with a few gold-hued villas.   Palm trees towered amid smaller trees. 

Portofino was just a fishing village until millionaires discovered it after World War II.  There was a row of buildings with cafés along the narrow road that skirted Portofino's tiny bay.  The buildings were old and covered in pastel shades of ivory, gold and coral.  The windows were covered with charcoal-colored louvered shutters.  Amid the small and colorful fishing boats that were at anchor, the buildings the shore were reflected on the gently undulating water.  It was like an impressionist painting – "Hot Lips Hoolahan" had been accurate in her description.  But you also found incongruity here in a few large high-tech yachts that were moored to the shore on the left side of the small inlet.

I walked along a narrow pedestrian street that was paved with stones. I passed a shop that had lace table clothes displayed outside and stepped under the awning of another shop to take a photograph.  A dark, beautiful Italian girl wearing large gold earrings stepped out into the doorway under the awning.  She was not wearing any rings on her fingers.  She tipped her head sideways and looked curiously at me as I snapped the shutter.  I was tempted to talk with her but I thought, What if we find things we have in common?  I felt I could not afford to take that risk.

As I mentioned, I was in a hurry to get to Rome.  But things were so layback in Italy that it was hard to be hasty.  You even had to take your time over the Italian word for “as soon as possible” – precipitevolissimevolmente (the longest word in the language).  Besides, there were still two places that I at least wanted to see.  One was Pisa.  Yes, a cliché, but I held firm to the belief that things such as the Leaning Tower became clichés for good reasons and that no cliché words or images could compare with actually being there.  I headed back to Rapallo and the coast road south.  It turned up and away from the sea. 

There, the mountains were sparsely covered with scrubby pines.   To look anywhere, you saw a blue haze though the sky overhead was clear.  The mountains ranged from dark blue nearby to nearly invisible white in the distance but power lines prevented photography.  The countryside was awesome, desolate and remote and this made any specific destination seem far away.   When I stopped, I had the sound of crickets to keep me company.  There were chestnut trees heavy with their thorny-husked fruit.  I could seldom go more than 35 miles per hour because of all the turns and ups and downs.  I was only 40 miles north of La Spezia at 2:00 p.m.

I backtracked two miles to the village of Termine di Roverano (Fraz. 01 Borghetto Vara).  I had spotted an old man sitting on a bench in a narrow colonnade outside an old church, and I had debated with myself whether or not to go back and see if I could photograph him.

I backtracked and saw that he had not moved.  As I parked Melawend, he looked at me with only the mildest curiosity.  He was wearing baggy brown pants, a dark brown sports jacket, a wrinkled shirt with faded stripes and a soft round brown cap like you imagined an Italian or a French artist would wear.  The sepia-coloured wall behind him was flaky plaster. There was a tiny window with an iron grill centered above the bench.  Above that were faded black-painted words that seemed to say something about this church in Termine di Roverano.  It was an image you might have seen in National Geographic. I asked the man if I could take his photo.  Though he did not speak English, he shrugged in indifferent agreement.  As I tripped the shutter a few times, he just continued to sit, unposed, with an arm across the top of the bench – a timeless image of an old man lost in thought.   This put me in mind of the man I had photographed as he sat on a bench outside the church in Castle Combe, England – the one who reminded me so much of my departed Grandpa Darby. 

This image of reflection on life made me think: What is an “old” man? (or woman) –  I thought: Just a young man who is many years further along on the road of life  He’s someone who has more time to look back upon than forward to.   An old man is a young man who now has wisdom to share.   The more I thought about it, the more I began to look up to older people as tremendous resources that were too often ridiculed, ignored or wasted.

I decided to camp before going on to Pisa.  In Torre del Lago, I came upon a veritable subdivision of campgrounds and selected Camping Europa.  The manager, who looked like the actor Marc Singer (the lead actor in the TV series V), welcomed my journey and said, "You shall be our guest."  It was the busiest campground so far with a few hundred tents and caravans.

The next morning, you got a small town feeling as you entered Piza.  And then you saw it – The Leaning Tower – poking above nearby buildings.  It had what you might expect at such travel destinations: the usual variety of hawkers who were peddling guide books and cheap plastic models of the Tower, including some that were wired as lamps.

But all the photographs in magazines did not truly prepare you for the real thing, up close.  Of course the tower itself was beautiful – eight stories of arched arcades built of white marble.   It was 179 feet tall.  But the lean of the tower was indeed unnerving – it really looked like a good swift kick to its north side would send it toppling.

Galileo Galilei, a native of Pisa and a professor of mathematics at its university between 1589 and 1591 had stood up there and used the tilted tower as a means to and prove that bodies of different weights fell at the same speed.  He would be denounced as a heretic initially by his Aristotelian colleagues and then by the Roman Catholic Church.  It was Galileo’s lifelong quest to liberate scientific exploration from the restrictions placed on it by philosophy and theology.  It was Galileo who was credited with basing physics on precise measurements rather than metaphysical principles and formal logic.  So it was that modern science seemed to owe a debt of gratitude to this exquisite relic of faulty engineering.

The reason the now 800-something tower was leaning was simple: the foundations were inadequate.   The building weighed 14,453 tonnes and its foundations were just 3 meters (10 ft) deep in the ground.  Also Pisa was built on a flat alluvial plain.  The soil to the north of the tower had more sand – the tower had originally leaned north soon after construction began in 1174.  No stranger to under-financing and budget overruns, money ran out five years later, with the tower only half built.  The mason varied the marble blocks to correct the fault.  On the first story north side, the blocks are 1 cm (0.4 in) thinner and on the fourth story, they are 10 cm (4 in) thinner.  Building restarted in 1272.  The tower was almost straight.  But now it began to lean south.  At the seventh story, work stopped for about eighty years.  To straighten the tower, the bell chamber was built out of line – four steps lead to it on the north and six on the south.  To the south the soil was richer in silt, which compressed more easily.  It was leaning about 2 millimeters (0.01 inches) more each year, closer to the point when it would topple.  To put it bluntly, the tower’s engineers screwed up!  Then again, look what human error had done for Pisa’s economy.

Money was also my problem in Pisa – so I did not go up the tower. 

(To my lasting regret. The tower was finally closed to the public in 1989 because of the increased danger of the tower actually falling over.  By 1994, it was leaning about 14 feet from vertical.  A slew of stabilization efforts have slowed its lean but have not stopped it – it has been predicted that at the current rate of lean, the tower will fall in about 175 years.)

But I did have my cameras and my debt to Hiker’s Haven.   I took self-portraits to get some publicity shots for Hiker's Haven.  It was silly, but it seemed somehow appropriate to have a pizza in Pisa.  La Pizza was a shop that faced the Tower and its door was left open.  I placed a piece of pizza on my table and took a shot with the Tower in the background.  Could you get more cliché than that?  I didn't think so.   I was in a touristy mood.  I then sat by the cathedral and watched groups of tourists come and go.  They would take the same hackneyed picture: someone standing on the grass about 100 feet or so from the tower with arm and hand outstretched pretending to be either push or support the tower.  The picture-taker composed the shot to make the person look like he she was a giant next to the tower. 

Good grief!

I had planned things poorly.   I felt pressed to get to Rome – word of my coming had been sent ahead and I felt obligated to get there as soon as possible because meetings were to be arranged for me.  And I had already let some of our representatives down by being late.  I should have given myself some time.  Melwend and I scooted out of Pisa.  I would next have to settle for just a glimpse of Florence, the cradle of The Renaissance.

The sun was setting when I arrived at the edge of Florence.   High on the Viale Michelangelo, I found a large municipal campground.  It was crowded with campers and I could only imagine what it was like here in the height of the tourist season.  The manager could not give a sponsored stay because he said he would need approval from city officials.  He said there was another campground about five miles away.   I left but it was getting dark.  I turned back.  The manager at the municipal campground let me camp for less than half price.  This was only the fifth night of the journey that I had had to pay anything for accommodation.

Most of my neighbors were fair-haired, disheveled Europeans.  The couple closest to me had a little brown and white dog that stared at me.  Being in such cramped conditions made me crave solitude.  I dove into the privacy of my Promo Dome. 

It was full night by 6:15.  I wanted to catch up with my journals.  My flashlight bulb was burned out.  I improvised by propping a lighter Honda had given me and propped it up with a pair of vice grips.  I lit it and held the valve open with electrical tape.  It worked only for a short time because the heat melted the top of the lighter and ruined it.   (It was a stupid, risky thing to do in the first place!)

Woe is the person who travels all the way to Florence and only looks upon it from a distance.  My time in Florence reminded me of the scene in Cecile B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments when Moses (portrayed by Charlton Heston who had chosen by De Mille because of his resemblance to Michelangelo’s statue of Moses)…   Anyway, I am referring to the scene in which Moses says that he was told by God to "Behold with thine eyes...." For me the Arno River became my river Jordan. 

(Writing this 12 years later, I can’t help my eyes from welling up at this loss.)

Early the next morning, I packed up and drove Melawend to the broad Piazzale Michelanagelo, an overlook with a huge parking lot.  From the low fence of stone columns, you got a splendid high view of Florence.  The piazza was almost vacant this morning.  A couple was making out in a tiny red car and you could hear western rock music through its open windows.   There were the usual portable kiosks of souvenirs.  I bought two rolls of film and took my images of the European mother city of art.  The sky was clear but a brown haze floated low over the old city.   Even smog – that lingering visible fart of modern urban life – did not diminish the impact of this sprawling Tuscan mural: red-roofed buildings of ivory or gold with the blue of the Apennines beyond.

It was there for my eyes to take in.  At last, down there to the left, leaping in three arches over the Arno, I saw the Ponte Vechhio upon which Pulteney Bridge in Bath, England, had been modeled.  Like most models, the original was far superior.  Among all Florentine bridges during the destruction of World War II, only the Ponte Vecchio survived.  The Ponte Vechhio, Florence's oldest bridge (built in 1345), supported the Vasarian Corridor.  Since 1593 it had been lined with jewelry shops.  It connected the Pitti Palace and the Uffizi Gallery, which was one of the largest art galleries in the world.

But Florence itself was also a survivor, especially in the wake of its numerous devastating floods. During a fairly recent one – Nov 4, 1966 – the Arno River had turned into a raging frothing menace, swollen by intense rains. The first to alert the city were the night watchmen on the Ponte Vechhio, who saw water lapping the tops of the arches at 3:00 am.  The flood poured down Florence's narrow streets, filling the basements of workshops, museums and libraries, climbing walls were masterpieces hung.   Hundreds of paintings, statues and other art objects, millions of books and manuscripts were ravaged.  Half a million tons of mud, oil, silt, and sewage covered Florence.  An international brigade of art experts, scientists, fund-raisers and student volunteers began to descend upon Florence the day after the deluge.   New restoration technologies were developed.   That was wonderful.  But the high volume of the flood was indicative of a global problem that remains sorely in need of greater attention – deforestation.  The stripped hills and mountains of northern and central Italy could not absorb the torrential rains.

I panned to the right until the most imposing image of Florence came into the viewfinder: the magnificent cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore whose enormous dome was created by Fillipo Brunelleschi in 1426.  I drew it in close with my 500mm lens.  The dome dominated the low skyline of Florence.  That was the most amazing thing I noticed about Florence – its low, preserved skyline.  No modern aberration of concrete, steel and glass defiled that 15^th century renaissance image of Florence.  I felt as if I was standing at a window that looked back through time.  It seemed that you could go down into the city and walk back into the living 15^th century. 

But for me, it was not to be.

As I marveled at the sights, Florence became backdrop for two people who might well have inspired Florentine artisans of old.  One was an Italian stallion who had parked his blue Moto Guzzi motorcycle beside the low columned fence.  He was tall and had the chiseled features of a Roman god.  He sat astride his modern steed and was happy to pose before the city.    We did not talk – we did not know each other’s language.  But I knew something of the fantasies of women and the image held of the Latin Lover.

As an adolescent becoming interested in the fairer sex, it rather annoyed me to see movies about North American girls who would run off to Italy in search of the mythical Latin Lover.  The Italian male was supposed to be passionate, impetuously sentimental, and powerful in bed.   So we weren’t?  I had observed expatriate Italian men and they seemed excessively tied to their mothers.   They seemed wimpy, with a need to feel loved and understood that bordered on obsession.  The Italian male needed reassurance through constant affection while seldom giving any in return.  Italian mothers strengthened this feeling.  So the Italian man looked for Mama's qualities when he looked for his bride.

After marriage, the Italian wife was expected to be homebound and unquestioningly faithful.  She could compensate by exerting domestic power.  She was typically moody, ranging from silent to hysterical to nagging – I had seen this too.  The Italian man felt intimidated by his wife and would go out a lot to find comfort in companionship with male friends, sports and casual sex – I had read that half of Italian males had extra-marital affairs.   But he would swear passionately that he could never live without his wife.

I concluded that Italians, men and women, were not so different than the North Americans I knew.  I looked upon an affair as a terminal violation of a marriage and nagging as one of its causes.   Since the behavior of Italian men and women seemed to epitomize those crimes, I looked upon them suspiciously – I did not want to get involved.  But what did I truly know about Italians?  Or about love and marriage?

When the stallion on the Moto Guzzi left, I looked to the red-tiled terrace of a café immediately below me in Michelangelo Park and saw a photographer working with a dark-haired full-figured model.  Large gold rings dangled from her ears.  She wore white jeans and a pink sweater that clung over her large, firm breasts.  You could imagine Renaissance artists sculpting her or perhaps painting her against this magnificent backdrop.   Indeed those 15^th century artists could select from the abundant supply of beautiful people that I imagined roamed the city’s streets.  Italians had classic features.  (But it is equally true to say every that country has its beautiful people.)  Then the girl was siting alone at her table.  I was tempted to go down and talk with her.

I let go of my philosophizing and fantasizing and looked one last time upon the beauty of Florence.  I ached to walk its streets.  I admonished myself for my shortcomings here.  With great sorrow, I turned Melawend south.

(Truly, I was intimidated by Florence.  My greatest fears were that if I went down into the city, I'd find too many places to explore – that I would want to stay for a long time – and that I would agonize over security for Melawend and my supplies.  What a waste!)

 

I was on the Via Cassia, the main road to Sienna, and was soon driving past dry, harvested vineyards.  I came upon some low lush forested hills and discovered the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial.  It was sobering to see the symmetry of hundreds of white stone crosses against the gentle sweep of the green land when you realized that this peaceful place was born from the horror, chaos, ugliness and tragedy of war.  This, like all military cemeteries, gave some order and dignity to the grim aftermath of battle, a mute secluded memorial to self-sacrifice.  Here were the cut-off limbs of so many distant family trees.  No birds sang.  The silence here was deafening.

I took out my small coil notebook and wrote down a few names at the gravesites: Thomas R. Morris, Sergeant, 135 Infantry, 34^th Division; Normand E. Yando of Vermont, Captain, 168^th Infantry, 34^th Division, died October 5, 1944; and Frank E. Lise of Illinois, Staff Sergeant, 13^th Regiment, 1^st Armored Division, who died on Independence Day, 1944. (The latter two were the only gravesites where floral arrangements had been left.

I knelt by one soldier's cross, choosing it at random.

"What would you like to say?" I said aloud.

"Please tell my sweetheart that I love her and I miss her so and that I am waiting for her.  I did not want to die!"

His sweetheart might well be a great grandmother by now. 

I wondered if, when we died, we would come to our dead loved ones in the same form in which they knew us when death had first separated us.  Would a dead soldier be reunited with his young bride?

I thought about death.  Were there different and simultaneous time lines in the afterlife?  In other words, would we come back to the various people we knew in our life as we looked when we last saw one another?

I stood and looked around at the multitude of crosses, and imagined the pleas of so many silenced voices.

What would you all like to say?" I said aloud.

"Please don’t let this happen again!"

"I'm so sorry." I said.  "Thank you for your sacrifice."

It might seem like contrived sentimentality to write like this but that is how I felt and acted.  I was truly chastened by my visit to the cemetery.  I had taken freedom for granted.  War and violent death were tragedies I read about or saw on the evening news or in movies – I could always just set it all aside and go about my business.  I was so damned lucky to be able to jump onto a motorscooter and ride through a country for which people had died to liberate it from tyranny.  I was free.  I had purpose.   I was alive!  General George Patton once said that only a fool died for his country.   A real soldier made some other fool die for his country.  I had to wonder: If Patton was to stand here and talk to these silenced fighters, would he address them as fools?

I looked at the forested hills and considered the trees.   Any living trees on battlefields that were alive when battles were fought bore mute testimony to the horror they witnessed. I wondered how many of those trees still held bullets that had been intended to end a human life.

(The leaves of trees also suck up man-made toxic gases.  Nature often shields man from himself.  Does that not imply a certain gratitude due to Nature?)

I wondered why there had to be such unnatural places as "battlefields"?  And why were battlefields now so impeccibly landscaped?  For a moment, I thought that such places should be maintained as they were found in the immediate aftermath of battle, complete with smoking scorched earth and dismembered bodies (reproductions) – the true look and stench of battle. And just a simple plaque: "Never this again."

 

Just beyond the cemetery, I saw a lean old man standing beside an orange Piaggio.  This was basically a three-wheeled motorcycle with a utility trailer sitting atop narrow rear wheels and a windowed cocoon for the driver in front of it.  They were a common sight on the rural roads of Italy and this was the closest I had been to one.  They buzzed like bees when they sped along.  I had amused myself by thinking what it might be like to go around the world in one of these utilitarian vehicles.  The old Italian put his hand atop the thin open door and posed proudly, if somewhat tiredly, beside his vehicle. 

I had my Melawend.

At an Agip gas station south of Sienna, Melawend drew admiration from attendants and a few customers.  A young guy on a moped asked about my trip.

"You go around the world?  Alone?  On this?" he said.  He extended his hand to mine, which he shook vigorously for my good luck.

There were no more towns through to Grosetto.

Petroleum products were expensive in Italy as I was reminded of this again at an Esso station in Grosetto when I forked over about six dollars for a liter of premium oil.  But paraphrasing what model/actress Cybil Sheppard would say on L'Oréal hair care commercials, "You're worth it (Melawend)."

It was late afternoon when we were back at the Mediterranean Sea and I found Agrituristica Camping Village.  This was a seaside campground on a crescent limb of land that connected Monte Argentario to mainland Italy.  It seemed very big in part because there were few tenters.  Many caravans were in storage here.  I asked a stern-looking young attendant about a sponsored night for camping.

"Is not possible," he said.

I went over to the graying, bearded director.

He had the same look but he paused and said," One night?"

"Yes."

"Okay."

What a great relief there was in being accepted.

I was set up by sundown.  Crickets keep me company.  The moon was out so I gazed upon its lifeless craters with my 500mm lens.  As we observed, my flashlight batteries were dead.  I went to the washroom to catch up with my journals.  Dirty water blasted from the taps.  Sinks were caked with dead flies.  A man cleaning the washroom grumbled as he washed down the toilets, mirrors and the outside sinks with a hose and broom.  I washed up at a large indoor sink.  You stepped on a foot pedal to get water from the tap.  It came at only one speed – a blast that threatened to knock you down and drown you.

(This was October 12, 1986, the day that the US and the Soviet Union reached a stalemate at the arms summit in Reyjavik, Iceland. The horrendous stockpiling of nuclear weapons guaranteed the mutual destruction of their countries – taking out the rest of the world too, I imagined.  The talks broke down with an impasse: that reduction of the Soviet’s medium-range missiles be linked to concessions in Reagan’s treasured Strategic Defense Initiative – “Star Wars”.  The photos of Reagan and Gorbachev showed their fittingly icy looks at each other.)

The next morning, I rode up over and down into the old Etruscan port of Porto San Stefano and grabbed a few shots of the harbor.  The gentle slope of the mountain was speckled with red-roofed buildings and greenery.  The tranquility of a sheltered port… I was loath to turn away from it.  I had been spoiled by the shores of the Mediterranean.  And I was also getting apprehensive.  Though I was bound for one of the most ancient and intriguing cities in the world, I had no clue on how to handle it.  I knew only that I should get to Rome precipitevolissimevolmente!  (“as soon as possible”)

 

 

Chapter 22

The Eternal City and the Holy Father

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