Trains

 

Sometimes the problem with the world is the we evaluate it on a curve. If, for instance, all countries are bad (hey, I'm just throwing out the possibility), we might be inclined to think the best country is brilliant just because it is so much better than the worst country.

And so it is with transit.

It took me a long time to realise that there are no countries with good transit, and no cities with good transit or walkability. There are just badly put together places where it is better. 

I come from a country where transit is notoriously awful. And I increasingly visited places where the transit and walkability was much better. This excited me. This excited me so much that I even moved out of my own country to try living in one of these far better places.

But I was confused about the curve thing.

And when I got here I found that yes, it is way better here. With effort and time and money and sacrificing access to places one might want to go, one can live pretty well without a car. 

Compared to Saint Minneapolis, on a curve? It is great. 

It is absolutely brilliant!

But in reality?

Sorry dreamers.

Let's talk about Saorge, France, the one of a hundred most beautiful mountain villages of France that I have been showing you pictures of for days and days.

We took a train there. 

It was a marvel, as promised by the name of the train, the train of marvels. In fact, it was a lot like what I thought exploring France by train might be like; a train with pretty windows going from tiny interesting town to tiny interesting town until it can't go any farther, gives up, and comes back to where it started.

But sadly the train to Saorge is the exception and not the rule. Indeed, it is pretty much one of a kind. There could be a vastly more train lines just like it but there aren't. If we were to measure say 100 kilometers from where I am now, in every direction (discounting the half of it that just goes out into the sea), so something like an hour and a half drive then, we could find literally hundreds of darling villages and small towns that would easily charm you and me both. I went and looked on a map to make sure I wasn't exaggerating. It is insane out there! I literally could pick any place name showing on my map, out in Provence and the Maritime Alps, do a street view, and melt my heart on the spot.

And how many can I get to by train?

Maybe one percent, with a good walk and/or a lucky bus.

How many could I visit by bus?

Maybe a few more if I were willing to travel all day and sit at a series of ugly roadside stops for one to three hours, both ways.

How many can I get to by car?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Well,  so by fortune and wonder one can take the train to Saorge. But you still have to walk up a mostly sidewalkless road (a narrow one in the tunnel) for twenty minutes to get there. At least there's mostly no cars in the town.

On a French curve? 

Paradise.

Fine.

Dining in Saorge France

 

Though I think the mountain village of Saorge would be considered a tourist destination of the Cote D'Azur, it was the first one we went to that felt like getting away from the Cote D'Azur. We were with other tourists on the train, but hardly a glut, more like a small sprinkling somewhat overwhelmed by school groups moving between towns, and though our destination town was sleepy and small, it had real life to it. The people living there, as few as they were, outnumbered those of us visiting. In short, more people were hauling around bags of stuff and running their morning routines on a Friday morning than there were wide-eyed tourists, taking pictures, like me.

The cafe we had lunch at reflected the remove from the fancy coast where we live as well. Ingrained with decades of food challenges in traveling the small country towns of America, it was not a natural adjustment for me to go now to a small village and get a plate of utterly delicious mushrooms for seven euros, pastis and cappuccino for three or four each, and a lovely plate of four good quality diverse cheeses for eight euros. But so it was. And we happily sat out hiding in the shade at an outdoor restaurant table nibbling and talking of our good fortunes and swatting at the occasional annoying fly.

Using the bathroom before setting on our way was its own treat. It was up an impossibly tight spiral staircase and left me free to look around an upstairs interior room of the historic village. Among the 850 year history of brilliant engineering and charming construction feats in Saorge, adding in plumbing everywhere was surely not the least of them.

Your guide to Saorge France

 

Humming along on my six day festival of photographs of Saorge, France, which is a heralded member of the Beaux Villages de France, it did occur to me that I don't know very much about Saorge. Yes, it is one of the 100 most beautiful villages of France. Yes, it is up the mountains from the Cote d'Azur, getting pretty close there to crossing into Italy. And yes it is picturesquely built on the steep hillsides as they climb off into the mountains above. In the end of May we could still see some patches of ice lingering on the mountaintops above us.

But what else is there about Saorge?

So I looked it up.

And...

I didn't find anything of note. I mean, Wikipedia is nice but I think it peaked circa 2015. Now it just gets wider, but no deeper.

So...

Saorge is old.

It has a church.

It has a monastery. And something something Italy then France.

Er. So, maybe we'll just continue with my impressions and I'll make stuff up as needed. How's that?

Saorge was founded in 1182. It grew quickly due to its success in producing honey, which it provided to the sugar craving people living in the valleys below. It has its own dialect of French which people say is slower, more measured, and easier to understand, though I was still pretty confused by it. I did understand "miel" and "reina" and "abeille" which mean honey, queen, and bee, which just goes to show these people are still into the same stuff they were into 850 years ago.

That's cool.

So we bought tons of honey.

The town has a fantastic church, a baroque one, and I don't say this lightly, but in this wee mountain town was the prettiest church I have seen so far on all of the Cote D'Azur! I am a big fan of churches but after a baptism (so to speak) in Rome, a lot of the rest of Europe has been a slight let down. Like, if you don't have Caravaggio and Bernini and Michelangelo to do your church decorating what's your plan instead? So many places just went for the same kind of thing, only not as good. The church in Saorge took a different route, high as they were on bee pollen and mountain flowers. They went gaudy instead, and it works way better. They used crazy colors, purples particularly, that I have rarely seen anywhere. And instead of impressive moralism, they, for once, seemed to have some fun with it. 

It's great. Among our 42 pictures there are at least a couple church pictures.

At the edge of town they also have a monastery, where we spent a lot of our time, both hanging out on its parklike grounds, waiting for it to reopen after lunch, and also inside among its more Renaissance delights and beautiful gardens. Even more of my pictures are from here. It should be noted that this is no longer a Monastery, but is owned by The State now, and cost fourteen euros because Capitalism.

Have I mentioned that France is secretly just America under a more tasty pastry shell? 

No? 

Well let's not get into all that now. 

Here are some pictures of the delicious pastry shell then:

Saorge, France and the forks in the road

 

It did not occur to me when we were walking, and climbing, the streets of Saorge, but it occurs to me now that the most striking difference to that particular village, in contrast to any other town I've been to, is how when one walked through it, and one came to an option for which path to take forward, the options weren't so much left and right, rather they were up and down. Saorge wasn't built climbing the cliff, like many hilly or steep towns are. It is built along the face of it. And a lot of the time one can walk through it on an almost normal seeming flat street between buildings, but excitingly everything in always veering off in a plunge or a climb, and suddenly one is walking over some other way, or walking under it.

We are on day two of our pictures of Saorge where I show seven of my 42 meticulously completed pictures everyday. We were in Saorge at the end of last week, a respite before our seemingly unending adventure with covid decided to resurge.

Luckily I have all these beautiful memories as the sound of coughing rings out once again through the house.