想飛 I WANT TO FLY

我去的地方，就在地圖右下角之處

(Source: www.sitesatlas.com)

Calanque in Marseille



Beautiful, isn't it.



艾克斯 Aix-en-Provence
我最愛照噴泉了。這兩個人頭的眼睛各看向一邊，很有趣
I love to take pictures of fountains. It is interesting that the eyes of each statute were looking at different directions.



艾克斯一角。好不容易被我逮到路人甲，趕快請他幫我照相



亞維儂教皇宮 Palais des Papes, Avignon 相當雄偉



亞維儂教皇宮附近可愛的壁畫 代表當時拜訪這裡的知名演員



亞維儂聖班納齊橋 Pont St-Benezet, Avignon
等了很久才等到沒有車子經過



令人懷念的Place Castellane, Marseille



Street market along Prado Street, Marseille. The vendor is selling all kinds of spices and seasoning



優雅的女人雕像 Elegant women statutes, Gap
希望自己也能站得這麼優雅

Gap是我這次拜訪的城市中唯一不是在普羅旺斯的城市。Gap座落於Hautes-Alps地區，所以整個城市均被阿爾卑斯山所環繞。雖然Gap的網站稱其為法國少數sunny的城市，但不知是否是該網站言過其實還是我們太過倒楣，我們去的那一天雲層相當厚，雖然還是隱約看得到阿爾卑斯山，但還是很可惜。


Gap is the only city that I visited which doesn't belong to Provence. It is located in Hautes-Alps region, and so the whole city is surrounded by Alps. Gap's website called it "takes pride in its reputation as one of the sunniest regions in France", and that "fog is non-existant", but I guess that we were just not lucky enough to see the clear Alps, and during our whole trip the top of Alps was always covered by clouds.

既然我在馬賽住了很多天，就來貼張馬賽舊港的照片吧。

很美吧。碼頭另一邊早上固定有魚市，出海捕魚的人家在港口邊賣新鮮魚貨，吸引了很多當地人（還有觀光客）。我也興奮地探頭去湊熱鬧，卻發現魚販們在剖開魚身拿出器官後頭也不回把髒東西往身後水裡丟，害我看傻眼....真是豐富又天然的魚飼料。一堆小魚大魚果然很快包圍上來。

I was suprised to find out that I am the only few Asian in South France. When I shopped in Marseille, there were always people yelling "Kong-Ni-Chi-Wa" at me. I thought that in those people's small world they probably only know Japanese. Well, the funny thing is, my flight going back home was transferred in Seoul, so a lot of passengers on that plane were Korean. The stewardess spoke Korean to me. I chatted with a Korean woman in the back of the plane when I was waiting for the toilet. I asked if she could tell that I am not Korean, she said, "no, you have a Korean face". WOW. Now I am surprised.

So here is a test for all of you who think that you are good at distinguishing Chinese from Japanese or Korean: www.alllooksame.com

I got only 8 correct on that game. Shame on me. I missed several points when the people are actually Chinese!

I am talking about dog poop, contrary to the usual impression of the grace and elegance of France. Dog poop is literally everywhere. I was kept reminding of watching every step so I wouldn't step in it, although sometimes I wasn't lucky. There was one time when I was sitting on the bus, the driver waiting outside on the street for other passengers tried to kick away a piece of newspaper lying on the street but dog poop was found to be under the newspaper, and so he kicked right at the target. How hilarious. Maybe the French government should impose a fine for the dog owners to clean up after their dogs!

We heard that the city Gap is surrounded by Alps and is quite beautiful, so we drove there during lunch time. Since we didn't know where to go or what to do there, we stopped by the Information Office and figured that we can still get some useful information there.

Well, we forgot to take consideration of French's habit....the office is closed between 12pm-2pm. I am becoming very envious for their casual life in France....the working hour starts from not too early in the morning, close for 2 hours for lunch, and close again when it gets dark. Also, people get 6 weeks of paid vacation in a year (8 weeks in Netherlands). As for us Taiwanese, everyone is forced to be a workaholic. We don't get ANY vacation during our first year in a new job, and only 7 days for the second year. I don't see we have more productivity under this policy, yet the quality of life keeps us from being as happy.

Anyway....enough for complaining about the job. We called a friend for restaurant suggestions, and he directed us to this restaurant where it offers traditional food "tourtons".

The bad thing about travelling in a non-English speaking country is that, it is always hard to get what we want. Although we always bring a pocket English-French dictionary and a couple pages of French food vocabularies copied from a book, we usually don't know what we will get even if we already spent 10 minutes trying to look up every word from the dictionary. So I always get whatever it is listed for "menu" since it is a pre-fixed course normally comes with salad, main course and dessert, and is normally cheaper.

Since this restaurant only lists two "menu" without offering other choices, we both got the menu and that saved our work. Before long the waitress brought us a plate of salads, a plate of sliced ham, and two bowls of tons of fried square thing to the table. The fried square thing comes with two kinds: one stuffed with potatoes and the other with tuna.

At this time I am gladly satisfied with the food here, thinking that if their "appetiser" can be this good, the main course should be no worse than this....until I found out that those fried square thing is actually the main course "tourtons"....^^; I started to joke about that this restaurant shall only hire one chef, and this chef only needs to fry those tourtons everyday without doing anything else....

I think it is a must visit place without doubt....it is just like a place only exists in a fairy tale. Although I already saw the pictures of Gordes in the travel book, really being there and looking at its beauty is totally different---it is just too breathtaking!

So I guess a lot of you have seen this background scenery from the travel book (both my Chinese and English travel book used this picture as the cover page). The building is Abbaye de Senanque, which is surrounded by lavender. Well, the picture I took is somewhat different....you don't see the beautiful purple color of lavender, because the lavender grows only in July and August. Just imagine that I am standing in front of a tranquil sea of beautiful purple lavender!

I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but we found this restaurant from the travel book Routard. We ordered fish (the whole fish again, which surprised me a lot) with couscous and chicken with banana. The reason that I am writing this is, I think this restaurant offers really great food and the food is not expensive. The African restaurant owner was so excited that his restaurant is recommended by Routard, and he took our book and showed it around to his wife (the big chef) and other African customers and only returned it to us after 10 minutes. With food and drink only cost 25 Euro. And the fish was not fishy at all and tasted really like Taiwanese style. I was wondering if millions of years ago maybe China and Africa continents were connected. This is definitely a restaurant that I will recommend!

So this is how you eat it....everything in the fish soup.
How did I like it? Well, if you must know, the first several bites were quite good. But then after the soup got cold, I started to feel a bit sick of it....imagine there were 4-5 different fish in it! And the whole thing tasted kind of fishy....I just ended up finishing all the bread! It was kind of fun to do some "work" on the bread and let it flow in the soup tho.

Voila! Here comes the Bouillabaisse. You will see 3 major plates on the table: one with the fish meat, one with fish soup, and one with bread and paste (don't know what that is). First of all, you should pick up a piece of garlic and rub on a piece of bread for several times, and put some paste on the bread, spread some cheese. Secondly, put the finished bread in the fish soup. Thirdly, you eat the bread with some fish meat.

I've already read some articles written by an author who writes a lot about great food in France, and I've got the impression that Bouillabaisse is expensive and only few restaurants offer good Bouillabaisse. So basically we have to be really careful to pick a good restaurant. However, the good restaurant recommended by that author and most travel books is Miramar--whose Bouillabaisse costs 60 Euro a person, and you have to order two Bouillabaisse, which means if you want Bouillabaisse in Miramar, a minimum of 120 Euro is inevitable! Of course for someone who likes great food like me, I can never leave Marseille without having Bouillabaisse....So we picked restaurant Oscar, whose Bouillabaisse is only 30 Euro, and we don't need to order two of it. So here it was....the waiter brought a big dish with 4-5 fish (note: they come with the whole body!) and other kinds of seafood on it, and started to scrape the fish meat to another big plate....