My airbnb vacation; No plastic bags!; The return of Alain Juppé

Thursday, August 21, 2014

     Once I found Madame Froment was willing to board Beau for two weeks, I began thinking about where I might go that would be delightful and take my mind off the house.  Originally, I thought of going to Venice to see the Palladian villas on the Brenta, but it's a long trip by car and I didn't want to go alone.

     So I decided to book a French and Italian Riviera holiday via airbnb.

     I decided to stay only with women --I thought it would be safer, and that an older woman would probably understand another older woman better.  I didn't want to go anywhere on the Côte d'Azur I'd been before, but somewhere that had some mystique.  So I decided to go to Grasse, where the essences for many famous perfumes were once extracted from plants that grew in the area; to San Remo, the 19th century resort not far from Bordighera, where Monet painted; and to Hyères, the first resort on the Riviera, which began receiving English visitors in the late 18th century, and where Edith Wharton had a house.

     The trip will be by car, so I can practice my driving.  The stay in Hyères will be on a sailboat, docked in the Hyères harbor.

      I am hoping that I will rub shoulders with that world that never changes: the world of wealthy people on the Riviera.  Somerset Maugham observed --and he knew the Riviera well, being resident at his own villa on the Riviera, the "Villa Mauresque", for many years-- that the Riviera was "a sunny place for shady people".  It would be fun to pretend that France isn't in the state its in for a few days.

                                                                         ***

     All the shop owners are preparing their clients: no plastic bags starting January 1, 2015.  No one ever bags your groceries in any supermarket in France, so now customers have to have the forethought to bring bags to carry away their purchases, be they from a bookstore, a grocery store or clothing store.

     A television program on France 2 last week showcases a beach in Africa where the detritus of flip-flops washes up.  A group of artists organized by an American woman recycle them and make works of art out of them.

      Seeing that program makes me think that perhaps it is necessary to do away with plastic bags.

      "The government requires it", Marlene, the owner of the grocery store opposite the mairie tells me after I ask for a bag to carry the cheese I bought.  When I go to the bakery, I ask the boulangère whether the rule applies to paper bags.

       "There will be no more plastic bags given out after January 1, 2015.  And the paper bags, I am not required to give them out --I don't always have them."

       I just want to know what the law is, but the boulangère is always testy when asked about anything having to do with the government (see the post about "poop bags" for Beau).

                                                                           ***

          French politics has been shaken up by today's announcement by Alain Juppé, the center-right mayor of Bordeaux (and former prime minister) that he will seek the French presidency in 2017.

          Alain Juppé was a much-hated French prime minister who has enjoyed a political comeback of sorts.  A brilliant man, he would be 72 in 2017, three years older than Ronald Reagan was when first elected.

          What Juppe's announcement has done is to steal the spotlight from Nicolas Sarkozy, whose return to politics in September was supposed to have been the centerpiece of the entrée politique in September.  With both Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-François Copé, former French president and former leader of his party, the UMP, tarnished by criminal allegations --and even François Fillon --Gordon Brown to Sarkozy's Tony Blair-- touched by charges he used government helicopters for personal purposes-- Juppé benefits from having his conviction for political corruption be of an earlier vintage, and therefore, practically forgotten.

          Juppé made his announcement on his blog, which he writes himself.  He is not to be counted out, having made a great success of the restoration of Bordeaux's waterfront and concomitant raising of the  city's profile.  Juppé, firmly center-right, never supported Sarkozy's move towards positions closer to those of the Front National.  He once said that in French politics, "only physical death counts, otherwise, there is always the possibility of resurrection".  How well he knows.