Guest blogger! (Erica Ellis)

Introductory note from Mark: Quincy and I are delighted, once again, to avail ourselves of the lazy way of maintaining a blog. We convinced Erica to spend a precious chunk of her holiday time sitting in front of a computer, in order to write something for our blog. Quincy expressed the opinion that Erica's observations are far more factually accurate and informative than anything that I've posted in the last three months, and she's probably right. Nevertheless, I'm allowing it to appear here (mostly) unedited, and without footnotes. Now, here's Erica...

Have Baby, Will Travel

I must confess that the title of this blog is slightly misleading, as though we were jet-setting parents of a 9-month old baby. In fact, this is West’s second time ever leaving the Metro Vancouver area: go big or go home we figured… You know that old saying about how you either have money or time but not both? Right now we have time (or at least West and I do), so here we are.

I promised Mark that we would do some guest-blogging and I thought I would write a post about my first impressions of Cotignac and surrounds, before I’m so used to being here that it’s all old hat and I feel like a local (I wish).

We arrived here after what felt like about 24 hours of continuous travel and Mark did indeed greet us in the airport with the offer of delightful local cheeses and bread, and was wonderfully chipper considering that we had kept him waiting for about an extra 5 hours due to our flight being delayed (see Icelandic volcano…). We rounded out our arrival by changing West’s diaper on the front lawn of the Nice airport, attempting some breastfeeding on the side of what turned out to be the main exit from the airport parking lot (not very successful – very distractable baby), and then peeled out of the parking lot with me frantically pumping milk in the back seat – vive la France! I’m sure they were glad to see the last of us…

It’s about 1 ½ hours from Nice to Cotignac by car. And what a car! I was struck again how compact and efficient European cars are – M&Q’s is smaller than a Mazda 5 but can carry 7 people, is a (quiet and speedy) diesel and has all sorts of nifty built-ins from double sunroofs to window shades. We’re in love… ;-) But I digress. We arrived in Cotignac just as it was getting very dark, driving through the main square where the bars and restaurants were still lit up and then pulling into this little tiny alley in front of their house to unload our gear (we are travelling with a baby after all, so not the definition of travelling light).

As we entered the house to go say hello to Quincy, I had the impression of endless stairs, landings and dark doorways – somehow it seemed ridiculous to have the main living area three floors up! (I have since gotten fairly used to this idea). I have to say that despite following their blog, I was unprepared for the ‘house’. It’s really more of a compound, which is also not the right word I think since that has a negative connotation, but I can’t think of how else to describe it. It’s a combination of one 3 ½-floor townhouse bounding a large, multi-tiered and tiled/gravelled exterior garden area, with a 2-floor townhouse on the other side. The garden is a combination of exterior patios (many), planted areas, and pool. And it’s big! And the ‘plants’ in the garden are big! Like 50-60 foot trees big… It’s really, really lovely. There are birds tweeting and cooing pretty much always during the day, and at night there are frogs (we presume in the nearby river canyon and not, say, in the pool). The weather has been pretty warm lately so we spend a lot of time outside reading, eating, playing ping pong (Bob and Mark mostly, multiple times a day), and watching West play with gravel and drag himself around on the ground. Not quite warm enough for the unheated pool but we’re getting there.

The other main surprise for me is how bucolic and rural it is. I’m not sure exactly why this is a surprise to me, but it is. The town of Cotignac is nearly continuous stone, tile and bits of asphalt but it takes about 10 minutes (walking, with a baby) to get out of the town and into the surrounding countryside which is very, very green right now. I guess that’s the real surprise – I pictured this hot, arid landscape with nary a spare drop of water and bits of vegetation clinging to life, but instead it’s grassy and treed and there are little streams and waterfalls all over the place. Which probably explains why this region is called La Provence Verte. There are wildflowers aplenty and gardens in bloom, and even some of the vineyards are starting to sprout. It’s beautiful (and pollen-y).

Anyway, West is napping and I am going to take advantage of the remaining nap for some breakfast and downtime.