Été 2013. It was a long time coming what with all the raining and cold weather and then some more raining and still the cold weather but the Office of Weather XXXXXXX has tried to make up for the cold and wet spring with summer days of 38+ degree heat and scorching sun sapping all of our wills to live. We've been able to do our best to escape from said heat by fleeing to the temperate climates of the South and in other cases have failed miserably to cool down by attempting to flee to local lakes or rivers only to find some impediment to our planned cooling regimens, often times comically; so comically and cliché, in fact, that you may be led to believe that in recounting these stories that they were lifted from the scripts of the most shallow bottom-feeding vapid wastes of space-and-time sitcoms that were bought and paid for by our consuming whatever edible oil products were presented between the 7 or 8 minutes of mindless banter between the insupportable cast members of F*R*I*E*N*D*S. No matter. In Germany everything's cold (the weather, the people I'm told, but also the beer [it's not England]) and so we might as well take advantage of this while we can. Here is a photo essay of summer 2013 so far that has been principally designed and presented for Tom Darling as he is the spiritual founder of this blog. It does not encompass the entire summer because I've already put the Barcelona pictures on here and some other stuff too (I guess the marathon counts as the summer but at that time it was still cold. All of these pictures were taken in absolutely oppressing heat).
Early July 2013. Nice. The Jazz Festival (since 1948!)
We saw (among others) Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite. What a show. These dudes know how to play.
Below he is holding his microphone but -- I can't remember if it was the whole song or just a verse of it but either way.. -- for the final song he did this a capella thing without a microphone even and it was just simply amazing. We were right up front too which just made it all the more awesome. You just don't get that with the David Guetta concerts (that we didn't attend) because if he loses power then there is no longer any music. You also don't get that with, let's say, Lady Gaga because if you take away the microphone then there's no computer to put her voice through.
Of course to make it a standard vacation for us (we already sent the standard "Sandi sitting at a table with a Campari" vacation picture) we have to go to the beach and ride some bikes there so here's exactly doing exactly said thing.
Jesse is practicing either his dance to go along with the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "It's my Aerooooplane" (he likes pleasure spiked with pain!) or maybe practicing surfing for later on (the waves weren't big enough though) or maybe I just caught him in the act of falling to his death and he was futilely attempting to balance himself and save his life.
Later on during the same visit (of Jesse, I mean) we visited Voiron where the monks make the delicious Chartreuse Liqueur. There are some pretty girls that take you on a tour that really helps make the trip to Voiron worth your while but we got totally ripped off this time (yes we've been here before) and our pretty Chartreuse girl tour guide was in fact a dude. So, while the first time Sandi and I visited Voiron last year it was more of what you see to the left below; this time it was something like on the right.
But, even with the male tour guide, it was still fun especially watching the big budget 3D movie of how the Chartreuse monks started making Chartreuse and how they lived in the mountains and all this. Also seeing all the barrels of Chartreuse going through the aging process is pretty fun as well (as is the all-important taste test at the end). To read an interesting article about Chartreuse from the Wall Street Journal (!!), "The Intrigue of Chartreuse: French monks. Secret recipes. An otherworldly color. Belly up to a most mysterious liqueur", you can just head right on over here: The Intrigue of Chartreuse.
On Bastille Day we went to Vizille, home of the museum of the French Revolution. How fitting, right? I don't have any pictures of the Chateau de Vizille (which houses said museum) or the incredible gardens that surround it, but you can easily look those up on BING Image Search. In fact, just click here and you don't even need to type anything in: Chateau de Vizille pictures. Instead, and what you probably won't find as many pictures of, we are providing you with a view of something that provides a true window into the future. Take a look at the picture first:
If you haven't figured it out, that is a fully automated pizza making machine. You choose the size, toppings, etc. on the touch-screen, put in your bank card, wait 3 minutes, and out slides your pizza. That is some scary $%*&.
While in Voiron (Chartreuse country) I supplemented my meager wardrobe with two stylish additions: a Chartreuse T-Shirt and a Chartreuse toque (modeled below by M.C. Sablé and D.J. Testament).
Later on Bastille Day we visited the Parc Paul Mistral just across the way from our apartment (which sadly will soon no longer be our apartment) to view the insane fireworks display centered around the Tour Perret. This was one crazy fireworks display; more impressive than any I've ever seen anywhere else in my life. It lasted probably 30 minutes or so and the fireworks were (mostly) synched to classical music (I'm pretty sure that La Marseillaise was the final song, natch). But it wasn't just the length of the show, it was the extensiveness of it. The huge amount of fireworks going off all at the same time. I'm estimating the budget at at least 250,000 €. AT. LEAST. It was totally out of this world.
The next day (or maybe the day after that?) Jesse and I decided to hike up to La Bastille in Grenoble. There are some pretty amazing views on the way up and once you get to the top but instead I provide you with a picture of Jesse confusingly making his way up a spiral staircase in a tour that you go through near the beginning of the journey.
Several days (or weeks? who knows anymore..) later we were feeling the heat something fierce and had to escape to a lake. Lac Paladru is about 60km or so from Grenoble so on a Sunday morning(-ish) we took off in search of refreshing cold water. When we finally arrived, it was clear that we weren't going to get to go swimming because the few beaches that there were were completely packed/crowded and there are some places where you can climb down on to some rocks and swim from there but then we'd have to leave the bikes up by the road and that's just not a safe idea in my opinion.
So, instead, we did the next-most sensible thing and went for health-killing snacks such as Coca Cola and Café Liégois (seen below). If you're not familiar with these products, the first was originally a non-alcoholized version of French coca wine that apparently cures many diseases including morphine addiction, dyspepsia, neurasthenia, headache, and impotence. The latter is coffee, vanilla ice cream, coffee ice cream, chocolate syrup, chocolate covered coffee beans, and whip cream. Yum!
While the Lac Paladru escapade was a bit of a failure in terms of our attempts at cooling off, the next weekend we instead went towards Provence to go camping by the river (the Drôme) and do some swimming and "white water" kayaking. This was more successful because we did in fact go both swimming and kayaking but camping was a bit of an abomination because of the heat and I can pretty much never sleep while camping anyways and we didn't really go real camping because it was on a camp ground overrun by Dutch people with their ATVs and camper vans with satellite TV. You'd think that Holland has rivers of their own but apparently they all come to France because the Dutch government has protected all of their rivers and lakes so people can't visit them so they come here to ruin the French ones. Perfect.
Finally, the heat got so unbearable that there was no other choice than to just drive to Marseille. Jill and Anna arrived on Tuesday (maybe Wednesday?) and we drove down Friday. We stayed in an amazing old re-furnished apartment with something like 25-ft. tall ceilings right across from the international maritime port close to Le Panier and the Vieux Port. This was my maybe 4th time in Marseille and it sure is amazing. It made me a bit sad since I had a chance to go work at the university there starting this Fall but the logistics, let's say (it was the pay), didn't work out.
I think I took some pretty rad artistic photos:
... including this one of Sandi's food ("where are all those food pictures?" here's one)
Even though I was sick (and still am a little bit), we had fun and joined in the partying!
Anna and Sandi in the windows of our super awesome apartment.
The Ferry to Algeria right across from our apartment! But we didn't take it...
And there I am (on the right, half way down the stairs) with Marseille in the background (well, actually everywhere because we're in Marseille, but you get it...)
On Sunday we spent the day in Cassis which is really nice but I didn't take any pictures maybe out of respect for the 5000 topless women at the beach. But maybe it was because I was too lazy too.
J'aime tes histoires et tes photos. Franchement, je crois que MC Sable et DJ Testament Rochent! Comme, vraiment rochent. Vous rochez comme Neil Jeune et le cheval fou!!!
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