Purely Practical Constructions

I’d been dreading this day a bit.  I must have told everyone concerned nine or eleven times by now that everyone will have to get up early on this morning.  “We are not leaving at noon on Saturday morning.”  “We know, we know.”

Yesterday we’d driven over to remarkable Pont Du Gard, a timeless Roman Aqueduct.  I was considering writing “ruin” but there is certainly nothing “ruined” about the Pont Du Gard, which was undeniably built-to-last.  “The Great Wall” not withstanding, there are not many constructions of any stripe to have survived from the contemporaneous Han Dynasty, back in China.  I was going to say that extant non military, non residential, non ceremonial, purely practical constructions of from any dynasty would be hard to find, but then I thought of the Grand Canal.

My wife was set on visiting the town of Grasse.  The following day we’d plans in play to drive the exact opposite direction.  Grasse has a perfume museum.  Loyal readers will recall that we had just visited such a place but, as mentioned, my wife as set on visiting the town of Grasse.  I found a reasonable looking hotel in the nearby coastal town of Frejus.  Grasse didn't seem to have much by way of hotels. 

By the time we’d driven over it was getting on 6:00PM.   The museum would certainly be closed.  We agreed to go in the morning.  (The morning that everyone would need to get up early for and be packed and ready.)  Well, the hotel was grand and the pool was just what most of us needed and the dinner, well, we’d need to wait till 9:30PM to be served but it was worth the wait.  Late then, we all went up to our four person bedroom and made our way to oblivion.

And at by 10:00AM the next morning we were up and we were checked out and we were not en route to the perfume museum.  Rather we were heading west, cutting across the south of France to Bordeaux.  The whole ride over to Frejus then, had been a bit of a bust.  

I won’t dwell on it.  But be it noted that the French highway toll system is by far the worst I’ve encountered in the European Union.  It is much worse than China or the U.S.   We chewed up crazy hours queuing for a dozen or more tolls, we could have easily paid for once or twice with a bit of smart-toll coordination.  With the recent sample set of Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland there is no question that the French highway system the nadir of my European driving experience.