Travels of THB: Day 10: Chateau La Coste

Day 10: Chateau La Coste

JR closeup

Quote of the Day1: Chateau La Coste WHERE ARE YOU?

Quote of the Day2: Eventually all 3D art gets damaged

Weather: Warm, even when we’re in the shade

THB's first "hot" breakfast of trip...a nice change even if the pancakes aren't really hot

Damn, this is getting to be a habit: fitness center and two breakfasts again this morning.

Full moon?

We finally leave the property, driving to Arles to see the Gehry building at the Luma Foundation in Arles.

Aside: As we near Arles, we have to take a ticket at a toll booth. Not 10 minutes later we have to pay the toll. We can see it is $5 (4,40E) and don't have exact change. No problem, THB drives up to the equivalent of Fastrak...a big mistake! THB thought the small script "t" meant pay in person. And, there's a bar over the too booth lane. So, over an intercom, THB has to read off his credit card number. Thankfully, we don't see another toll booth before turning in the car.

It’s about an hour and the instructions on how to get there are great…until we get close enough to see the building, call Luma to get the last set of directions and finally decide the only option is going the wrong way on a one-way street. Less than 200m and we’re in the parking lot. We’re also using two nav’s: one on our sim card i-phone and one in the car. Neither can negotiate the last 200 meters.

The back side of the Gehry building at Luma, from about 200 nmeters away

Luma is participating in annual Arles "art" crawl

the maquette

The building is very impressive and still under construction (maybe 2 years to go?). Our tour consists of 8 English speakers listening to a not quite bilingual guide try to talk over the jackhammering for about an hour. At least we’re in the shade for the first 45 minutes, then inside one of the other buildings in front of a maquette.

Close up of construction

The front of the model

The overall project is massive: lots of buildings to be restored (old foundry, artillery manufacturer, etc.) and all to try and find synergy between science and art in making the environment more eco-friendly. Big undertaking and must require a huge investment.

Bauminiere's main building, they now own five properties stretching through town

All of those lunching today are sitting outside facing the pool

We're taking a sentimental journey

On to DB and THB’s 40^th year anniversary lunch. We ate at Oustau Baumaniere 40 years ago on our jaunt through France when we were 30. The menu has changed, though not as much as you might think; Baumaniere has been open for 75 years.

Pompidou ate here; when we had lunch 40 years ago Jacques Chirac had lunch with us

Old menus on the wall inside

We take our coffees and petit fours inside near the bar; much cooler

To go box; excellent with our dinner on the deck

The hotel with famous rocks of Les Baux above

We take a bit different strategy than at Arpege: we order a la carte and go for a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet instead of wines by the glass. Several yummy amused buchies, then first courses of anchovies in marinade and “tight” cooked lettuce followed by bouillabaisse served in 3 different dishes for DB and sweetbreads in cracked wheat (Pomme de ris de veau) for THB, both excellent (actually, the ris de veau was ethereally good). Dessert is their famous Grand Marnier soufflé in a soft crepe (looks like a giant taco with slightly toasted white cream filling) and a fig cooked on the branch (yep, they cut the fig off as part of the serving presentation) that looks sort of like a mini-candy apple. More petit fours, two espressos served with hot milk, for a total of….$625, or almost exactly what it cost at Arpege. Same-same but different. Bauminiere is a 2* restaurant, we sure couldn’t tell them apart in quality, service, ambience, etc.

J: (looking very worried) we're going the wrong way
C: the nav sez we can't get lost going this way

We’re going to drive in a loop to get back to Villa La Coste, with a stop in a “historical” town about an hour from Bauminiere. Just before we get there we decide we don’t want to do the historical town visit, let’s just turn south (or so THB thinks south) to La Coste. The change drives the car nav crazy. It can’t find La Coste (it did just 2 days ago), it thinks we’re in another province, it won’t turn off, it can’t change its mind. Hmmmm…even though it talks with the voice of a female, maybe at heart it is really male.

(Ed. note: THB is nowhere current on gender fluidity and could easily be making fun of some with the above "joke"...however, wherever the car nav is on a gender continuum, it was so fuckin' lost that THB almost reached under the dash to pull out the wires. Even turning off the radio wouldn't shut the thing up.}

Lots of apple orchards under net in this area

Good news: we’ve got a back-up, the phone nav. HAH!!! It is sort of directing us in the right direction except that it appears to have lost the idea of using A, B, C or D roads. So, it ends up directing us down a gravel one-lane road (i.e., you cannot turn around, one side is tall grass (7 inches away) and the other a water-filled ditch (oh, maybe 11 inches away). About a half mile down this obsolete goat path is a massive truck filling the road with no driver, it’s just parked there.

Aside: THB takes it back, he could really use a human toll booth now

Time to test THB’s backing up skills. Eventually there’s enough room to turn around, using many short up and backs. Back to a D road, back to the C road, a right turn onto maybe a B road and lo and behold we see the end of the goat path coming into this maybe B road; we’re now on the other side of the truck. From here it is a piece oh cake. Well, actually, we make a C/D road turn (it looks too obscure to go straight…), yet straight was the right choice. This road is clearly too wide to be a goat path, it might be an elephant path (though no ploppen to test for warmth as indicator of recent use).

Hot Damn: there is the Villa La Coste up on the hill. THB thinks we can see our room!

One day later at Basquiat exhibition: totally empty, just us. It is a retrospective of his drawings from age 18 to 27

About one in 10 drawings is excellent, all informative

Dinner on the deck, very nice

We’re dining on our deck with the jar of fois gras from Paris ($25…aside: the guy at the café showed THB how to open the glass jar: you pull as hard as you can on the O ring to break the vacuum seal…if they had used this type of O ring the space shuttle crash would’ve been averted), toast, baguette, leftover cheeses (we still can’t finish them from last night’s room service order), the sweet brioche from Bauminiere, La Coste rose from the mini-bar, and the terrific just-bought melon ($2.50). A great repast enjoyed on our deck in the twilight.

After dinner, DB shows THB a trick: you can get the JR miniature train installation to actually “move”…there’s a button you push and all the trains start turning. True to form, the button doesn’t work! DB goes back to the desk and one of the staff says he knows how to get it to work, there’s a button in the art storage closet just to the side of the JR piece.

The secret button....there's one outside the closet, it is turned off

Ohhhhhhh Nooooooooooo (twin speak)

He pushes the secret button in the closet and all the trains (20? 25?) start whirling around….and some of them crash and fall off the tracks. THB and DB are in shock: we’ve asked for something and now the art work (by JR….worth thousands) is broken! Staff guy is very nonchalant: he flips the button to stop the whirling around and shrugs: “it happens all the time”…he gets down low to the floor and snakes his way into the middle of the piece and collects up all the pieces to put in a box. JR apparently comes every few weeks to repair the installation. Oh yeah, and he stays at Villa La Coste for a few nights…that’s a sweet deal! Is it true?

Settle the bill, re-pack using a checked bags strategy, and time to write a blog post.

Just a Foot Note: The last few days, while relaxing on the deck off our room, we could hear the woman (or women) talking on a mobile. Is it true that one person talking on the phone (sometimes with the speaker on) is more annoying that just two people having a conversation? It certainly is intrusive. Last night, before dinner, DB sat outside while a call was going on; THB couldn’t stand it, having made it through one earlier in the day.