“7 High”
Recollections of a Combat Defense Squadron “Ramp Rat”
Chapter 9.3
“Bienvenue en France”
Le Boulou, France
We stopped at one of the first places to buy some francs and food. Estúpido Americano, I had always thought a brasserie was a female undergarment.
A1C Marston Kodachrome photography, August 1965.
All rights reserved 2011.
After crossing the border into France, we really felt we were in a foreign land. The signs were in a foreign language and they had branded gasoline. The traffic was most impressive. It was stop and creep for miles.
Perpigan, France
Tourist traffic too, you can make out the GB sticker on the car ahead. There was plenty of time to step out and take a photo. Traffic was backed up like this from Perpigan to Narbonne.
Narbonne, France, Cathédrale Saint-Just-et-Saint-Pasteur de Narbonne.
Notice the line of stalled traffic on the left, leading into town. This traffic jam lasted for hours.
Narbonne Cathedral
Narbonne was established in Gaul in 118 BC, as Colonia Narbo Martius. It was located on the Via Domitia, the first Roman road in Gaul, built at the time of the foundation of the colony, and connecting Italy to Spain.
Narbonne was once a prosperous seaport, but the course of the river changed, leaving it landlocked 15 clicks (kilometers) from the sea.
The first church at this location was a Constantinian basilica built in 313, just after the edict that authorized Christianity as a legal religion. This current structure was begun in 1272 and is still unfinished. They ran into funding problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbonne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narbonne_Cathedral
This land has so much more history than the USA it is difficult to comprehend. It does look like a certain part of Disneyland.
Next, Marseille, the second largest city in France.
Marseille harbor entrance. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsaille
The harbor sunshine is teeming with swimmers and sunbathers, while onlookers enjoy a picnic lunch in the shade.
Notre-Dame de la Garde in the background.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_la_Garde
Notice the buildings all the same.
Downtown Marseille was a busy bustling city. We didn’t notice any hostility towards Americans, but didn’t venture into any of the alleys with steps leading into the “barrio”.
The next year, on 7 March 1966, General Charles De Gaulle announced that France would withdraw from NATO's integrated military structure. He gave NATO forces one year (until 1 April 1967) to depart France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_in_France
We were happy to leave the big city behind, and continued along the coast, our destination Saint-Tropez. Once we were off the main drag there were lots of shady spots to pull off and have a picnic and a nap, with scenic views of the coast.
We did the picnic and nap, right there, in the shade, along side the road, there was almost no traffic. We fired up the sterno stove and had a hot meal, and a siesta, it was most pleasant. You can see small coastal villages in the distance.
This was the view from our picnic spot.
Saint-Tropez was on the itinerary for one very good reason that I remember. Bridgett Bardot lived there. We shared an interest in photography. Here she is using an Asahi Pentax, a camera that I much admired.
A1C Marston wishes in his dreams that this was his photo.
Ms. Bardot had received coverage in Playboy magazine, read religiously every month, even the articles, recently, her film “Viva Maria” had just been released.
I purchased a copy from Amazon, it is still a hoot. Hollywood would never give favorable to a terrorist, these days.
http://www.amazon.com/Viva-Maria-Brigitte-Bardot/dp/B00079ZA6S
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte_Bardot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viva_Maria!
Approaching Saint-Tropez, the narrow winding road was walled in like it had been worn down into the earth from years of travel.
With traffic this light, these roads were a sightseeing delight.
A charming village, Saint-Tropez had a distinctly pink hue. Finding the slides of this house, I hoped that it would be Ms. Bardot’s home, “La Madrague”, but this is not the case.
This house does appear to have two separate electrical connections. There must be an interesting story in that.
It has a very unusual, highly polished door bell. Even blowing the photo up, I am unable to read the sign. Perhaps someone can fill us in on why this house was special?
The change from sleepy Saint-Tropez to Nice was dramatic. Consulting our “Europe on Five Dollars a Day” guidebook, here is a bit of what Mr. Frommer had to say.
“The French Riviera is a never-never land for
many American tourists. Tales of outrageous prices, of extortion-type menus
and hijacking hotel bills, have all combined to scare many cautions travelers
away. Is there any substance to these fears?”
“…To understand the hotel situation in Nice, look at the map and imagine that you are walking from the railroad station to the sea. As you near the water, hotel prices increase; arriving at the waterside, hotel prices are astronomic…”
Mr. Frommer then goes on to list good hotels from 475 to 800 francs per night. He suggests 350 francs to the dollar as an acceptable exchange rate.
Here is what he had to say about restaurants; “…Loosen your belt, take a deep breath and pitch in. Nice is a gourmet’s paradise at low (for France) prices. This is mainly because the fixed price (“prix fixe”) meal in Nice is no rarity, but the general rule. In a city with over one hundred and fifty restaurants, there are less than ten which offer only a la carte selections. And, while a Parisian restaurant offers around three courses on its “prix fixe,” the restaurants in Nice throw in four or five. This, remember, is the city where the Frenchman comes to relax: the meals are huge and delicious.”
Here we are parked in the “astronomic” zone. There was a free section on the beach and we availed ourselves of a great meal and some time in the sun, bikini watching.
Nice was a busy place on and off the water.
Water skiers pulled by “old” inboard speedboats. Bow in the air, they did sound good, though. They even had a jump ramp.
We were more impressed with this. We had not seen a supermarket for nearly three years.
Using this opportunity we stocked up on groceries, Casino must have been the store name, as we didn’t find any gambling.
Monaco and the Monte Carlo Casino just up the road.
What a view that white house up on the hill must have.
The Casino
Way out of our league.
Never noticed until now, the breakwater is a popular bathing spot.
We looked around a bit in the Casino, but had no idea how it all worked. It didn’t matter; we didn’t have money for gambling, and were in awe of all the rich folks. After walking around the harbor a bit, we decided since prices were sky high, we would push on into Italy to find a place to camp.
We were caught in another traffic jam leaving Monaco. By the time we reached the Italian border it was too late to purchase gasoline coupons at the location we had identified. We kept going, by now it was dark, and we had switched to the emergency reserve gas tank. We stopped at several campgrounds before we found one that would take us if we were “Piccolo”? It sounded like “Pe-leak-e-lo” to me. From hand gestures we hoped that this meant small, and assuring them that we were, they found us a tiny space. They really did shoe horn us in. Here is a photo of our sad little piccolo tent, taken the next morning.
Campground near Sanremo, Italy.
This campground had taken francs, but we needed to exchange dollars for lira, to buy necessities like beer, food, and gasoline. We had a few ESSO coupons left but had missed the opportunity to purchase more at the border. Not wanting to backtrack, we decided to go ahead, hoping to get to the US Army Base near Pisa without buying too much gas at local prices. We could buy coupons there. Lira, we would need to find sooner and hopefully at a reasonable price. Some of the tourist places would really jack up the exchange rates.
That was certainly the case as we continued to Genoa, where we spent the last of our francs and purchased a only a few lira to get lunch and buy groceries and gas, due to poor rates of exchange offered.
***Genoa photos? Missing photos from this section, look again..
We continued along the Italian coast through Tuscany.
We found an upper class sort of campground around La Spezia somewhere. It was a little more than we were used to paying. Campers here had huge tents and expensive cars. There were lots of tents as big as houses, with living rooms and bed rooms and kitchens and terraces. While the campground was a little expensive, they had everything; bar, restaurant, and store. We spent the evening watching the rich people party.
In the morning I noticed that the office had a money exchange, with a good rate for dollars to lira. They were busy, and I was anxious to get on the road, I took the rather large pile of colorful lira he handed me. It seemed like a lot of monopoly money, they seemed to know what they were doing and had a line of folks waiting. We were all packed up, so I stuffed it in the glove compartment of the VW, and we got underway.
We found the US Army Base, Camp Darby at Pisa. Camp Darby is home to the American beach in Tirrenia, the only U.S. military beach in Europe and a popular vacation destination for military personnel on leave. For us, it was the American restrooms and American food. Cheeseburgers, fries and chocolate shakes, we thought we were in heaven after all those chorizo bogadillos living off the land. There should be a main gate photo, somewhere…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Darby
http://www.usag.livorno.army.mil/WtI.html
At Camp Darby, we purchased some badly needed ESSO coupons, and found a recommendation for a good local campground. This one had a little elbow room. We set up camp and enjoyed their clean showers, and spent the afternoon just hanging out.
Pisa, Italy. New flag pennant on antenna.
I took the opportunity to sort out the car, and the small mountain of lira in the glove box. Lira were works of art, different colors and sizes, and large denominations, too.
http://www.atsnotes.com/catalog/banknotes/italy.html
Sorting and counting all that beautiful money, I discovered that we had a lot more than we should have. The campground back up the road in Tuscany, must have given us the exchange rate for the British pound. Probably a lot of those tents were on GB cars. And, we were speaking English. The exchange for the pound was about $2.80 to the dollar. What a windfall. I wish every year was like ’65!
We went back to Camp Darby that evening for supper and a movie to celebrate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Ballou
In the morning, we went to check out the Leaning Tower.
Campanile
We climbed to the top. The interior staircase was steep narrow stone steps with treads worn deep by the tread of millions of feet.
The Leaning Tower is the tree standing bell tower for the Cathedral.
Plaza of Miracles
Baptistery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_del_Duomo,_Pisa
We enjoyed our time here, and talked about staying longer and hitting the American beach, but decided that a beach was a beach and our leave time for traveling was limited. Rome was next and according to the book we needed to spend a few days there. As much I had been enjoying driving along the coast since Valencia, we could make much better time by going inland and catching the Autostrada into Roma.
It had been over two years since we had been on a freeway, and never in our VW. Italy was the first country in the world to start building motorways, i.e., fast roads, reserved for motor vehicles, and they knew how to do it right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostrada
There was no speed limit on the Autostrada. Drivers seemed more disciplined than on US freeways. Faster cars slid past with a warning flash of the headlights. It was a sunny hot day, and it was very exhilarating, we were whipping along with the windows down, about 60mph, pedal to the metal, when the Tiger opened the glove compartment to get a Kleenex. I watched in horror as that beautiful lira stacked so neatly right on top went streaming out the window like it had wings.
The rest of the drive into Rome, I noticed for the first time just how underpowered the VW with 36 hp really was. No XKE for me.