castle – Off Center & Not Even

Our last day in Provence, and the sea was calm enough for us to get a boat out to Chateau d’If, the island castle turned prison that was made famous by Alexandre Dumas in his novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The most famous prisoner on Chateau d’If was Edmond Dantes, Dumas’ fictional character who was wrongly imprisoned on d’If for 14 years, and who meets the Abbe Faria after Faria digs a tunnel into Dantes’ chamber. Faria educates Dantes, Dantes escapes posing as the dead Faria, and becomes the Count of Monte Cristo. Even though Dantes and the Abbe never existed, there is a tunnel adjoining two chambers that are labeled Abbe Faria and Edmond Dantes. The castle is in great condition with access to almost every room. In some of the rooms they have sound effects to give added ambience. There are lots of seagulls nesting on the island, and ignoring the signs saying that seagulls are dangerous, I got very close to one that sitting on her eggs. She was very vocal about my close proximity, but simply held her ground.

We drove northeast of Aix to the Grand Canyon du Verdon. We turned around at the first photo, which was the Clue de Chasteuille Réglès at 1447 meters above sea level. This is the lower end of the Alps, and at that point we were about 200 kilometers from the Italian border. At one point we had a really good view of the snowcapped Alps, but the road was too narrow to stop and get a photo, and by the time I could pull over, the snowcaps were out of view. Along the way we passed the remaining supports of an old suspension bridge at the confluence of the Durance and Verdon rivers, a castle at Allemagne en Provence where a group of men were playing pétanque. At the mouth of the canyon is Moustiliers St. Marie with churches built up in the steep walls of a small canyon above the village. Moustiliers St. Marie is well known for the fine pottery produced there. We drove through the canyon on very narrow roads hugging the cliff, which made Laurie very nervous, up to the top where we encountered the view of Clue de Chasteuille Réglès. On the way back down, we stopped and hiked about a third of the way down into the canyon. To hike all the way down to the river and back would have taken three or four hours, which we didn’t have time to do.