history – Lo Vedo Life

Altitude adjustment

Like much of the world, the South of France has been experiencing an unusually hot summer. A few weeks ago when we hit a particularly hot stretch, I started looking around for a place where I could break the cycle for a few days. At heart, I’m a mountain girl (montagnarde in French), and when some friends recommended Andorra, I jumped. It offers stunning mountains, high elevations, dry air and my favorite: a high barometric reading. So I threw a bag in the car and drove to the hills for an Andorra altitude adjustment.

Genghis Khan

A quick trip to Nantes

I had read about an exhibit on Genghis Khan, to be shown in the city of Nantes, and it seemed like an interesting thing to see. My friend Kitty is also a history buff, and we decided to make a short trip to see the show. Our flight touched down in time for dinner, and two days later we left on a mid-afternoon flight. It was a brief but wonderful getaway.

Rome

A February jaunt to Rome

A while back, I was talking with my friends Mark and Ro about visiting Rome together. They had spent the majority of their professional lives in the world of classical music, especially opera, and they have been known to take themselves off to this or that city in order to see one of their friends conduct an opera or a concert.

We talked about going to Rome together, and we finally made it happen in February. We saw their friend (and Ro’s former boss) conduct a concert there, and also had time for some excellent exploration. We all had lists of things we thought we’d like to do or see—or eat!—and we managed to check most items off the lists. Except—oops—I came home with a longer list than I’d left with.

Here’s the story of how we spent five lovely days in la Bella Roma.

Chemin de Compostelle, Redux

This photograph summarizes our walk on the Chemin: wet weather, muddy terrain, and a whole lotta green.

From Le-Puy-en-Velay to Conques
In May we returned to the Lozère-Aveyron area to walk the second half of the section of the Chemin de Saint-Jacques that we had begun in June of 2022. You can read about the beginning of the adventure here and here.

A refresher: my friend Claude had long wanted to walk from Le-Puy-en-Velay to Conques. Many French people consider this to be the prettiest section of the Chemin in all of France, which is saying a lot. Take a look at the black and grey map below to see how France is covered with variations of Chemin routes, nearly all of them converging in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.

Chemin de Compostelle (Part Two)

And they’re off!
As I wrote in the previous post, we began our walk in Le-Puy-en-Velay, a lovely historic city about two hours southwest of Lyon. It’s one of the ancient starting points in France for the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (Saint-Jacques de Compostelle in French) in northwestern Spain, 1,522 kilometers away (946 miles).

This route is often called the Via Podiensis, although its more utilitarian name is the GR 65, where “GR” stands for Grande Randonnée (great trek). All of the GR routes are marked with a white-and-red blaze, which you’ll see in the photos below. This section of the GR 65, between Le Puy and Conques, is considered by many French people to be the prettiest in all of France. Our plan was to walk half of it now, and half later. When we started out, I tried to say “Conques or bust!” to Claude. As often happens, it fell flat, but we finally figured out that “Conques ou rien!” would be the translation (Conques or nothing).

The Pyrenees

Santazi, or Santa Grazi, is the Basque name of the village Sainte-Engrâce, in the French Pyrenees.

That was then…
Twenty-seven years ago, I set off from my home in California and paid a visit to my friends Mindy and John, who were living near Paris at the time. Part of the vacation involved Mindy and me taking a road trip, with our first stop landing us in Saint-Émilion. Wine and hilarity ensued, but that’s a story for another day. We continued south, passing through Auch long enough for each of us to air-kiss a giant statue of D’Artagnan, and then we continued toward the towering Pyrenees, where we explored towns and hiked and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.