RIP sweet Christopher
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Last month, I wrote that our grandson Christopher was loosing ground after his latest spate of surgeries. Days later, he went into a coma and the situation progressed much as it was expected to. He was taken home where family gathered to say their goodbyes and come to grips with the inevitable. When the time came, folks from hospice came to the house to deal with the medical part of things. Christopher passed on March 1. He is survived by his parents and 7 brothers and sisters. Christopher managed to endear himself with the Nascar driver community as he would text the drivers before a race to wish them well. In turn, they had him ride in the lead car at the beginning of a race. They also had a helmet made for him which they all autographed. All that racket we heard from the heavens was just his welcoming committee.
INCOMING!!!
Early this month, we had the good fortune to have Janice's cousin (and husband) come visit all the way from Nebraska. Monte and Cinde had flown to Germany first to see our daughter Mandy and Markus for several days then were returning for their second visit here. They had joined us several years ago in the area when we were looking for a house. Now they were back to see what we ended up with. They spent just short of a week with us and we had them visit everything from a WWII Higgins landing craft where American troops landed on our local beaches to begin the southern part of the liberation of France to the archaeological remnants of the Roman city of Glanum, founded in 6th century BC. Then, for good measure, we had them help us bottle some wine we got from our local vintner.
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Higgins amphibious landing craft
The project
Last month I also wrote about a big project we have going here. Well, more like 'trying to get going here'. When we arrived a month or so ago we had been trying to get a surveyor to draw up a set of plans for our pool project for the past 7 months, get it to the city for approval and be ready to hit the ground running upon our arrival. Then the story about "the best laid plans of mice and men" came into play. In those 7 months, we had not even completed the FIRST step of the process. It's human nature, I guess, that if you are not around in person, your paperwork gets buried at the bottom of the inbox. It is most definitely French nature.
So when we showed up, I relentlessly called, visited, badgered and harangued the guilty parties until I lit a fire under their rears and LAPRA- DE'D them along until they came to their senses and decided to save time by seeing things my way. Since then, we have completed 4 of the 5 administrative steps to make this a wrap. Although we will clearly not get the project done this year, ironically it turned out to be a blessing in disguise by allowing us to plan for a bigger pool and better landscaping. Laser focussed persistence will see us through.
Frejus
OK, I'll bite. What in tarnation is a Frejus? Frejus is the city (Pop 55,000) we live in the suburbs of. Our town is actually called Les Issambres and is part of Roquebrune Sur Argens. Had enough?
OK. So the short story is that Frejus was founded by Julius Cesar. 'THE' Julius Cesar, in 43 BC. It is thought that the Romans had been hanging out here since 124 BC, but that was lost in the history books. This was no outpost as the city still has many important remnants of the Roman days. There is the theater and an arena which has seen better days but was renovated and is still used for some events. There are sections of the 24 mile long (40Km) elevated stone aqueduct that brought drinking water to the city that run here and there though the city (occasionally in someone's back yard) and immense stone columns that clearly had purpose at the time but I'll be darned if I can figure out what for. There are ingenious fish traps they set up using only the rocky parts of the coast to trap fish between the tides and it had an important sea port. No slouches, those Romans.
A part of the Roman aqueduct
Remnants of columns that served who knows what purpose. Each piece is roughly the height of a person
While Frejus has the history thing going for it, today it also has all the big box stores and services you could ever want. Hilltop medieval walled villages surround us and our little neck of the woods is a mere 15 minutes away from Frejus. Being on the Riviera, it does not suck. We are in the middle of a 5 1/2 mile (9 Km) area which on the entire coast pretty much exclusively does not have large apartment buildings and hotels built right up to the water. As a couple of poor Americans, we could not afford what the French call "Pied dans l'eau", (translated to "Feet in the water") referring to having a villa right on the water. Ours is 40 feet away (13M) from the beach, on the other side of the winding coastal road where no one can ever build to block our view of the sea or the breathtaking snow capped Alps in the distance.
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