School and Salon

Puyloubier and Salon-de-Provence (week 8)

Much to their chagrin, the boys are registered for school.  We met with the directrice (and grade 3 teacher) and everything seems to be in order.   We now have the list of school supplies (not as long as we were led to believe), and the boys each met their teachers.  Craig had a flashback of working for the Lunenburg County District School Board, because there were workers all over the school painting, putting in drywall, and generally renovating.  Yes, school starts in 5 days....  The boys also met their teachers; Andrew has a male teacher, which is a first for our children.  The class sizes are ~25, which seems large for a town of only 1500 people!

St.-Michel bell tower (l) and Nostradamus's tomb (r)

In the afternoon we went back to Salon-de-Provence.  We had previously visited, but made the mistake of going on Monday when many things were closed, and at 11am, when everything (else) was shutting down for lunch.  So we did the exterior touring two weeks ago, and have now returned to do the interior touring.  Salon's two main claims to fame are: (1) It used to be the border of the Holy Roman Empire, so there is a (partially restored) former imperial palace that now houses a museum and (2) It is the hometown of Nostradamus.  For the latter, I give him no particular credence: if you make enough predictions, and don't date them, you're bound to make a lot of correct guesses.  Nevertheless, if you're interested, there is a Nostradamus museum in town, which we didn't visit, and his tomb is in the Collégiale Saint-Laurent (in spite of its name, it is a church).  We also dropped into the Eglise St-Michel, which has nifty exposed bells (not surrounded by towers so you can clearly see them from the street).

Musée de l'Armée en Province in the Château de l'Empéri

The main thing we visited was the Château de l'Empéri's museum, which is a vast collection of military small arms (rifles, swords, etc.) and uniforms from the start of the Gunpowder Age to the end of WWI.  The sheer number of muskets and rifles is huge, and they are all immaculately restored.  Of course, to a child one musket looks much like another, so David and Andrew might not have appreciated it quite so much.

Salon's "Mossy Fountain"

As for the tour about town, Salon is lovely and the residents take great care to keep the houses in good repair and the flower boxes fresh.  There are a number of little fountains in the squares that have some sort of drooping plant in the middle, so that the water trickles down through vegetation into the basin - it's a neat effect.  Unfortunately, not all French dog owners are fastidious about cleaning up after their pets (this is true throughout the country), so in 30C heat the air was somewhat malodorous in the narrow streets.