After the buzz of our four days in Spain, our week has been rather quiet. We've finished off the painting touch-ups, re-oiling the benchtop, cleaned the stairwell and done some other jobs. The weather has stayed remarkably warm, with temperatures around 26-27 most days, so it's been pleasant out on our walks.
Ceret's Museum of Modern Art has been closed for the last few years while it's been significantly extended and refurbished. It opened to the public earlier this year and we've been intending to visit it since we got back. We finally did on Wednesday afternoon and what an uplifting experience it was. It is so much bigger and brighter than it was, with excellent interpretation panels describing the works of those many artists who gathered in Ceret to paint and sculpt. The histories of Picasso, Manolo, Miro, Herbin, Chagall, Soutine, Modigliani, Dali and many others are described through the paintings, sculptures and ceramics on display. The rise of Cubism is to the forefront. There is also a display dedicated to those artists, both French and from around the world, who gathered in Paris in the 1950s to develop their emerging artistic styles, e.g. Tamara de Lempicka (a Polish Baroness). We enjoyed it immensely and hope to go again before we leave Ceret this year. The museum's reputation as one of the finest in France for its catalogue of work by influential artists has certainly been enhanced.
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| The old town of Ceret, by Frank Burty Haviland, 1912-1913 |
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| Countryside of Ceret, by Auguste Herbin, 1913 |
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| Portrait of a baron, by Tamara de Lempicka, 1932 |
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| One of the galleries |
On Thursday we drove the 30 minutes to Le Racou, a beach just north of Collioure. We'd enjoyed our time on the beach on the Costa Brava so much, we wanted to try and prolong the experience as much as possible before the autumn arrives properly. Alas, although it was warm enough to enjoy the sun on the beach for a while, there was a strong wind blowing, which whipped up quite a chop in the sea and dissuaded us for going for a swim. A lovely morning out all the same.
Friday saw us seconded into an expat walking group. A small group of our friends have started going for a gently-paced walk for 60-80 minutes mid-morning each Friday and they were keen for us to join them. John and I usually do a fairly hard walk/run before breakfast, but it was nice to be pulled into the group. We also knew some different terrain for them to explore. Hence, we set off at 10am, strolled for 90 minutes (their longest trek yet!) on some tracks which took us past our blackberry picking haunts. We didn't let on about where the best spots were though!
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| Most of Friday's walking group |
For Friday evening we had invited one of our Swedish friends for apero. She is the semi-retired doctor who bought our first apartment in Place d'Eglise. She's become a really good friend and we have a lot in common. We have a standing invitation to stay with her at her apartment in Stockholm if we ever find ourselves in Sweden. It might happen!
Heavy rain this morning, the first in ages, put a dampener (no pun intended) on the Saturday morning market. Only about a third of the normal stalls were there. Le Comptoir doesn't have any outdoor umbrellas, nor indoor seating, so it wasn't an option for our usual Saturday morning coffee. We opted for Le Grand Caf' instead, where we could sit inside in the dry. Funnily enough, after we'd been there a wee while, the woman at the table next door leaned over and asked if we were Australian? Or perhaps New Zealanders? We answered appropriately. She and her husband are visiting from Sydney, but had actually rented in Europe and Ceret for 7 months in 2017. They loved Ceret, so have come back again at the earliest opportunity, though only for a month this time. She said she had heard about 'the New Zealanders who live in Place des Neuf Jets'.
This has become a theme for us, because it is not uncommon to be introduced to someone and they come out with the same phrase, 'Oh, so you're the New Zealanders'. We are virtually the only NZers who live here for a significant length of time each year. We know quite a few people in the Scandinavian and English communities here and, of course, everyone gossips about everyone else. We know we have a bit of a rebel reputation, partly because we have done so much renovation work ourselves (rather than get tradesmen in, as most other people do), we exercise a lot (and are particularly visible when out running), are younger (often by quite a lot) than most of those we know, we quite often do our own thing rather than joining in with the daily expat coffee/wine gathering, and we also have a non-European/UK perspective on life. We enjoy being different and therefore slightly unpredictable.
