Back home on Isla Mujeres

At six in the morning I can hear the tired engine and the loud exhaust sounds of the muffler-less municipal garbage truck.  The crew operating the garbage truck are currently only two houses south of ours.  I have to hustle to get the can out on the street before they pass us by.  The guys wave and holler a greeting as the truck slowly rolls up to our curb.  One worker tosses the full can high into the air, towards his buddy who is perched atop the myriad of reeking plastic bags and cardboard boxes.  

 

Our can is emptied, and carefully placed back on the street right-side up with lid affixed.  They laugh, joke with each other.  One guy sings bits of a song that could be ribald, off-colour judging by the way it makes the others giggle. 

It's good to be back on Isla.

During May and June we traveled for six weeks through Dieppe, Vimy Ridge, Dunkirk, the Loire Valley, Paris, southern France, Cinque Terre, Tuscany and Venice before returning home via London.  We mangled several languages, speaking a combination of French, Spanish, and English with the odd word of Italian tossed in the mix for that truly continental sound.  We ate delicious food, but missed the 'heat' - the spice of Mexican foods.  Apparently our palates have adjusted to Mexican food better than we thought. 

We drank different wines and beers, enjoying Belgium beers and French wines a bit more than German beers and Italian wines.  We dealt with crowded underground transit systems, high-speed trains, city buses and commuter boats.   And the crowds.  Line-ups to see museums.  Line-ups to get on the trains.  Line-ups everywhere! 

The sights, the sounds, the smells - all different.  New.  Exciting.

Now, sitting on our street-side balcony we watch friends speed past on their motos or golf carts.  They yell hello, welcome back, and wave as they speed past.  Sue Lo, on her daily walk around the airport, stops to chat - recounting her recent adventures in Machu Picchu. 

Fashionista riding a bicycle in Paris - K Lock Photo

My sister Joann dashes up the street with her laundry bag in hand, coming for a morning coffee and to do her laundry.  She has misjudged the intensity of the scudding clouds - and is soaked with a warm deluge as she arrives at our house.
 
A motorcycle slowly putts past with two adults - the woman clutching onto a little one, so small that one tiny foot with a yellow bootie is all that is visible. 

A young girl, standing in the foot-well of a motorcycle turns to chat with her dad as he drives her somewhere special.  She is wearing a pink and white polka-dotted dress and a matching bow in her hair. 
Her happy smile is wide and loving as she looks at him. 

The contrast between the Isla motorcyclists and the Armani-suited motorcyclists or the beautiful fashionistas riding bicycles in Paris is startling to say the least. 

In the evening we sit on the east side of the house, wine glass in hand, staring at the turquoise ocean, aware that we missed this most of all.  The colours.  The sounds.  The smell of the water.

We will always be proudly Canadian, but, Mexico is now home.

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This is the last posting for this blog.  Please join us on our other weekly blog Notes From Paradise - living on an island in the Caribbean Sea on the east coast of Mexico.  

http://lynda-notesfromparadise.blogspot.mx/

 

Dancing Fountains of Versailles

Apollo Fountain at Versailles

“Huh!  That’s it. 

That’s what we paid extra money for, and then waited three hours to see?”

The twice daily “Dance of the Fountains” at Versailles occurs at eleven in the morning, and again at three-thirty in the afternoon. 
 
“Why?”  We wondered gazing around the vast and meticulously groomed gardens.  Why such a short amount of time, and why not leave the fountains working all day from the time the park opens until sunset? 

Water – or more correctly the lack of water is the problem, and has been since Versailles was built in the 1660’s during the reign the Sun King, Louis the 14^th. 

Waiting for water!

The gardens of Versailles cover eight hundred hectares; have fifty fountains, with over six hundred jets to spray the water from the mouths of Gods, water nymphs, horses, or mythical sea creatures. 

The original gravitational hydraulic system included thirty-five kilometers of piping.  Before the advent of electricity a combination of windmill-power and horse-power was used to pump the water, diverted from local rivers, up to the reservoir on top of the beautiful Grotte de Thétys.  From this reservoir the water would make its way back through the fountains returning to various streams or ponds.

Rental boats on Grand Canal

Around 1668 the 1500-meter long Grand Canal was constructed as a pretty venue for boating activities, doubling as a collection basin for the water. 

Still there was not enough water.  The head Fountaineer Jean-Baptiste Colbert devised a system of signaling, via whistles, to warn other Fountaineers that the King was walking towards their area.  

One arm of the Grand Canal at Versailles

The workers would scramble to turn on the appropriate valves, ensuring the fountain was working as the king strolled past with his entourage, then turn off the valves to feed the next fountain on his route. 

It must have been a bit of a comedy show at times, anticipating where his royal highness intended to stroll next. 

Perhaps the Sun King had a mischievous sense of humor, making last minute adjustments to his promenade – just to see if the workers could keep up with him.



People watching, waiting for the fountain show.

Two more attempts were made to solve the critical water shortage at Versailles.  In 1681 a complex system of waterwheels and pumps was engineered to pump water from the Seine River up 100 meters above the level of the river into the fountain system at Versailles. 

With various equipment failures and conduit leakage the expected volume was reduced by half. 

Then in 1685 twenty thousand soldiers were employed to divert water from the Eure River.  The war of 1686 – 1689 ended that project, unfinished. 

Versailles with its stunningly beautiful setting still has water problems.  The twice daily Dance of the Fountains is quick, and a tad repetitive. 

Go, enjoy!   Just remember; it’s not Vegas.




Hotel de France - perfect, just outside the main gates.