Leaving France on a high; Avignon drama festival.

Never in my life did I ever expect to run into Snow White on a cobblestone street in a Middle Ages city and receive a personal invitation to watch her live performance. But it happened here, and we were delighted with her enchanting performance. Avignon holds around 100,000 inhabitants all tucked inside ancient Roman ramparts, a topography of narrow winding streets. We arrived on day one of a three week theater festival and every street was packed with tourists enjoying the vendors and actors promoting their shows. There are over 800 theaters of all shapes and sizes inside this charming city, so the challenge was to choose which shows to attend. Our choices were quickly influenced by friendly personal encounters with performers or directors, and a tactical decision to focus on dance and music where the language barrier was not such a challenge.

Among the many wonderful people we met was the Italian writer/producer Carlotta Clerici, who was kind enough to give us a free ticket to her dramatic play. She asked that we stop to meet her after the show, and I surprised her with a copy of my book.

Of course not every person possesses the talent to perform. One thing I enjoyed about France is the individualism of people to come out and express themselves however they wish. We saw people dressed in so many unique styles and everyone just seems to accept you for who or what you are.. so when we saw a homeless man contentedly sketching a landscape from his perch we just assumed he was an established artist. He was so delighted when Sugar showed a curiosity in his work, which looked like maybe grade school level. He even dramatically signed his name when Sugar took out some coins from her purse. But rather than accepting the scratchy drawing she simply thanked him for his time explaining the drawing.

So goodbye to France. Barcelona awaits.