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Today is Ile de Ré day, and it's another warm, cloudless one. Having been on part of the coastal route from town to the Ile de Ré yesterday, it seems a better alternative to plowing through mid-town, and we'll get to see more of the ocean. Well, yes and no, because after just a few kilometers of less than inspiring cement seaside apartment buildings, we are dumped into an industrial backwater with meandering lanes, auto repair shops, and vestiges of old factories. And then an exit to the highway that leads to the bridge out to the island (http://www.fotolibra.com/gallery/854...-de-re-bridge/).

It's a graceful structure, about 3 kms long, and you can drive over, bicycle, or walk. I think we paid 9 euros to drive. The island is about 30 kms long and 5 ms wide (http://tinyurl.com/9pdpxev), flat, full of salt marshes, and very much a celebrity playground. At the end of the bridge, you are in Sainte-Marie de Ré; nothing particularly fancy about this part of the island, just block after block of oyster and clam stands, boulangeries, patisseries, small commercial outfits on the left, and endless mud flats and half-buried boats and a few salt flats on the right along the shore. I remember this from previous trips, how at low tide, whether in la Rochelle or on Ile de Ré or Ile d'Oléron, you had to wade out what seemed like miles before the water got up over your knees. Then whoosh! It's high tide and you're in over your head.

We're heading up the east coast of the island, our destination being Saint-Martin, the "capital city." I'm hoping to catch a gander of Johnny Depp or some French film star, but honestly at this end of the island everyone just looks like a lost tourist or un ouvrier. The road veers off a bit from the shore, and off to our right in a field we see a fort - Le Fort de la Prée (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_de_La_Pr%C3%A9e). There's a dirt road turnoff, and we take it. Unfortunately, it's a long walk from the small parking lot to the entrance to the fort, over stones and underbrush, and I've had my fill of those, so I and my crutches stay in the car while runningtab goes off to investigate. He comes back in a half-hour or so with stories of strategic views and killer architecture and Huguenots and warfare, and we continue on to La Flotte (http://www.holidays-iledere.co.uk/il...e-uk/la-flotte.)

Before we go into the town, which is truly a beauty, we stop at an Intermarché for picnic provisions (we ARE going to the beach today!): cold beer, bread, yoghurt, ham, cheese, fruit, which we pack in our handy soft cooler. In town, we find a parking spot right on the quai and get out for a look-see, or, in my case, a find-a-café-to-sit-down-in-asap moment. And there’s one right opposite our parking spot, with tables in the shade and reasonable prices. We order a couple of demi-pressions and chat with the waitress, who asks us a lot of questions about where we come from and what we’re doing here. I explain that I had been entertaining the notion of buying a small property in or near La Rochelle, and she rolls her eyes and says “Wait! Look at this!” and scurries into the interior of the café and comes out with a real estate brochure. “You can’t imagine, Madame,” she says, “what prices are like around here right now!” Well, I wasn’t planning on looking for real estate on the Ile de Ré, as I already knew it was expensive, and this is clearly a sales tool for high-end customers, but still…..the glossy brochure has categorized properties into things like Etoile d’Or, Prémium, Platinum, etc.… and the very, very cheapest property listed on the 50 pages or so is a minuscule…really, closet-size…studio apartment…for 800,000 euros!!! The rest of the properties of course go up into 8 digits, gorgeously groomed places with private beaches, yachts, massive pools, manicured gardens full of statuary and fountains, garages with special outfittings to protect antique cars, maids’ and butlers’ quarters, massive spiral staircases, marble balconies, crystal chandeliers…the works. And all so gorgeously far out of our reality it can only be amusing.

Just north of La Flotte we spy a sign that indicates a public beach, and so we pull into a small parking lot. There’s a closed-up beach shack, a stone wall, and a massive stretch of sand with a handful of folks at the water’s edge. Three young men are pulling a rubber raft down to the shore. They climb into it and paddle out to a small sailboat and prepare to launch. We settle in by the wall and open our cooler of picnic goodies. Is there anything better than a warm day in France on the sand, the ocean sparkling before you, sailboats bobbing lazily by, nothing pressing to do, and a baguette, a cold beer, some ham and cheese? Hard to imagine. So we idle away an hour or so in utter tranquility, not a care in the world, every real-life stressor erased in the face of a beach, the gentle lapping of water, a few seagulls, a ripe nectarine, and a blazingly sunny horizon.

But even the most tranquil of moments, unless you are brain-dead, leads to a desire to press on to the next thrill, so we pack up and move out, heading to Saint-Martin. Coming into town by way of the 17th-century citadel built by Vauban, through the old stone archway, we decide to stop to look at the impressive, star-shaped fortifications; the English Navy must have been considered a fearsome foe, necessitating the expertise of master fortifier Vauban, whose handiwork was excellent enough to have survived almost entirely intact for several centuries and won the town the privilege of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage site. The interior of the walls was used mainly as a prison, to hold convicts, including Richard Dreyfuss and the French writer Henri Charrière (known as Papillon), before they were deported to the least savory areas of the French empire. Today, just abutting the fortress walls, is an enormous foreboding structure that holds modern condemned prisoners.

There’s a sign under the archway indicating that there will be a free tour in just a few minutes. We decide against taking it, as it will no doubt involve a lot of stair climbing, but it’s interesting to note that there is a group of handicapped young people standing outside waiting for the guide to appear. I’ve seen this so many times in France – maybe it happens everywhere and I just don’t notice it because I don’t have my traveling head in gear – mentally and physically handicapped folks being taken on the same intellectually stimulating tours as everyone else, with no assumptions of reduced abilities, yet a kind regard for any that are evident. Maybe I'm more aware of it on this trip because of my own physical limitations, too. It has astonished me daily since we arrived how aware the French seem to be of handicaps, even though the country certainly isn't known for its handicap facilities. I have had people in every corner of the places we've been visiting pull up chairs for me, caution their children not to make quick movements in passing me, put me at the head of the line...I'm struck by their mindfulness.

If ever there were a swank slice of French island heaven, it’s Saint-Martin de Ré (http://www.saint-martin-de-re.fr/). Walking into town is like walking straight into an artist's imagination: pleasure boats, every one of them perfectly aligned and gleaming, rimming the tidy little port; freshly laid cobblestone lanes; chalky white houses with newly pastel-painted doors and shutters; trendy boutiques with colorful windows lined with expensive trinkets; cafés spilling over with gilded, bronzed, savagely scarved and sunglassed patrons; designer bicycles weaving through the passersby; and over it all at the apex of the harbor, massive flagpoles with the flags of France, Ile de Ré, and Saint-Martin flapping in a euro-scented breeze.

We park in the lot next to the harbor and stroll a bit before runningtab takes off to find an ice cream and a souvenir or two to take home to his kids. I’m just going to park myself at a café in the sun, have a coffee, and pretend to be a Grimaldi. In awhile runningtab comes back to join me, and we share a pression, then amble over to the ramparts to see the sea crashing far below. We consider continuing north to see the famous Phare de la Baleine, but one of us looks at the gas tank reading and we decide we’d better find some fuel. Not so easy a task. We find one station, but it’s unmanned and we don’t have a chip and pin card. We contemplate waiting until someone comes along and asking if they’ll fill us up if we give them euros, but after 10 minutes or so it’s clear that this might never happen. So we head back toward the bridge and abandon the idea of seeing the lighthouse. In doing so, we cross the island east to west, and get a close-up glimpse of what a micro-climate it really is here – very southern Mediterranean, with cypress and pine groves, hollyhocks of every hue waving from front doorsteps, mimosas and fig trees and laurels, all interspersed with long clumps of sea grasses. There are nature preserves, including a large bird sanctuary, and miles and miles of bike paths. There are, however, no gas stations.

We finally find one when we’re just about back to the bridge, fill up, and had back to town, getting irretrievable lost for a moment in the industrial thicket beyond the highway but short of the city. There’s an enormous, elongated park in the center of La Rochelle that we haven’t figured out how to get around yet; every time we try to cross town we end up in it, and while it’s lovely, it takes us way out of our way - there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to just go straight across town. But we manage to find our way to the huge Place de Verdun, where we think we’ll sit for a bit. There’s a small market there this evening, and of course we can’t resist. A tomato, a small hunk of tomme, miniature quiches, a ficelle, and dinner’s accounted for. Then to a café across the street for our final demi-pression in La Rochelle, and back to the apartment to eat, pack, and organize for tomorrow.