On the way we took a quick hike in to the largest waterfall in France (which I don’t believe). A nice trail shared with Sunday strollers.
Hated to leave the gorges but many more towns to see. Next up is a town in Northern Provence. The drive was easy except for my constant desire to stop and see things.
This place looked like an Applebees from the outside that was the only place still serving at 2;10, but check out this menu! You could get a platter of grilled sardines with fries and salad, a dessert with espresso and a glass of wine for 15 bucks. And it was excellent.
In regards to food nearly all has been very good to excellent. The timing of meals can be tricky though. Lunch is 11-2 and dinner is about 7-9. Fortunately that works pretty well for us most of the time. The last time we went to France there was no google translate, we would just randomly point at items on the menu. What a difference to be able to shine your camera at the print and …Voila! …english magically appears. (Seriously the word voila is used a lot here.)
I loved taking pics of the architectural details, This was a tiny town as always up on a hill. A beautiful blue sky, we wandered the empty town then hopped back in the car.I took this pic as we zipped by. This is an old castle that a woman renovated, planted large fields of lavender then opened a bed and breakfast, And we zipped by this town, though later returned to hike up to the top of the hill.
This area seemed remarkably free of tourists. I don’t recall anyone speaking English here as there first language…and very spoke anything but a few words of English. Everywhere went, however, people tried their best to communicate with us…sometimes with humorous results. It was difficult to come up with a response when someone said they spoke english but then would say something like we are giving to you fried cats today…or something like that. Best to just shake your head, no merci and point at something else on the menu.
This is the town of Brantes.And here is his cookbook—-well Brantes Cookbook. Just a beautiful place to wander around….…and have a nice lunch at a vegetarian restaurant.Here is what is really amazing….note how mountainous it is: there were bicyclists everywhere! We rarely drove more than a few minutes without seeing a couple cyclists. All ages and only very rarely were they riding Ebikes.I like how this pic shows how the buildings just seem to cling to the side of the hill.
Here it felt somewhat remote and very peaceful…just a wonderful place to walk and walk and walk……. Often we would walk through a beautiful old village and never see another person, dog or cat. Brant found it spooky but I liked it.
This is a drawing of the plan for The Garden of the 9 Mademoiselles in Vaison. There are 81 giant rocks plunged into the dirt Stonehenge style. 9 central stones represent European Cities of culture (chosen by a commission). Then each year on summer solstice another rock is engraved with the words of a poet/writer etc from another country. The words are in their language and then again below in French (see stone below). This is a project that was done by the Rotary and it was said that the impetus (though not a memorial) for doing it was a flash flood that occurred on Sept. 22, 1992 when 42 people died. As we read this, we realized it was September 22. We happened to be there on the day the flash flood occurred back in 92! It seemed a little eery to be there that day but it was also a very positive vibe in a beautiful site. It also made me doubt it when people kept saying that they usually don’t have cloudy rainy weather this time of year…..
Our airbnb could not have been better (well maybe if it came with free nightly massages). Yvonne and Finn were terrifically helpful. We especially appreciated that they called and made reservations at restaurants for us *(truly impossible for us). Most of all, we just enjoyed chatting. Our lives had some parallels. We had both sold everything and moved to another country (holland for them). They had bought the property turned the barn into our apartment. They also rented a trailer they had fully renovated as well as a gypsy wagon that they rent. (They were well spaced so no issues with noise). We have had many of the same issues as them and they have worked hard on becoming part of the community as well. And like us, there is always another DIY project to complete. Yvonne is a furniture builder and jewelery maker and I was able to see her studio in the cold cellar of their home. Over the past 8 years they have respected the beauty of an old country home while transforming it into a unique air BnB. I fixed dinner for all us one evening and it was just great to hear about their adventures. And once again reminded how we pretty much all want the same stuff in life….good food and drink we can afford and a safe fun place to live. Of course our definition of what that is varies. Regardless, we hope we successfully convinced Yvonne and Finn to come visit us in LB someday.
Love how this kitchen was perfectly placed into this former barn. The roof has Timbers that are hundreds of years old and they are right over an induction cooktop. After doing our 15.000 steps for the day this chair put me right to sleep, I also think it would be nice to open those shutters and have a coffee handed to you (so I wouldn’t have to figure out the induction cooktop).Here is the fire pit which is a full circle with more benches. We need to go back in rainy seasonWe found an app that gave us foot trails and this one took us up thru the town then over a hill so that we were looking down at the town. Beautiful hike that made me appreciate the melon (which I can say in French) ice cream with glass of rose even more. This is where we sat..and the waiter/cook/bartender seemed to be slightly in a hurry. Later we understood why because we saw him again picking up his (sp?—it’s an onion anchovy coated tart) kids from school where we were buying homemade bread and pizzalerias where they had set up a couple stands near the school. Another hand out the window pic. We were just exploring little roads that looked potentially interesting. Look how the road goes in between the building.I gave Brant one of my short cut directions which put us on a narrow road with herds of bicyclists (worse than goats), but at the end of the road we found a beautiful chalet that we wandered around. No one was there.…except a couple beautiful horsesWe had time to explore on the way to our next place so we decided to visit Ochre Trail. It is an area that has been quarried and has provided pigments for painting and plastering for 1000s of years.It was a good leg stretch on a pretty well maintained trail (about a 4.5 mile hike) and seemed very popular with lots of French tourists but honestly seemed to be not terribly exciting to us…an eroding quarry? On the other hand, when we went to Rousillon we could see all these pigment colors in the buildings. I said to Brant, I wonder if they sell these pigments in the gift shop? And sure enough, they did! Water color painting with Provence pigments will be happening soon.
Another beautiful place. This is Mount Ventoux. A favorite with bicyclists. Maybe we will come back and bike up to the summit…with Ebikes…with extra batteries.
Life's Been Good To Us So Far! 