After a breakfast of, I hate to admit it, toasted baguette
and brie cheese and coffee with, oh dear, real cream, we headed for the market
in Orange. Had a heckuva time finding
the market. Eventually, we simply parked
and walked in the opposite direction of the people with shopping bags stuffed
with goodies to find the real thing.
Purses, straw bags, shoes, Provencal fabrics, fruits,
vegetables, bread, fish, roasted chicken, roasted pigeon. And all colors and smells. We bought some vegetables and some
lavender. (Did you know that “lavander”
is the eating variety and “lavendin” is the smelling variety?) And we wandered still.
Come time to leave, and we looked to catch up with the Tour
of the Dentelles (a mountain range named for its lace-like profile—“dentelle”
meaning lace), a drive, which included Vaison-la-Romaine, Malaucéne
(tried to find the watchtower converted to clocktower), Le Barroux,
Beaumes-de-Venise, Vacqueyras, and Gigondas.
After Orange’s market, we headed to Gigondas and found an ideal parking
spot right at the edge of the walk up to the 14th-century
chateau. We stopped up the street in a
small restaurant and sat outside to enjoy a lovely lunch of risotto with
mushrooms and hazelnuts for Cindy and me and very delicate spinach and ricotta
ravioli with parmesan cheese for Phil and a lovely carafe of gigondas wine for
all. We topped it off with coffee and a
climb up toward the top along the difficult-to-navigate cobblestone streets/paths.
To Carpentras in search of the oldest synagogue in France,
which we found closed. So we thought
we’d visit the Cathédrale-St.-Siffrein. Many of the Jews from that 14th-century
synagogue converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution and attended the cathédrale. Because we couldn’t be sure that the walk
there would be as simple as it appeared on the GPS map, we drove--only to find
ourselves in narrow one-way lanes moving in the wrong direction where people
were motioning to us that we should reverse direction. So lots of movement in reverse, three-way
turns, narrow turns, angry looks along with looks of pity and disgust ensued
until finally we made it out onto a “conventional” road with more than one lane
and cars moving faster than three MPH.
After that stressful little interlude, we wended our way
toward Lagnes, stopping at a small supermarket to buy a few staples. We made it back just before dark and had a
cozy evening at home watching BBC thrillers and eating veggies and cheese,
drinking wine and reporting on the day’s events.
It’s pretty easy to feel at home here. The weather has been grand—warm enough this
evening to sit outside for a time. I
haven’t encountered too many dead-ends—language-wise. (I’ve already reported on the dead-ends with
the car.) It’s always a challenge, but
not intimidating or uncomfortable. It
feels good to stretch my brain and improve my French. What better way to use those cerebral cells?
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