If it’s Tuesday, we must be in Vaison la Romaine

After yet another night of not closing inner doors – the voleurs were of course locked – we awoke to another hot one. Our line for today was, “Let’s go to the Vaison la Romaine market to get a good walk.” Right! “OK, maybe a little shopping.”

The town was bustling as usual and we got waylaid at the very first stall. Here the shirts and Capri’s that were 15 and 20 Euros were now 8 Euros and the lady’s tunics were only 12 Euros. Well, who can resist those bargains? It appeared that they were clearing out the summer stock and we obligingly helped them out.

It is always fun to see the outfits on the REAL French women. There is usually that “Je ne sais quoi?” about them as this photo illustrates. I probably shouldn’t mention that this just happens to be my tomato lady, AGAIN!

After a short shuffle, because that’s about maximum speed in this congested market, we settled in for lunch at another of Peter and Margaret’s favourites, La Lyriste. The menu here was definitely not the regular Provencal fare and for 19 Euros we had an excellent and unique meal.

Dawn started with an olive tapenade risotto done to a crispy or as they call it “croustillant”, finish, while I started with a pear tarte with carmellized onions and Fourme d’Ambert cheese. Main course was brochettes of salmon for Dawn and I had a bull (taureau) parmentier, with an orange sauce - something like a shepherd’s pie with mashed potatoes on top. For dessert, we both had a three layered parfait with chocolate on the bottom, mascarpone in the middle and a plum puree on the top.

After lunch, market had packed up, the garbage trucks were cleaning the streets and we badly needed that walk I talked about earlier. So, despite the blazing sun and intense heat, we set off to conquer the chateau at the top of the old town. This is not something we had done before, despite many visits to Vaison.
It was a very picturesque walk and we discovered some really cool cafes on the way up. The view from the chateau today was pristine, with those Provencal blue skies dominating.


Following our excellent walk, we stopped in at Intermarche to get some white wine. Although we’ve found a few local ones that are good, most are quite expensive. So, another first for us was buying bag-in-a-box –three litres of Vaison white for 11 Euros. I did the same thing at Camille Cayran yesterday with their rose and I have to confess that the wine is pretty good.
When we returned to Cairanne at around 4:00, we discovered that today was the first day that it was actually a good deal more pleasant inside the house, in the heat of the day. Therefore, we didn’t actually head out onto the terrace until close to 7:00. I should point out that we ARE NOT complaining about the weather! Keep it coming, I say!