When most people think of Montelimar, they think of nougat and indeed there is a long history of its manufacture here. Apparently the most noteworthy recent event regarding nougat, was the building of the A7 autoroute that bypassed Montelimar. Guess what? People were no longer stopping in hordes on the way through to buy this almond/ pistachio candy. As a result, many of the nougat facilities closed up shop. Gotta love progress!
Anyway after we took the autoroute north, we followed the signs for the tourism bureau where we got a walking itinerary and off we went.
We walked into the town through the Ponte Saint-Martin and down Rue Pierre Julien. The tour was heavy on a lot of local history, including some historical facades of shops.
We wound through the wider shopping streets and up into the warren of narrow streets barely wide enough to walk through much less drive a car through – more about that later – on the way to the chateau.
Then it was time for lunch and since we had done some research on the Michelin site, we were able to find a cute little restaurant on a cul de sac, just out of the hustle and bustle of the main shopping area. La Petite France had a 25 Euro menu, which ended up being more than enough food.
Our starter was escargots in an herb-garlic sauce with mini ravioli. Wow!
Then we had a supreme of guinea fowl with vegetables and finished with a nougat ice cream with a slice of a butter cream torte. Wow, again! We felt that, when in Montelimar, one must at least sample the famous local food.
After lunch, we thought we’d stop in at an E LeClerc store, since we hadn’t been to one yet on this trip and I thought I'd read that they had a wine fair. Well, once in the store, we were both afflicted by some kind of tummy turmoil – it was too early to be our yummy lunch, we hoped.
In any case, we lost our zest for shopping and decided to head back to Cairanne. Before I go any further, I need to comment on GPS’s.
On this trip I have access to two units, the Garmin I brought with me and the in-car TomTom. So far, I’ve been impressed with the car unit and we’ve used it a lot. In Montelimar, both of them had difficulty getting us where we wanted to go. The Garmin took us on another tour of Montelimar before getting us to the E LeClerc.
I’d programmed home into the TomTom and before we knew it, we were driving on those winding narrow streets, too narrow for cars. It was telling us to make wrong turns on one-way streets and knew nothing of the construction that further forced us from our designated route. We pretty much did our walking tour again, only this time in the car. One sharp turn was particularly noteworthy for the amount of car paint left on the walls. Fortunately, I had none to add and after what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes, we escaped and headed for home.
Continuing to follow the GPS – are we masochists or what? - we missed the nougat shop we’d seen on the way in, so no nougat was purchased on this trip.
We did however, avoid the autoroute and had a very pretty drive back to Cairanne through the dormant lavender fields and passed many cool towns worth a further look like la Garde-Adhemar, Saint Paul Trois-Chateaux and Suze la Rousse – great name – shown above.
The rest of the day was pretty quiet, giving our tummies a bit of a rest and as usual, we watched it disappear in a blaze of glory.
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