Vaison la Romaine

I think there's a movie that says, "If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium." In our case, it would be, "If it's Tuesday this must be Vaison la Romaine." This is still the best market in Provence - in our minds - and due to forecasts of drizzly rain today, it was much more navigable today than normally. We had no problems parking closely and no jam ups on the streets. And what was better, the rain headed in over night and was gone by the morning.

I guess due to the forecast, many vendors didn't show and therefore many tourists avoided the market as well, but all in all it was a much more enjoyable walk.

We walked the circuit and visited our favourite vendors, including Lilian. We bought some items here and Carole bought one of his new lines of table clothes - very beautiful.

One thing we didn't do with Carole and Claude last year was walk up into the old village, so that was on the itinerary. As we started our climb we came upon this cat - with attitude.

If one walks up to the chateau, the first part seems steep and extreme, but it isn't until you are almost at the chateau that the walk becomes a challenge, as Claude discovered when he took a tumble - with no appreciable injuries, thankfully.

Views from the old town are always interesting.

When we headed back down to the market, we discovered, much to our chagrin, that my favourite vendor, Vivian, was nowhere to be seen. Weather? Holidays? No idea. All we knew was that we weren't going home with either her sun dried tomatoes or olives. Quel domage! Anyway, we quit the market and headed back to Cairanne for another lunch on the terrace. Then we then dealt with the only medical issue we've had on our journeys and it wasn't Claude's knee. Carole had an issue with a burst blood vessel in one eye, so we phoned Johnsons Insurance for help. Once they recorded the info, we phoned the doctor in Cairanne. He had no time to see Carole today but told us to come to his office after 9:30 tomorrow morning, so the saga will continue. We finished off the day with a dinner of viccychoise followed by BBQed artichoke hearts and chicken legs with oven fries and beans. As usual we finished off the day with Bite Me. Claude won both games tonight - his first wins on this trip, so we won't hold it against him. Fortunes could change tomorrow.

Stocking the larder

A road trip is and was great but it's also wonderful to stay put for a while. Of course that meant that today was devoted to filling up the fridge with French delights. Before that, however, we got some good news. It appears that the Air France pilots strike is over and although the next couple of days might still have flight issues, by the time Carole and Claude fly home next weekend, they should have no problem with their flights. After a very leisurely start to the day - and that felt great - we decided to have the ultimate shopping experience and head to Avignon to the Auchan. This is a shopping experienve that delights most of our guests and certainly gave us an opportunity to get anything we need.

We started off with a small list, but ended up checking out with an overflowing cart. It's amazing how those things happen! As usual the aisle of roses kept us entertained.

The skies were less than their usual Provencal blue today and although it looked distinctly like rain, it held off. I doubt we'll be as lucky tomorrow. The rest of the day was devoted to enjoying the ambiance and washing clothes. We had a fabulous salmon dinner this evening and thoroughly enjoyed all courses.

After a week of lengthy blog entries, the next few might be a little lighter.

To Cairanne

Today we set out on the last leg of our road trip. We had a nice stay at the Ibis and their excellence was personified after we checked out and went to purchase some lunch and dinner food stuffs. While in the store, not far from the Ibis, my phone rang. First of all it was 3:00 in the morning in Canada, so we knew it wasn't a call from home and secondly the call display indicated it was a French call. So I picked up. Claude had left his bottle of cognac at the hotel and they had called me to come and get it. And we did.

Once the cognac was safely stowed we headed out on the last leg of this road trip. Less than an hour down the road we settled on a walkabout the medieval town of Carcassonne. We 've been here more than once but it's always special and I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Quite the spot! By 3:00 we had rolled into Cairanne and were home, 1752.5 km from Paris.

It felt like being home and after a few libations we settled down to dinner and cards.

Toulouse

Chateau Margaux. As a post script to yesterday, we took a walk to the Margaux church last evening, a short distance from our hotel and on the border of the property of Chateau Margaux. These are very pampered vines. This morning as we awoke the sun continued to shine and nicely highlighted both the name plate for our room and the neighbouring 2eme Grand Cru Classe of Rauzan-Segla.

The drive to Toulouse was pretty slick and we arrived at the hotel by 12:30. We booked into a fairly new Ibis Styles, right off the autoroute and a short distance from downtown. Just as a point of fact, the photo here was taken later this evening when we returned from dinner.

After unloading the car, we immediately set out for the core of old Toulouse. This is a university and aerospace city of around 7500000 people and driving into its centre it was immediately obvious that this was not a big city like Bordeaux or Paris. It was actually easy to get around in this city and we quickly found central parking adjacent to the the ancient cathedral of St. Etienne.

What struck us immediately about Toulouse was the amount of brick used in the architecture. Everywhere else it stone, but here, brick dominated almost every building.

We hit Toulouse over the lunch hour and therefore everything was closed, so we were flying a little blind and as we wandered about we just had to guess where to head next. I think we got a feel for the old Toulouse but surely missed some key features. Lunch was at a little bistro next to St. Etienne.

Regular readers of my blog might wonder about my lack of French haut couture on this trip, so now I'll add three photos representing interesting fashion statements from Toulouse.

Suffice it to say, the picture of the ladies in traditonal garb was all about a group of Brittany performers with bagpipes that we came upon. Gotta love serendipity! Following our brief tour, we were back to the hotel, after a gas up stop and had some slow time before we headed out to the Campanile Hotel, a kilometre down the road, for dinner. It was, in fact the only restaurant in the area for us, unless we drove back to the heart of Toulouse or unless we succumbed to MacDonalds. This restaurant/hotel was adjacent to the Cite d'Espace, a space museum set up in 1997, to tie in with the Airbus industry which, today, is the heart of Toulouse's economy.

Back at the Ibis it was card and Scotch time and we were pretty happy that this was our last night on the road.