Market Day in Vaison la Romaine

After a leisurely start to the day, we headed off to the market in Vaison la Roamine, about 15km down the road. This is close to, if not the largest Provence market we've experienced, encompassing the entire town.

But before I get to that, let me talk about traveling in Europe with a GPS. This is our first experience with a GPS and after a few days we've made a couple of observations. First of all, when it works well, it's fabulous and it's taken us on routes never before covered. When it doesn't work - like when the satellite coverage is poor - you're screwed, unless you either use some common sense, or if you have done a paper map overview before you headed out, or in our case, actually had some clue as to where we were. On numerous occasions, Emily - that's our British GPS guide - is seriously late with turning instructions and/or slightly out of location. I've been trying to follow her implicitly but her pronunciation of French road names is quite often a little sketchy and without Dawn reading the actual name on the unit I'd have problems. Maybe we should be listening to instructions en francais - maybe not.
Anyway, back to Vaison la Romaine. This is one of the chi-chi spots in Provence and specifically the Vaucluse, so on market day, there lots of foreigners crammed into its narrow streets. We hear lots of English, Brits and Americans, German and similar Germanic tongues like the Dutch and Belgians. We have been to this market numerous times in past years and it seems to get busier and busier and we seem to be parking further and further down the road.

We seek out a number of our/my favourite vendors like the tomato lady above - she of the amazing sun died marinated tomatoes, plus excellent olives and olive oil- , or the paella stall, or the chicken guy shown below.


There are, of course, many tablecloth merchants and needless to say, we have yet one more tablecloth to add to the stable. Hard to resist!
On our way back to Cairanne we drove through the neighbouring village of Rasteau, which is probably better known in Canada for its wine than Cairanne. The old town offers some nice photographic moments.


From there we actually drove past Cairanne to Orange, so I could get a networking cable for the internet, since the mystery of the wi-fi password for our house has still not been solved and now my new hardwire stretches throughout the house.
We were fine in the air conditioned car, but back at the non-air conditioned house we had a quick bite and resorted to finding the coolest place for a nap. We're starting to conform to French dining habits and eating dinner much later to escape the heat in the kitchen. Actually, this also allows us to dine on the terrace overlooking an expanse of the Rhone valley and as far as the eye can see, vineyards. Shabby!