avril 26-mai 2: Luberon reunion

I spent the 26th in Avignon waiting for Tim's train to arrive and amassing what would be our dinner feast that night. I returned to Pain § Cie, the fantastic bakery I discovered the first time around, for half loaves of flaxseed and vigneron (walnut and wine-soaked raisin) breads. Then on to the butcher for some jambon de Savoie, an aged ham in the Parma style. And finally a long, but very nice walk to La Reboule, the farm on Ile de Barthelasse for strawberries, carrots, zucchini and snow peas. I was already packing dried fruit, digestive biscuits, a Snickers bar, a hunk of aged cantal and two goat cheeses from the last farm. Good thing Tim arrived hungry.

We met up at the TGV shuttle stop and had a great sit in a nearby park. After a short walk around town and some grocery shopping, we hopped a little train to Cavaillon where we stayed for the next four nights. Our room had doors out to a terrace with table and chairs where we enjoyed many a dinner and breakfast. Cavaillon is a town of about 25,000 in the heart of melon country. The Cavaillon melon is somewhat like a cantaloupe, but people rave and rave about it. Sadly, they're not in season until July. We saw tons and tons of fields, though, many bordered by high cedar hedges that cut the fierce Mistral winds that can blow here. (It's the typical wind of Provence that usually comes roaring down the Rhone.) We did see tons of strawberries at the market, though, as well as an anti-GMO protest where people were chained together using bike locks.

Cavaillon is at the edge of the Luberon regional park, an area named after the mountain nearby that we could see from a hike in town. Cavaillon is also the most westerly point on a cycling loop that swings through the park for 230km round trip. We saw lots of cycletourists in town and also serious-looking mountain and road bikers. In fact, we became part of the cycling crowd for four days, too. The bike shop just down the block from our hotel was a high-end place with one really sweet Cannondale RAW up for show that was sadly already sold and not available for a test ride.



We rented nice Cannondale Backcountries with panniers and handlebar bags. First up was a day trip to Carpentras inspired by reports from my first French hosts of an incredible pastry shop there that they used to frequent. We passed through Isle-sur-La-Sorgue where the Sorgue river cuts through the middle of town. This was followed by some getting lost and a long, long climb to a point where we could see Mt. Ventoux in the distance, the biggest mountain in Provence.



The pastries from L'Atelier des Mets did not disappoint. Tim, on his crusade to have at least one pain au chocolat a day and try lots of different places, stuck with his standard while I had a lemon tartelette. We also each had an incredible macaron. On the way back we took a little break again in Isle-sur-La-Sorgue next to a canal.



The cycletouring began in earnest the following day with a rainy, windy ride. We followed the sign-posted route out from Cavaillon, and the weather was wretched until Bonnieux where we stopped for lunch. One great, long downhill later, we arrived in Apt where Tim discovered that "pain frite" with cheese, lettuce and tomato doesn't actually mean grilled cheese. It means a pocket sandwich stuffed with fries.



The following day we took a loop day trip to Rousillion to see the famous ochre rocks there as well as the village which is classified as one of the most beautiful in France. After yet another cheese, bread, olives, fruit and chocolate lunch, we left Rousillion down an enormous hill and got ourselves off the route. It took some frustratingly hot biking to get back on, only to lose it again. But all ended well with a 15-minute-long downhill without pedaling or braking back in to Apt. We rewarded ourselves with delicious Moroccan dinner.



Tim classified the next day of cycling back to Cavaillon as the best he's had while touring. Indeed, the crisp morning air was perfect for the hard climb out of Apt. Bonnieux was buzzing for market day when we came through, so we stocked up for a picnic which we then had in Menerbes and which Tim classified as probably the best picnic he's ever had. (So many superlatives!) Biking-induced hunger, fresh food, a table in a garden and a view of the Provencal countryside were hard to beat. Apricot jam with lemon pulp was the highlight.




We spent one more night in Cavaillon where we had pizza while watching "Borat" in French. Then off for five nights in Nice.

avril 22-26: Nîmes

I decided to skip Carcassonne on the recommendation of my last hosts who said that after walking around the old medieval part of the city there wasn't much to see. I decided instead to spend all four nights before Tim came in Nîmes, a fairly big city with lots of Roman history.

My first day, I headed for the Arènes, or Roman amphitheater, one of the three major Roman sites in the city. Nîmes was Nemausus in Roman times, a very important city in southern France on the Via Domitia, a road that connected Rome to Spain. The amphitheater here was built in the first century and used for gladiator battles, etc. But after that it went through centuries of other uses such as a fortress for the Visigoth invaders and even a small walled town in the Middle Ages until the 18th century. In the middle of the 19th, a restoration was undertaken, and it's evident in some parts just how "restored" it was with stone and brick that resembled very little the original structure. Today, the arena is used for bullfights which were happening the week after I was there, and I wondered if they left the wooden bleachers up all year round or just for the season.



I also walked around the city quite a bit, passing this ridiculously-named clothing store. I don't think I'd want to shop here.


Nîmes also boasts an incredibly beautiful park on a site where the Romans had some major public buildings and a temple to the goddess Diana. The park's major feature is a fountain and series of canals and ponds fed by the powerful spring that was one impetus for Roman settlement.



On the same subject of Roman water, I took a bus the next day to the Pont du Gard, the Roman aqueduct over the river Gard that was part of a system to bring water from Uzès to Nîmes, about 25 km. The structure is amazing, rising almost 50m from the riverbed with three levels of arches of differing sizes. I was able to see the aqueduct from a few different veiwpoints since there are trails all around and a second bridge that has been built running right next to the Roman construction.



One of the trails was particularly great because you could see the continuation of the aqueduct as it ran off into the forest. Parts were overgrown and falling down, while others looked quite intact. And still others had had the arches filled in at some later point, perhaps by opportunist folks looking to build a wall in the area and taking advantage of the existing structure.



Back in Nîmes the next day, I wandered more, stumbling across the place in the city where water came in from the aqueduct and was separated into different flows to areas of the city. And I went to the city archeological musem which was quite the place. It felt like a somewhat dinky municipal museum in the U.S. where you might find things that have been sitting around attics for years, but things like old polictical propaganda or furniture or clothing, not Roman artifacts. Somehow the lack of interpretation and jumble of set up is more shocking when the objects are that old. Perhaps it's not just age that imbues things with importance and these Roman stones and pottery were not so valuable. But seeing thousands of years old statues, mosaics and carvings in a courtyard with lots of pigeons and bird poop was pretty startling.



And then after my last night of sleeping with a loud, snoring Australian in my room, it was off to Avignon to meet up with Tim!

avril 17-22: More Roquecave time

My later days at the last farm were much the same as previous: not a ton of work because there wasn't much cheese and consequently lots of time to hang around, run, hike and read. I occupied a few hours one rainy day with baking banana bread, however. I explained to Carole and Ingo that often in the U.S. when you have overripce bananas, you would make banana bread, so I was pressed into service. After finding a recipe online that actually contained the very French ingredient of crème fraîche as one of the fats, I set about gathering ingredients from their various corners. Flour and eggs from the cave (cold room), oil in the kitchen, sugar searched out underneath the counter (thankfully vanilla bean-infused!), and walnuts from a sack upstairs. The bread was super moist and got good reviews from the family.

I also had a chance to sell at a few markets with Ingo and Carole. One was an atypical French market in that it was restricted to organic producers (with one re-seller thrown in) and took place from 4-8pm for working people to be able to come. It felt much more like a farmers' market in Massachusetts with more younger and middle aged customers and fewer vendors.

The market in Olonzac is one Ingo has done for 23 years. His table is underneath a pavillion with a bunch of others including the charcuterie truck, but the market stretches throughout the streets of this small town. There were tons of people selling asparagus during its short season, as well as the normal mix of grocery, prepared food and clothing/bags/cloth vendors. I sold on my own a bunch while Ingo took the opportunity to run some errands and wander around. I fared just fine and actually met a couple from Newton, MA one week! Customers at the market in general during the day skew heavily towards the elderly folk who congregate and chat on various corners. There are also tourists, parents with young kids, and other people who aren't at work for some reason or another. My favorite by far were the older ladies who walked around with their bikes at the market almost using them as walkers. It's great that they can still use them to get around town to see people and do their shopping even though they have trouble walking.



After the market, Ingo drove me to Narbonne where I took the train to Nîmes to spend four nights. I enjoyed a picnic lunch on the train while watching the countryside get progressively more southerly-looking.