Not Just Any Wednesday

Wednesday, July 29

We slept late again this morning and enjoyed hearing the noises of the town through our open windows. Unfortunately, Jeff awakened with a stomach issue (I'm sure it had nothing to do with last night's Moroccan meal) and I had to make a quick run to the pharmacy around the corner. In Europe, there are pharmacies with cute green neon cross signs conveniently located about every four blocks. So guess who doesn’t speak English…..yep, the pharmacist. So we proceed to play Charades with me describing stomach cramps and diarrhea with my hands which was pretty hysterical, I imagine. She shouted, “Imodium” and I jumped up and down saying, “yes, yes” ….. just like a game of Guesstures with our friends. We both felt like we had won the game! I never thought to ask for Imodium since she didn’t speak English. Guess some words are just international. Anyway, those little magic pills worked and Jeff is fine now.

We left Avignon and headed northeast to the picturesque little town of Gordes, recommended to us by our new friends at dinner last night. This village was built into the side of a hill, so you can imagine that each street was a hard climb up or a downhill slide. It was hard to walk the narrow passages because the little stones that the streets were made of stuck up really high. Of course, flip flops didn’t help. We had a picnic lunch sitting on a ledge way up high overlooking the most incredible scene of rolling hayfields, pastures and vineyards. Ahhhhh, France!

I had read that the best lavender fields are near Sault and July/August is the peak of the growing season, so that’s where we headed next. Except Sault was just a teeeeny bit farther than we expected and was through just at teeeeny bit more challenging land formations than we imagined. We drove much longer than planned and traversed two huge mountains: hairpin curves, no shoulders, no guardrails (scary part always on MY side), no center line on the narrow road, etc. Don’t know if my “Top 10” book was a little off or if the heat wave here caused the lavender to bloom early, buuuut it was a bit dried up for the most part. Not to worry, we found the one and only currently blooming lavender field abuzz with fragrant lavender and BEES! As I plopped myself in the midst of this field for the perfect photo op, Jeff and I heard the buzzing of thousands of bees sounding like a lawnmower. Luckily, they weren’t as interested in us as in the soon-to-be potpourri; picture was snapped and we headed to the town of Sault for a cold drink and potty break.

Of course, what goes up must come down, so we made our descent down the two huge mountains. (Yes, that would include one scary ascent between the two scary descents.....gaaah!) One minor problem: our GPS’s battery died and the car charger didn’t work. I guess that would be considered a major problem since we didn’t have a very detailed map. (fyi: A landman without a good map is not a happy traveler!) Not that having a map would have solved all our problems as European towns don’t adequately mark their street names. We stopped in two very cute French villages on our way to Marseille to plug the GPS into a wall socket in a shop (darn, had to shop while it charged) but it still fizzled out before we got to Marseille. Jeff was just a bit frazzled (to put it kindly) since we were in the mountains of a foreign country, not knowing exactly where we were or where we were going. My assurances that this was an "adventure" seemed to go unnoticed. For some reason, his Blackberry decided to work (after taking its own vacation for a week) and we were able to navigate our way through Marseille to our hotel. Don't know whether to bless or curse technology.

Marseille is the oldest city in France. It’s much larger than we expected (especially when you have no city map or GPS) so we hope to leave the car in the hotel garage and use the Metro tomorrow. We took a cab to where there are a dozen cute (you guessed it) outdoor restaurants around the sea. We had a good Italian meal and headed back to the hotel by 11p.m. which is the earliest evening we’ve had so far. Time to unwind!

Click here for today's pictures. Click on Slideshow, then click on Full Screen in upper right.