Recalculating

I had trouble getting connected to the internet yesterday, so here’s the recap for Tuesday, July 28. Jeff and I actually slept till 9 am today which was true bliss. Since the hotel breakfast was about $15 each, he went to a nearby McDonald’s and brought back funny looking little pancakes with cylinder-shaped syrup packets and the tiniest cups of coffee I’ve ever seen. Not complaining, just describing.

We hooked up our GPS girlfriend and headed to Pont du Gard which is a Roman bridge (dating somewhere between 19 BC and 50 AD) topped by an aqueduct. Seems the Romans were partial to these lands long before the French and their influence remains to this day. We knew it must be worthy of seeing when we saw the parking lot was full and busloads of people were pouring through the entrance. This was the coolest thing to see in person. It was built with stones without using mortar, which makes it pretty impressive. The river below it was deep and beautiful, and people were swimming, snorkeling and kayaking in it. In my opinion, this place contained the “photography trinity”….. stonework, arches and blue skies!

On to Avignon. Well this quaint little town, surrounded by an ancient stone wall, occasionally dotted with stone towers, apparently swells with thousands upon thousands of people during the entire month of July (yes this is July 28) for a theater/arts festive. Yep, that would be us driving into an ancient French town with streets that are wiggly and barely wider than the Peugeot we’re driving. With the annual festival in full swing, several key streets (key to getting to our hotel in the heart of the town centre) were closed and the GPS was totally unaware of these annual street closures. We circled this maze of a town about an hour trying to get to our hotel. Yep, if Jeff hears “recalculating” one more time I think he will throw the GPS to kingdom come. We finally found the only parking place on the street available in the south of France, then walked to our hotel which is on the main plaza, quite the lively location. We were told we needed to use overnight parking and to park in the only parking garage in town which was several blocks away. So we spent another 45 minutes “recalculating” because getting to the parking garage was easier said than done. When we did find it, it was FULL! After winding through town a few more times, we eventually found the FULL sign had been removed and we located a spot and dragged our luggage several blocks to the hotel. Then we were ready to explore.....on foot.

We had a sandwich and salad at a cute little outdoor café in the shadows of an ancient church. I decided to be adventurous and get a dessert that looked like the yummy berries and cream at Corelli’s where Molly worked, but it tasted like sour cream with three raspberries to sweeten itL We discovered a gorgeous cathedral, Church of St. Pierre is the English version. Then we went to a place that is ranked very high in my Top 10 Provence book that we carry around religiously: Le Palais des Papes (a.k.a. Palace of the Popes). Apparently, this city was the second Vatican until about 300 years ago…..who knew! We also saw Pont St-Benezet which is a 13^th century bridge across the Rhone River…..more stone, arches and blue sky!

Someone, please tell my trainer that just because I wasn’t at the gym for my usual Tuesday workout doesn’t mean I was slouching. Oh no, I climbed hundreds of Roman bridge steps and palace stairways today. Geez, some vacay.

Early in the evening, we sat in the plaza enjoying a drink, just outside our hotel which has a cluster of several outdoor restaurants, plus the additional crowds and entertainment associated with the annual festival. Then we walked up and down the tiny, curvy streets we had driven through earlier in the afternoon, wondering how we ever did that! People just walk in the middle of the streets like they do in the HEB and Wal-Mart parking lots, but picture a much narrower path…..yes, no room for a car. We got a banana ice cream cone, which was phenomenal, random but very good. You wouldn’t believe how many little areas there are (literally dozens) with groups of outdoor restaurants (just no telling how many) in this one little old town. We started reading the posted menus in hopes of finding a cute place for dinner with good French food that was reasonably priced which is hard to do since the writing is in French and everything is expensive. But I zeroed in on a crowded place (always a good sign) that had great atmosphere (another good sign) with cute water bottles on the tables (yet another positive sign,) and got into a conversation with a couple of local ladies around our age who highly recommended the restaurant. In fact, the waiter sat us at tables that were three inches apart and Monique proceeded to recommend a particular Rose and certain selections from the menu since we were clueless reading the French menu. Something just didn’t seem quite right, and I noticed only at that point that we were at Couscouseire l’Horloge……that’s French for “you’re going to have Moroccan food in France”…..ummm, recalculating! It was just too uncool to ditch our new friends from Avignon and hightail it to the nearest unMoroccan restaurant…..heck, they had already ordered two extra glasses to share their wine with us. So we decided to go with the flow and follow their suggestions. Ummm, when in France….. So we got an unusual salad filled with corn, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, beets and eggs with a pesto dressing as well as “tagine” which was a dish of chicken, potatoes, white raisins and lots of sliced almonds heavily seasoned with a spice that our lady friends swore wasn’t curry (gag) but tasted suspiciously like curry’s first cousin. We sipped on mint tea which was like drinking hot spearmint gum. We had a great conversation with our new friends who each have a bed and breakfast in the area, so they gave us their info for our next trip. The meal wasn’t as bad as we feared but I doubt Morocco will be on our Bucket List!

Afterwards, we walked around listening to the music and chatter of this happy place before heading to our room. In fact, the window in our hotel room is open and we can hear the festivities below as I type. Once again, it's very, very late. Goodnight:)

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