Today, Saturday, we were a bit tired from our road trips this week. We stayed in our gite this morning, writing our blog/logs and enjoying another cup of coffee.
We went to a nearby town, Bonnieux, for lunch across from the old train station. It has probably been many decades since there was a train going through; in fact, the train track has been turned into a bike path. Lunch was very good. This was our first real meal out in this area. We have been cooking or getting take-out for the rest of the time.
Larry has decided that we should be on a $100/day (that's dollars, NOT Euros!), so we often get something simple. In the Dordogne (Perigord) we ate lunch out almost every day. The kitchen that we had at our disposal was not inspiring, to say the least, and the restaurants were abundant and reasonable. Here, we have a very well equipped kitchen -- though extremely tiny. None the less, we have been taking advantage of nearby grocery stores in each direction. Also, I seem to be putting back on some of the 20 lbs that I lost in the three months prior to our trip. All of this wine and wonderful cheeses, bread and sausages have had an effect. Not to mention that we normally have dessert every night, something that we do not do at home. Of course, we don't have wonderful French patisseries at home, either.
After lunch we stopped at a winery almost across the street from the restaurant. This is grape crushing season. The winery is a co-op, and local farmers had brought their grapes to be crushed and processed. Larry took some great pictures of the process. We bought some wine, of course.
Here are his pictures:
After lunch and the winery stop, we drove to the town of Rousillon which is famous for its ochre. The houses in Roussillon are all painted with various colors of ocre that come from the surrounding hills. The result is very reminiscent of Van Gogh's depiction of Provence. In fact, that coloration is what I have longed to see here in Provence, and have mostly been disappointed in not seeing it. Most houses here are of unpainted stone, mostly limestone. Having said that, Roussillon was not a great attention-getter. The town, even in October, had more tourists than townsfolk. It did have a "meter maid", however who checked all the Pay and Display tickets in the car windshields.
Maybe the tour of the factory would have been interesting, but neither of us felt the need to go through it, for 6 Euros a piece. We read the material at the lookout post and got the idea of how the ochre was processed. At its height in mid-1900's, the town processed 40 tons a year, and now they only process 2 tons a year. There was no explanation of what happened. The colors of ochre are really beautiful, not just golden and rust, but all variations from very dark to pale cream and a range of blues. They make a lovely color palette.
Here are pictures of the red hills of Roussillon:
The big triumph of the day was that we found a clothing store in Apt to buy tee shirts and I found a shoe store to buy sandals, both for next week when we will be in the Riviera. For some reason, neither of us thought that it would be so warm here, and on the Riviera even warmer. We were unprepared for summer again. After all, it's getting towards mid-October already. Still, the temperature has been around 23-25 centigrade -- mid to upper 70's and bright sunlight. We are definitely not complaining about the weather, but we felt ridiculous buying tee shirts when we each have at least 50-60 at home. And, my shoe collection takes up considerable space, so another pair of sandals is not what I needed.
I'm sure that next week, we will be very glad that we bought our warm weather clothes. Meanwhile, back in Perigord, they are putting on the layers and buttoning up.
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