Everyone felt better this morning having slept last night and shaken off the horrible car ride. Still, yesterday was such a bad day, I might need two days to adequately recover. Our house is easy and comfortable, with a big patio, and clean modern furnishings. There's a pool, so the kids are excited about that. Provence smells like lavender, and cheese, which is a pretty good combo. We got everyone together by 10:15 a.m. and departed, which included Ava's friend, Hayna, that she met while in school near Aix. So we threw our party of 7 into the dreaded road trip machine, and hoped for the best. We're very central in Provence, but that just means that we are about 45-1 hour from most of the cute little towns (only 15 minutes from the larger city of Aix though). Our plan is to hit the various little towns, one a day, on that particular town's market day. Today was St. Remy, which is darling and probably even cuter without the big market and loads of people, but the market was fun.
We had a great time eating our way thru the market....cheese, salami, pesto, breads, fruits. and veggies. Romeo was having a field day with the samples (which are at every vendor). It's like going to Costco on a Saturday (which he and John consider a fun outing), but much, much better.
We found a glazed pottery cicada bug (about 10" tall) to place next to our front door. Per Provence folklore, the gross wingy cicada bug symbol was hung near the door as a welcoming gesture and good luck. They come out in June, thru September and the males make a deafening and continual sound throughout the region (mating call.) It's like crickets....gone crazy. If you are from the east coast, you know this sound well.
We hit another small town on the way home for a long lazy lunch and eventually made our way home after that. Our little village is called Cabriès, and it's as small as you can get. It sits up on a hillside, and while there are grocery stores within a 5 minute drive, in terms of walking distance there is only one small restaurant, a tiny grocery store, and what looks to be a tiny regional grocery/café where you can buy cheese and wine. John and I did the late afternoon stroll and confirmed, that was it. On the plus side, other than the cicada, and Romeo and Gia's screaming at the pool, it's pretty quiet. We like to walk around and imagine what life is like to live in a tiny village like this. Everyone knows everyone, all the houses are set very close together, opening onto narrow walking streets. I was curious so I googled the name of the town....8500 resides, but that was the only entry in Wikipedia, guess nothing else was noteworthy about the town.
My moral lesson of the day was that on our drive home from St. Remy, we spotted a grocery store about 4 minutes from our house per the GPS and I told John to pull over really quick because we needed more syrup. After our extensive shopping trip yesterday that caused me permanent mental scars, I wasn't keen to go into the grocery, but Romeo and his morning French toast is a combo that we dare not mess with. So I run into the grocery store and guess what? It's freakin' AMAZING...like heaven. I didn't want to leave. Clean, gourmet, wide aisles, hardly any people. The moral of the story is two fold: 1) don't make assumptions (I figured the bigger grocery store in the bigger city would have more than anything near the small village, but it turned out to be patently false, 2) don't get so whipped up that you forget what is reasonable, or you forget there are alternatives. Take a deep breath and have a little faith. If I had just settled down on the grocery quest last night, we could have skipped the madhouse, and concluded the hideous day with the bright spot of a wonderful grocery store. Instead, I aged myself 3 extra years with mayhem shopping stress.
The day ended with Ava and Hanya doing their teenage best to convince us that "everyone in Aix" came home at 4:00 a.m. after going "out" to the clubs. Even 16 year olds. Nope, not buying it. Not only that, it's a WEDNESDAY. They tried to tell us that no one even showed up until about 12:45 a.m., so it was barely worth going unless you could stay out late, like 4 a.m. late. I asked her what kind of club this was, and if there were any poles involved?? It's Provence, not Madrid Ava, settle down...club life on a Wednesday night can't be that cool. Still, we had to do about 25 verbal rounds with the girls before they accepted that their curfew wasn't going to change, then they dressed up in their club clothes (which DID look like a pole was involved) and John dropped them off in Aix. John's on his work schedule so he was on duty to make sure they got home, while I got to pass out around midnight. Still too late for me, but it's better than other nights.
My pictures suck a whole lot today...didn't have the energy to snap a lot of photos.
Signed, me {lv}
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