At the beggining of the trip, Tom, the guy I rented the bike from recommended that I go to St. Remy de Provence because it was a beautiful medival town nestled in the hills surrounded by some of the best riding in Provence. Not one to turn down good advice, I figured that it would be worth doing a day trip down there since it's only 20 km from Avignon and Avignon has cheaper lodging. So, today was this day trip, fortunately without the huge bags. A nice change that meant I moved significantly faster.
The ride to St. Remy was actually fairly boring. It was nice country roads and very flat so it was just good exercise without much to see except the countryside which was full of the normal mix of rural areas. I arrived in St. Remy around 11:30am and started looking around town. It was obviously not the one that Tom was thinking of, but it was a pretty neat town anyway. My guidebook said that it's become something of a foodie's paradise, so I set out to try and scop that. In the center of town, there were doing an awards ceremony for a race that apparently had run earlier. It seemed to be a teenage meet doing sub 10km. Pretty neat to see. I wandered around the town to see it and get my bearings, figuring that I'd get lunch as soon as the restaurants opened. I went past a cheese shop that looked fantastic from the outside and my guidebook said that they've been agiging cheese in their celler since the 11th century. Stupidly, I didn't go in, thinking that I could just come back after lunch. I had forgotten the fact it was Sunday and didn't notice that there were closed on Sunday afternoons. Pretty dumb of me really.
Well, I found a place for lunch that I didn't feel too bad about eating at in my bike clothes. The owner's were perfectly happy with me coming by for food and I expect that I really shouldn't be worried about that. Anyway, it was this italian place. I figured, hey I'm close enough to Italy they should be able to do it right. Yep, basically they did. I ordered a spaghetti au Provencal with Gambas. To translate: spagetti with herbs de provence (sage, thyme and parsley), a could of tomatoes and a bunch of Gambas. Gambas are a lot like Shrimp, but I think they're slightly different even though they don't look like it. Ok, on your plate they look a little different because they're usually served with the heads still on, but still.
Reading my guidebook some more, it sounded like the town Tom was talking about was actually Baux de Provence, which was 10km south through the itty bitty mountain range. I figured, hey, what the hell, it should be interested, so I went down. First though I stopped at the Roman ruins (Gallum) south of the city. Most of it was closed for some reason, but it was still possible to take pictures of the Triumphal Arch and peer through the gates.
Shortly after the ruins ended, the mountains began. They're not big per se, but they are quite beautiful. It took me about 15 min to climb to the high point of the road, which was about 3/4 of the way up to the summit I figure. Along the way, there were tons of trailheads for hiking and I will say, they were quite busy. At this point, I wanted to come back to St. Remy in the afternoon to visit the cheese shop and do some olive oil and truffle tasting, so I was thinking I'd get to the top of the ridge, which would give me a view to the other side and be able to see Baux right? Wrong? It was quite treed. So I sped down the other side and man, am I glad I did. It is absolutely gorges there. There are alternating olive groves and vinyards with the hills in the background. When I finally could see Baux, it took my breath away. The old castle perched on the top of a hill protecting it's little medieval town nestled in the fold leading up to it. Very picturesque.
So, after taking some pictures, I made my way back to St. Remy. I was concerned about daylight so I didn't want to dally even though it was pretty special. In St. Remy, I found the cheese shop was closed. Damn! and got to try some pretty spectacular olive oil. I had a nice little flight, all grown right where I was biking a half hour before. One was all black olives, one half black, half green and the last all green. The green they got, the more interesting and herbaceous in my opinion.
From St. Remy to avignon, I made great time since I was able to keep up a consistent pace of 28 km/h. It felt good to be able to still have gas in the tank after moving all day. Back in Avignon, I found a tapas place for dinner, which served some interesting takes on things. I had a sardine empenanda, some mushrooms in garlic and I think cloves or allspice, an artichoke ragou and finally some escargots in a ridicously spicy sauce. It was an interesting presenation for the escargots, but I wasn't too much of a fan of the spiciness. Oh, that reminds me, I bet the escargot were local. I saw a couple of escargots farms while riding along. Anyway, for desert, I had a pastis. If I'm in Provence, I had to try a pastis at some point. They give you the shot in a tall glass with an icecube in it, then give you a carafe of water to water down as much as you'd like. I tried a few different dillutions and I think I ended up with about 3:2 water to pastis. It was very anise and good. Made me wonder: could you infuse water with anise the way you do with cucumber or lemons or mint? I think that might be good.
Anyway, that was dinner. Not much to say after that.
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