Barcelona Baby

I think I'm going to do less blogging from here on because there's just less time. Right now, I'm on the train from Barcelona to Valencia to spend a couple of days there before going on to Granada. The last few days in Barcelona were really enjoyable. I had the first half day to myself before Matilda arrived. I was orginally thinking of taking Scott's advice and stopping in Girona on my way down, unfortunately, the trains only ran twice a day from Girona to Barcelona so there wasn't a practical way to spend a couple of hours there.

So, I arrived in Barcelona and made my way over to the hostel. In this case, we had to call the folks up to get the keys and open the apartment up. The hostel was really a set of apartments. It was an entire floor of a flat, with 6 rooms, two kitchens, two baths and two common areas. it was really quite quiet during our stay.

After dropping off my stuff, I went to explore Las Ramblas. At the bottom of the main street, there's a monument to Christopher Columbus. It was the site of a greenpeace protest that day trying to get people to write to the Spanish prime minister in order to get him to do his part of climate change in the upcomming Copenhagen talks. One of the protesters talked to me and gave me the letter they wanted people to send in. It was really pretty neat.

On Las Ramblas, there were a lot of human statues plying their trade. Well, sort of. Most of them weren't actually trying to stay still for most of the time and were actively messing with the crowd. Though some of their costumes were definitely creative, I feel that if you're going to dress up like a statue, you should at least act like one for part of the time. Plus, staying still like that is much harder. Ah well. To each their own.

Further up Las Ramblas was an incredible open air market. They had everything from mangos to nuts, to chocolates to seafood to rabbit. It was fantastic. I spent a good amount of time salivating and finally came up with a plan for dinner. Since we had the kitchenette, I figured we should take advantage of it. So, I got some potatoes, leeks, boletes (like mushrooms, but woodier) and some anchovies. The plan was to grill the anchovies and serve that over the potatoes, leeks and boletes, which would be brought together with a white wine sauce.

After dropping off the stuff at the hostel, I went to pick Matilda up at the train station. He train got in late (quarter to 10), but she hadn't eaten yet so it was perfect to whip up dinner.

The next day, was historically themed. We started off by going down to Las Ramblas and then making our way over to the Cathedral. It was very similar to the other gothic cathedrals I've seen other places throughout Europe. From there, we went to the Placa del Rei and went in to the city history museum. The museum talks about Barcelona's orgin as a Roman port and goes underground to show the old roman ruins. Unfortunately, they were closing early for some reason, so they really rushed us through the museum. For lunch, we had some sandwiches at a great place nearby. Cheap and tasty.

After that, we went to the Picaso museum. This museum was interesting because it went through his early work and didn't focus so much on the stuff he's famous for. However, you can definitely see the progression from his early stuff when he was doing real portraits, etc, until slowly, his painting got more and more insane. It was kind of interesting that way. Also, they had a temporary exhibit looking at some of picasso's sketches that were based on the old japanese porno art. The whole thing was kind of screwy especially when body parts aren't anywhere near the right location.

For dinner we went to a place recommended by the guidbook as being one of the best places to get paella in Catalonia. I wonder how much it's hyped up because their counter at the front was covered in guidebooks with bookmarks in them (presumably marking the restaurant). The seafood paella we had was excellent and I think what I've done wrong in my paellas is that I haven't used a strong enough seafood broth and I havne't had enough salt. This one tasted like the sea!

The next day was a Gaudi day. We started at his famous apartment building that he built in 1918. According to the guidebook, some people didn't want the apartments because they didn't know if their furniture would fit. Going on the inside, I find that silly. The curves were very gradual and it wouldn't have been that big a deal. The roof was really cool too with all sorts of crazy spires.

After that, we walked down the street to Sangria Familia, or the unfinished gaudi church. After a bit all we had to do was follow the sound of the drums. It turned out that at the base of the church, there were a couple of groups congregated in the park. The first was a high school drumming band. The second was a miniature Star Wars convention. Spannish Rebel Squadron #501 was fulling decked out from kids in Ewok suits to a bunch of Storm Troopers to a couple of princess Leias. Not was I was expecting to see in Spain, that's for sure.

As for the church itself, it's pretty impressive with all the details and masonry work they've done. It really is like an old church considering how long it's taking to build. They think it'll be done by 2030, making it well over 100 years for construction. That's like all the medieval churches way back when. Nothing takes that long to build anymore. I did like a lot of the elements of it, especially how the columns are designed to look like trees, branching near the top to hold the ceiling. It has a very surreal look to it that's enticing.

Finally, we finished the day by going up the the Gaudi Park, which is the outdoor landscaped park that Gaudi designed. It was perhaps my favorite of the three because it combined the natural trees with a lot of organic rock sculptures intertwined everywere. It just worked so well and is a very useable space. Plus, it gave a great view of the city :-)

Dinner was in again, using up the rest of the leeks, bollets and potatoes and then adding to that some flat iron beefsteaks we got from the grocery store and bringing everything together with red wine. The only steaks we could find were really thin, so they were a little tough, but whatever. It was tasty.

In the morning, we were heading out, so first we went to the train station to put our bags in the left luggage. From there, we made our way up to the Olympic venues. They're all up on the hill to the SW of the city center, kind of off on their own. You climb up the hill (with the help of a ton of outdoor escalators) and then you can see the main Olympic stadium, the aquatics center, the indoor sports area, the baseball diamond and more. The baseball diamond is funny because there's only about 100 seats now. I suspect it's hardly ever used. The Olympic stadium was impressive in how small it was. It looked like they had just done a winter X-games or something because they were cleaning up a gigantic snow ramp even though it's about 20 degrees outside. Also, the torch which they like by arrow was ridiculously small! I do remember that being one of the more memorable lighting ceremonies.

From the sport areas, we went to the Olympic village where the atheletes stayed. To be honest it doesn't look like good housing, so I feel bad for the folks who live there now. However, the area looks like it's been built up recently. It feels like the downtown of a lot of modern North American cities with big streets, lots of patterned concrete and restaurants. It goes right down to the beach and is actually quite nice on the water.

After that, we made our way back to the train station to catch the train to Valencia, which we're pulling into now.

Farewell France

Well it was my last day in France. I'm going to miss being able to talk to the locals. Even though my French isn't perfect and after a sentence, they know I'm an english speaker, it sure helps being able to understand people quickly and to talk reasonably well. I definitely need to come back and spend some serious time here.

The day started fine. I woke up in the disgusting hostel and had breakfast. I wasn't rushed because I found out about an english bookshop in Avignon that opened at 9:30 and I wanted to buy some books because I'm going through them too early. Also, I wanted to buy that bottle of wine I tasted earlier in the week from Croziers Hermitage. That shop opened at 10. So, at 9:30, I was at the bookshop. It was a quaint little place run by an old English gnome. All sorts of used books that have been collected for a while. I found two books and made my way to the wine shop.

The wine shop wasn't opened at 10, so I waited around for a few minutes and the owner eventually showed up to open the place. This was the shop where you could pay by the taste and try a bunch of different wines. I talked to the owner about the shop and apparently it's quite new. They just celebrated their first anniversary and definitely cater to the tourist crowd seeing as how they're right on the Place D'Horloge. They had a guestbook and he was saying that they counted it recently and have had people from 21 different countries come into the shop from Tawain to Australia to South Africa to Canada. I added my name.

Next stop was the train station. I had to return the bike to Lunel and the plan was to take the train there and drop it off. Unfortunately, I missed the train by 10 minutes (I never did check the schedule) and would have to wait until 1:30 for the next train that would allow bikes. So, I had some time to burn. I went to the post office to ship all my bike gear back home. I wanted to make room for wine and goodies in my pack, and I didn't need the bike gear. Unfortunately it wasn't cheap. I tried sending it the cheapest possible, but it's still going to get to Pittsburgh by Nov 10 and cost me 40 euros. I suspect there's some cheaper way that's not through the post office, but I definitely wasn't going to figure that one out.

Lunch was a tomato and goat cheese crepe, but they ran out of goat cheese so it got supplemented with some slightly stinky cow cheese. Delicious. And for desert, I went to the patisserie and bought some macarooons. Real french macaroons, which are basically two merengue cookies sandwiching some cream. They were damn good.

Finally, it was time to catch the train. I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to put my bike, so I put it in a car that had some open space if you fold up all the chairs. It was designed for wheelchairs. It worked, but I found out when I got off that one of the other cars actually had hooks to hang the bikes from. Go figure.

Dropping off the bike wasn't to eventful. They seem pretty impressed by how far I went and in particular how mountainous the terrain was. I was kind of surprised because I know that shop caters to avid cyclists. They advertise tours for things like climbing Mount Ventoux. Incidentally, Mount Ventoux woudn't have been possible on this trip even if I wanted to do it. Apparently it's a 6km, really tough climb and I think the mountain is 1600m high. It's what you'd expect considering it's the famous one from the Tour de France. However, this week it received it's first snow of the year. Not easy on a bike.

After dropping off the bike, I took the train to Montpellier and went to my hotel. The hostel was booked full, so the cheapest I could find that was close to the train station was a 15min walk and turned out to be a pretty facy place. It was 50 euros for the night, but I had my own little apartment complete with kitchenette and itty bitty dish washer. The dish washer was the size of a drawer. It was kind of hilarious actually. Unfortunately, I didn't really get to take advantage of it because I wanted my last dinner in france to be a little fancier and my train in the morning left at 7:30am. Also, I would have written this last night except that when plugging in my phone, I somehow tripped the circuit breaker and it was late enough that I lost power for the entire night. Good thing I brought a headlamp :-) I hope my phone charger and laptop charger still work, otherwise I'll have problems.

Before dinner, I went exploring Montpellier. It's actually a lot more modern than I thought on my first time through. My first time through, I was staying in the old part of town, but this time, walking around a little more, I was impressed by how americanized it was. There'a huge shopping mall right off the main boulevard and looks exactly like ones in the states unfortunately. I even saw some American chains like Clair's accessories. That made me laugh. Also, looking closer at the sandwich shops, I realized there's a sandwich "Formule Americaine". It's a baguette and inside is steack (yes, spelled that way) and french fries. That's not American! It's Yinzer! But somehow, it's over here and because it's the cheapest thing on the menu, quite popular with the young folks. Arrggg.

I had dinner at a busy cafe/restaurant. I didn't notice that the restaurant was upstairs, so I ended up sitting in the bar area and it took me forever to figure out that I had to ask for a restaurant menu to get some food. Eventually, I got a tasty, wafer thin crust pizza with chicken, emmantal, olives, garlic and oregano. Worked for me.

Final Day of Biking

Well that was the best Creme Brulee I've ever had in my life. I suspect it was because of the hint of lavender and mint in the creme and the fact that it was perfectly made. I found this delicious concoction in a restaurant, Chez Francois, in Avignon. The restaurant was off the beaten path, there beign no other restuarants on the street and it caught my eye because of it's 23 euro 3 course menu price. I think the chef/owner just recently started the place because it was quite empty when I got there, to the point that the chef even came out to talk to me in English for a little bit. Then when people did show up, I got the impression they were friends or family since they saying how great each of the rooms looked. For dinner, it started with a lentil salad topped with some heavily smoked pork belly. Then the main was a chestnut sausage with grilled apples and a saurkraut like thing on the side except that there were bits of ham it in and it was warm. On the side was a round of mash potatoes that even catherine would like. They were drenched in a fantastic olive oil :-)

Anyway, to back up. My day started in Gigondas where I got breakfast by going to the local store and getting a pear and a chocolate croissant. Then, I hopped on my bike and went down to Carpentras. This meant going back through Vaquerays and Beaumes de Venise, which I was more than happy to do. Carpentras is a decent sized town and like all the others, it's centeral area is basically pedestrian only with a church in the middle. The town's known for it's Truffle market because this is where most of the black truffles that come out of France get distributed to chefs or distributors from around the world. Of course it's not truffle season for another month or so, so there was less to see. However, I did pick up things for lunch later on. First stop was a fromagerie and bought a little itty bitty wheel of cheese for lunch. It was about 5cm in diameter, was AOC Picondon. I've seen these kinds of things all over the place, and and this one was goats milk. It cost 3.50 euros, so wasn't super cheap, but it was fantastic. Plus it taught me something when I ate it. It was a slightly stinky cheese, but the moldiness to it was mild enough that it didn't turn me off and allowed me to apprciate the great depth of flavour. I expect I could probably teach myself to like the blue cheeses if I slowly work my way up from something like this, just so long as I don't trigger the "eck, it's mold" taste.

By the way, I ate this cheese with a loaf of whole weat bread. Ok, not a whole loaf, but a good 3/4 of it :-) I'm just trying to be french. It's fun that the first thing french folks will do in the morning is go to the local bakery and get the bread for the day. I'm not just talking about a single loaf either. I've seen people walking with 5 baguettes in the hands. Or this morning at the hostel, one of the Moms came back with a box full of bread for the family. I think it was 3 loaves and 4 or 5 baguettes. Fun stuff.

After Carpentras, I went south. At the end of the day, I was shooting for Avignon, but the road from Carpentras to Avignon is one of the busier ones and my guide book said that there were a couple of interesting towns further south, so hey, why not. In total, my day ended up being around 50-60 km. I've really stopped keeping good track since my bike computer died and the GPS hogs the batteries. Anyway, further south is Pernes-Les-Fontaines; a town with tons of water fountains sprinkled throughout. Of course, the water had been turned off by this point, so I poked around and continued on to Ile-Sur-Sorges. This town is on an island in the middle of the Sorges river and there are a ton of picturesque, moss covered waterwheels turning away with the fast flowing river. The high school was out for lunch so there were a lot of young kids around while I ate lunch there in the sun in front of a water wheel.

After Ile-Sur-Sorges, it was time to head back to Avignon. The route was fairly built up and included a big climb up to Chateauneuf-de-Gagnoron. Cut little town, but I was quite ready to go back down the other side. I really like hills a lot better when I'm not lugging up an extra 40 pounds of stuff on my bike :-). Getting close to Avignon, the road sort of dumped me onto a bike trail. Before this, there had been plenty of bike paths, even on the 2 lane roads between towns (think of a bike lane on King Rd for those in RH or a lane on Fox Chapel Road for those in Pittsburgh), but I hadn't seen any bike paths per say. Well I found one. The weird thing is that my GPS actually knew about it and was trying to route me on it. It's the first time the GPS surprised me in a good way. I"ve basically taken to using it as a map and a reference of where I am, but not for directions.

Into Avignon, I went to the other side and across the bridge to the campground. Online, it said the hostel there was full, but I knew they had campsites, so I figured that I'd finally get to use my hammock, on the last day of biking. Well turns out that didn't quite happen. The guy at the desk said there weren't any sites with trees that would work for that, so I;d have to use the hostel. Of course, at least the hostel wasn't full like I thought. I did poke around the campsites and found a couple that actually would've worked. I don't know what he was smoking but whatever. I think the hammock really is best used if your hiking up in the wilderness, and not so much if your trying to stay at the same place as motor homes :-)

Well, that's it for the biking. Tomorrow I return the bike and head to Montepellier for my last day in France. I could definitely come back here. Hell I could easily see myself living here for a year. It's just so gorgeos, with a great lifestyle and great food.

Night.

Galavanting to Gigondas

I've decided not to head up the Rhone River. Mostly because I couldn't find cheap lodging up there since all the campsites are closed. Also, the wineries start to peter out. However, I did find a hostel in Gigondas, right in the middle of wine country and well known in it's own right. So I figured, perfect.

The ride to Gigondas was uneventful if horribly horribly uncomfortable. I guess the rain that came in yesterday brought in a cold front because it's annoyingly cold now. And dreary. I can't say that the ride was fun at that point. I figured that I'd stop into Vaqueray first since it's only 3km away from Gigondas and is also known as a different unique region. That's right, you're supposed to get significantly different wine 3km away. Crazy isn't it? Especially when most of the vinyards for the towns are all int he same flat space, although Gigondas does work it's way up the hill a little.

Anyway, I went to one of the winemakers in Vaqueray to try their wares. Most of them were basically closed, but I got somebody to open the door for me. It was this nice lady although I could tell she was thinking "stupid kid tourist wants free samples". Anyway, it wasn't worth the stop. All their wine was horrible. So, on to Gigondas to drop off my gear and get some lunch.

I wasn't in too good a shape when I got there because I was cold and it was starting to rain, but I got to drop off my stuff in the virtually empty hostel and change into some warmer clothes. Turns out that this hostel exists because right behind Gigondas is a small mountain range called the Dentelles de Montmirail, which has some great hiking and climbing. So the hostel caters to the eco-toursists. It's even a common stop for bike tours.

I went up to the town for lunch, which of course was pretty empty. The only people there were the folks working in the local vineyards, so I found a small place. There was one other lunch customer who knew the proprietress pretty well it seemed. They were chatting all lunch. Between the chatting, I managed to order a tarte (quiche) of broccoli and smoked salmon with a glass of wine and finished with some tea. The tea was the best part. I was finally able to chase away the chill I had all morning.

After lunch, I wanted to do a tour up through the hills so I headed up. The paved road stopped and it turned into some mountain biking through the vineyards that were clinging to the hills. I'd almost say that this was the most scenic part I've seen so far. It took me a while to figure out since I haven't really done much before, but it was fun. Took a little while though. Although part of that was that I was stopping every 50m to take a picture :-)



On the other side of the ridge, I found some paved roads and made my way down to Baumes-de-Venise where I stopped at a couple of wine caves. I found out that most of the vines up in the hills were Muscat and they make an excellent wine. I ended up buying a small bottle of the Muscat, mostly because it would remind me of the incredible ride. I also found a Plan-de-Dieu that could use some aging, but it was a nice subtle complex flavour and for 8 euros was a steal.

Finally, I made my way back to the hostel and found out where the other tennants were. They were up in the mountains hiking all day. I walked in and the front porch was covered with very muddy hiking boots. My kind of place :-)

Pictures

By the way, the album for this trip will be at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mdesnoyer/Europe09

Carrying on To Chateauneuf-Du-Pape

Looking online last night I wasn't able to find any reasonably priced places to stay further North, so I knew that I'd end the day in Orange. There were no youth hostels, no campgrounds I could find that were open this time of year. The best I could find was in Orange, which is a single room place for 32 euros. Not the super cheapness of hostels, but it won't break the bank either. The only annoying thing is that Orange is only about 20km from avignon. Not a very long ride at all, so I figured that I'd either be dropping my stuff off in Orange and taking the lighter bike out for a loop, or I'd be just vegging out and relaxing for a day. So, the short of it was that I wasn't very fast getting out of bed.

Of course, that may not have been a bad thing. The day started ominously since I knew rain was in the forecast. I was even woken up at one point during the night by the heavy storm outside. Fortunately, it turned out that by the time I got moving, the rain was basically over and the clouds opened up to the sun and a chilly northern wind.



I knew that I had to stop in Chateaunef-De-Pape because it is THE place that the AOC system started in the Rhone valley. Basically making it the first named Rhone wine. It's also the most famous which is why it's so expensive (~20 euros a bottle on average compared to between 5-10 for other areas) and why you can easily find it in the US.

It's a small town on the top of a hill surrounded by tons and tons of vinyards. As in your wasting space if you have a tree or two. Since wine from the region is so popular (and fetches a good price), and the region is strictly defined about where the grapes can be grown, it would be stupid for a wine maker not to cover every square inch with vines. It was interesting too look at the different vinyards on the way up. There is obviously tons of rocks in the soil, but some growers have let grasses grow around the rocks and produce a little bit of soil whereas others litterlly till piles of rocks and somehow a vine is growing there. I know the theory is that the rocks absorb the sun better during the day and then release that heat slowly at night, creating a more even "soil" temperature, but I don't know why some growers let the weeds go. Maybe the cheaper houses just don't till as much? I didn't really get a good answer from the folks I talked to in town.

Anyway, so my timing arriving was horrible. I got in right at noon just as all the caves were shutting down for lunch. So I decided to find a restaurant, read my book and have lunch to wait it out until 2pm when the caves opened up again. Oh right, I need to explain the caves. So the streets in Chateaunef are solid wine caves. The cave is basically a place where you can get free tastings of some of the wines. Some of them are run by the winemakers themselves, whereas others are run by negotiants or middle men, who then will let you try wines from a few different producers. So yeah, the town is completely stuffed with caves and lording over the whole thing is the broken papal castle that was burned down most recently in WWI.

So after taking some pictures, I sat down to lunch. I figued I'd do the full menu of the day. Tip, if you go to southern france, always get the special of the day. It's a lot cheaper that picking things and if you go for the menu, you'll get appetizer, entree, dessert and coffee usually for a very reasonable price. In this case I was looking at 15 euros where my appetizer was a salad and a slice of quiche. This plate looked exactly like what you'd order in the states at a french bistro for lunch and it was only the appetizer. For the main, I had a steak with a pepper sauce accompanied with sauteed vegetables and bread. I was surprised by the steak because they barely seared the thing. Almost mooing and delicious. I didn't have dessert because at this point I was stuffed even with a good morning climb up the hill to get there.

After lunch, I went to a few caves, bought a bottle of wine for aging and some spendildly mild goat cheese. I spent a lot of time talking to this lady from one of the vineyards about how they make their wine. They sell a Cheteauneuf and a Cotes Du Rhone and the vinyards are right beside each other, so you're not getting that much of a difference in raw grape quality. However, because of the way the market works, they can sell the Cotes Du Rhone for 10 euros and the Chateauneuf for 20. So, the Chateauneuf gets coddled because they can afford to do so. They pick all the grapes and lay them out on a table. Then they manually inspect everything and if the grape isn't ready, into the garbage it goes. She said about 20-25% of grapes get thrown out in this step. Then, since aging the wine in oak is expensive, they only do that to the Chateauneuf, but not the Cotes. A note, many new world producers that have cheap, oaky wines like Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon will get the oak by throwing woodchips into the stainless steel vat while the wine is maturing. Anyway, back to France :-) I tasted their 2006s side by side to see the difference and it was absolutely huge. The Cotes was super fruity, one might even say a fruit bomb, but I'm hesitant to say that because I've been having so much french wine lately that my pallate's probably shifting. The Chateauneuf on the other hand had a nice oaky and smoky complexity to it that slowly gave way to the fruit in the finish. It was excellent, but for 30 euros a bottle I couldn't justify it especially when I had already found a bottle down the street for 17 that needs aging, but will most likely be just as good.

So after my wine lesson up on the hill, I went north down the other side to get to Orange. The ride itself was beautiful if short (10km). It was through the vineyards and you could see for miles. In the distance, Mont Ventoux was visible with a crown of clouds lording over all the golden leafed vines. There were other cyclists on the route too who were just doing either a training, or a fun ride on road bikes. It's really easy to see why this area is popular for riding even at this time of year when it's ever so slightly chilly with the wind.

In Orange, the reception for the hotel was closed, but I expected that. It's Monday and a lot of toursit places are closed or have short hours on Monday. Hey, they need a break too right? Especially when most of these places are just family run affairs. Anyway, they had already given me the keycode to get in and my room key was on the desk at the front. I honestly think that I'm the only person in this hotel tonight, which is kind of eerie. It's a great place, especially for 32 euros a night. Clean and brightly painted and has all the basics you need even if the bathroom and shower are shared with a bunch of rooms. I'd much rather be in a place like this than pay three times as much for my own can. That would be silly.

Orange has more roman ruins. They're all over this area. In this case, the most striking one is the Roman theatre. It's huge! Oh and it's still used as a theatre :-) I kind of want to see a show there although I'm not here at the right time to do that. Maybe when I come back with Catherine. They're playing a kockoff of Phantom of the Open called Phantomes du Theatre. Oh and there's a new fancy theatre just down the street, but I like the old Roman one personally.

I wanted to save some money on dinner tonight, just I bought a kebab from a street vendor and a merangue for desert from a patisserie and then enjoyed some of my goat cheese with goat sausage and wine bread. A good way to end the day.

Beautiful Baux De Provence

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.