Markets, Mountains and Mini-Trains

Bedoin Market

This morning we headed out to the weekly market in Bedoin. This is the market that Stephen frequents as he usually has Mondays off and the walk there is not too far along the back roads. It is probably one of the largest markets I have seen, at least in length, it seemed to go on for miles. They had everything:

Cheeses

Nougat (Provence is known for their almonds)

Paella

Olives

More Cheese

Olive Oil

You can see that the Provencals are very serious about their olive oil = they sell it by the gallon!

You wouldn't see this in North America. This lady wrote down all the weights and prices on a chalkboard, then added up the total in her head. She was quick too!

Provencal Pottery

Cooking Pots

After walking up and down the length of the market, we took a break next to the town fountain. It surprised me to see that the water coming out of it was "eau potable" which means you could drink it. It looked very refreshing but I was still too leery to try it.

This little fellow had no problem though - his owners placed him on the side and he just lapped up the stream of water. I can see Kaylee enjoying that too!

Crillon le Brave

We had purchased some groceries for Stephen's roommate and so we drove to Crillon le Brave to drop them off. It is a lovely hill top town, very small and quiet. The hotel where Stephen works looks like a wonderfully romantic place to stay. Maybe someday.....!  We did make reservations for dinner on Wednesday night - Stephen will be working so we will get a chance to rate his skill ;-)

Stephen's house

This is the house that Stephen shares with his roommate Winston. It is pretty tiny inside but they each have their own room, and you certainly can't complain about the view!

The view from Stephen's room

Then armed with all our delicious purchases from the market, we headed off to Mont Ventoux to have a picnic. Stephen said he looks at it every day so he really wanted to go to the top. The summit is 1910 m and I think it takes 19 km to go up that high. It seems to be one of the great achievements for bikers to say that they reached the summit - we passed over 200 cyclists! (after that I stopped counting) The temperature dropped from 24 to 13 degrees, and the wind was just whipping around us. We got out of the car and climbed to the very top to take this "frozen" picture. Seriously - we were starting to get earaches! (I know, I know, we drove up and everyone around us had biked up so we shouldn't be complaining, but it was really cold).

Mont Ventoux from Crillon le Brave

We are above some of the clouds, and the wind is wicked!

Marian and Jim at the summit

We decided that we would go down the mountain a bit to have our picnic; as a matter of fact Jim said that he wasn't going to stop until the car thermometre showed 20 degrees! We found a nice picnic table and spread out our feast - bread, cheese, sausage, figs, olives, nougat and of course, wine!

Our Picnic

Enjoying wine and "pink cheese" (otherwise known as nougat)

This is just a random picture to show the weird way the doors open on our car.

Doors open out

Since we still had daylight left after our picnic lunch we decided to check out another city. (yes that sounds funny - poor Stephen is constantly starving because our stomachs are still on Canadian time and while he would like to eat at around noon or one o'clock, we usually end up having lunch around three or three thirty).
We headed for the town of Orange where there is a huge roman theatre.

Roman Theatre in Orange

We arrived too late to go inside but we were able to see parts of it from the street. We were standing in front of it when this little tourist train drove up and Liz suggested we get on to have a tour of the city. We were so glad we did because we saw all kinds of interesting things. Look - a Pizza Jeff! Something for you to consider Jeffrey if that mechanical engineering doesn't work for you.

We also rode up to a park at the top of the hill that had a great view of the inside of the theatre! I kind of wanted to eat an orange in the city of Orange but all the shops were closed, and besides oranges don't come from Orange. Now Chateauneuf du Pape really does come from a town called Chateauneuf du Pape, and it is right down the road, so you know we will be going there!

Another interesting tidbit we learned on the tourist train is that the king from the House of Orange that ruled Holland actually did come from Orange. I will have to do a bit more research on that because the lady on the speaker was very hard to understand.

Tomorrow - touring the hilltop towns of the Luberon
(I told you everything is uphill!)

Roman theatre in Orange