Girls Gone Abroad

Today we first had to take care of some business, buy some necessary toiletries like soap, shampoo, and sunscreen for Shan and then head to what turned out to be the hardware store to buy a new electric plug adaptor. I’m not sure how mine broke, but we quickly realized how we relied on having it for the computer, Sandy’s phone charger, Shan’s camera charger and our Ipod speakers so we can have music while we hang out. I took the adaptor to dinner last night and asked the owner where I could get a new one and he directed us to the hardware store in Apt, just 15km or so away, plus it was right next to Le Clerc so we could get the other items on Shan’s list.

It took us some time looking around Apt and asking 3 different people before we finally found the stores and were able to buy our goods. I realize now that we have come home a different way that there is more than one way to get to Apt from Bonnieux and I don’t think we chose the way that the owner would have gone, and if we had his quick directions would have been very good. But, we have an adaptor again, in fact for 8 euro we decided to buy two so we could charge more than one electronic at a time.

We had chosen a drive based on Provence Byways a guidebook to the Luberon region of Provence that included Apt since we were already headed that way. It was a drive that took us north of the Luberon national park region up to the Vaucluse Plateau and to the small villages of St Saturnin les Apt, Sault, St Trinit, Revest du Bion and back through St Christol and Rustrel. We stopped in all but the last 2 villages on our route, but by then we were thinking we needed to get back towards Bonnieux and we actually headed to Goult for the afternoon market. I either had the day, time or place wrong and maybe the dates because there was no market in Goult this afternoon when we arrived.

In St Saturnin les Apt we climbed to the top of the village to the ruins of the walled medieval village and chateau. It was a nice hike up and beautiful views of the valley and back at the luberon mountains. After we found a back way hiking trail down that took us past an old windmill and down some stairs into the back of town. It really is unique and I will try to remember to take pictures of the small stairways that connect one street to another in these perched villages.

Our back way down to the village provided these picnic tables and Shan and Sandy decided they should pretend these were "their tombs" and so we had to have a picture of that!

Next up Sault and we stopped to have a picnic lunch, unfortunately it started to rain so we had to eat in the car – boy would some pigeons have a hey day in there now with all the crumbs from the croissant and baguette. A nice lunch though of sandwiches with ham, cheese, and hard sausage on fresh baguette and some strawberries and a banana. Tasty! Since we hit Sault at lunch time, all the lavender shops were closed, too bad because this is lavender central and I am sure it is beautiful in June and July when it blooms and we were looking forward to learning all about it! Maybe we will get back some other day, or maybe not…

Following our guide, next on the trip was St Trinit, a sleepy little village with a small but very sweet Romanesque church from the 12th century. So, we stopped at the church and finally figured out which door was open so we could go inside. This church has amazingly lovely acoustics and the guidebook said we should test them out with a Gregorian chant or other liturgical music, unfortunately we don’t know any so we tried out some Elton John and it was very pretty! Oh yeah, and I did my best try at Trav’s favorite “In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit” in latin like I have heard priests do… very authentic!

The weather turned very cool and windy following the rain in Sault and I fear we may be having a mistral, a very cold, famous wind in province. It is said the mistral lasts for an odd number of days, so tomorrow we will know if it will be just one, or we are destined for three or five or seven. While it was a bit warm yesterday at times, I definitely prefer that to this cold biting wind mixed with rain. Anyways, we were all a bit chilled so we stopped in Revest du Bion for a chocolat chaud (hot chocolate) at a sweet bar in the village. It reminded me of walking into a bar in small town Iowa where everyone stops what they are doing to see who is coming in, then they stare because you are obviously not from around there, a bit daunting really but we walked right in and in my “fabulous French” ordered 3 hot chocolates! There were very tasty and hit just the right note in the cool damp day on the Vaucluse Plateau. It is there that we decided to move on quickly and head to Goult for some groceries at the market to make dinner ourselves tonight.

Of course as I mentioned – un petit probleme – no market to be found in Goult. So we went to the small grocer and the butcher and rounded up enough to make up a dinner. I decided we would have a salad (we need to get our veggies to balance the wine) and then pasta with a fresh tomato, basil and olive oil sauce with whatever meat looked good at the butcher – turned out to be sausage since foie gras is not tops on any of our lists. Now I am at the house with full computer juice catching up on blogs and downloading and resizing pictures for our faithful audience, enjoying a glass of rose and assuming Shan and Sandy are a bit cold on their walk as the wind is now howling (definitely mistral). More for you peeps tomorrow! Oh and I will make a concerted effort to load pictures for the last couple blogs that I posted with a VERY low battery and no time for photos, so go back and check!