This Place is Just Amazing

Today we returned to St. Remy-de-Provence for breakfast (which consisted of trying chocolate croissants at three different patisseries).  We had forgotten that today was market day in St. Remy.  WOW...what a great surprise.  We escaped having purchased just some beautiful material for tablecloths and some seat covers.  The displays of spices, soaps, olives and the biggest damn red peppers I have ever seen. Really fun to walk around and sample all the cheeses.

I considered buying one of the flimsy, little cotton dresses that all the women wear here in the summer, but I'm just not sure I'm the flimsy little cotton dress kind of person.  I will have to work on that.

Then we were off to visit a roman ruins at the Glanum archeological site south of St. Remy.  Fascinating.  Those Roman's were so clever about collecting water and bringing it into and out of houses.  Very impressive.  Here is a small sample of the million pictures we took  ;)

In the picture in the bottom left corner, in the far distance (about 15 kilometeres) is the hill in 'our' town.  We could actually see the 'chateaux' on the hill from Glanum.  Very cool...actually, no, it was incredibly hot.   Le Mistral (the sometimes fierce north wind) which has been keeping us cool was greatly diminished today and the sun is very, very strong.

Then we drove a little further south to Les Baux-de-Provence.  The mineral bauxite, which is used for making aluminum was discovered here - hence the name bauxite after this medieval town.  The castle and town are somewhat distroyed (French king got really pissed at them) but the place is amazing - carved out of the rock it sits on.  We learned about batterning rams (named after the ram because they put a metal head on the post which was shaped like a ram - who knew?)  Again very hot but very interesting to hear about how all these feudal lords, well, feuding.  From the top of the rock, we had a spectactulr view of the Rhone Valley from Avignon down to Marseilles. If you look closely you can see people in many of the shots below which gives you a great sense of the scale of this place.  (Also got to see my first sort-of-lavender field...that's the agenda for tomorrow.)

Tonight we are eating in - chicken cordon blue (frozen ???), bagette, fondu, chocolate mousse, and whatever else we have managed to acquire in our daily trips to all the super markets in the area.  Roaming the stores is great fun.  I love just seeing what all they have.  Today our special purchase was 'ice bags'.  You fill them with water, freeze them, then pull the sides away from the cubes and...VOILA! you have a bag of ice.  I'll let you know how it turns out.