Day 10 More Market the Palace of the Popes and lots of wine!!

Today we went to the indoor market in Avignon for breakfast and lunch. Outside of a major downpour in the mid morning, the weather finally improved!  We got to sit on benches outside and eat our market finds in the great outdoors. It was great. Avignon has a wonderful market. I think we all are a little awestruck by the market at St Remy yesterday, and this is totally different, but any market in Provence is pretty amazing. We all got different things, Emily and I ended up getting Chinese food. We seem to go that way a lot when it’s an option! LOL  After lunch we went to the Palace of the Popes, the main attraction in Avignon. But before I get into that, let me just say, these river cruises, while I’m sure they’re amazing and fun, really put a strain on these towns. There had to be at least a dozen, probably closer to 2 dozen tours going around town all throughout the day today. It makes for a very different place during the day. All the sights are packed! It makes it feel more like Paris than Provence for those mid day hours. That’s my little rant of the day!  We went to the Palace of the Popes, which was the Vatican for 100 years in the 14th century and is the largest gothic palace still in existence. It’s huge!  I think we all thoroughly enjoyed the tour. It’s big but manageable with enough to really make you understand what the life was like for the people inside this huge fortress looking palace. After that we went to the town of Tavel to their wine Cooperative. Tavel is known as the top rose in Provence. It’s made differently than all the others so it’s a beautiful bright red instead of the salmon color Emily and I usually look for in our Provençal rose. It’s bolder than your normal rose too. Very tasty. We learned a lot about the differences in soil and how much they affect the way the wine tastes. We learned we like rose grown in clay with large rocks best. As opposed to sand with Little Rock’s or limestone which adds a lot of mineral taste to the wine. The French really are fanatical about their wine. I think it’s fascinating!!  They also had red wine from the village of Lirac which is 5km away from Tavel. That was really good as well. The man who was guiding us through our tasting was the winemaker and he was so nice and enjoyed us so much he brought out bottles of Lirac red wine from 5 years ago and one from 20 years ago for us to try and see how well they age!  That was super nice of him and the wine was really good!  Especially the 5 year old one!  We really wanted to buy some cases and ship them home, unfortunately they don’t have shipping available there so we would’ve had to do it ourselves. That would’ve meant spending a few hours finding packaging and actually doing the packaging much less taking it to a shipper and arranging shipping for it all. They need to figure out easier ways to get a lot of wine home!!!  We would’ve spent a lot of money there today if they had. Instead we only bought about 8 bottles between the 7 of us. Oh well, it was still a lot of fun and a learning experience. We drove back to our home in Avignon and relaxed for an hour before having dinner at a place called Fou de Fafa which is one of the highest rated restaurants in town. We have really been looking forward to this one and it didn’t disappoint!  I had Iberico Pork brought from a small farm in northern Spain. It was incredible!  Emily had a mushroom risotto that was one of the best risottos I’ve ever had!  Sandra had a lamb dish that was cooked for 8 hours and was the best dish of them all, in my opinion. Definitely one of the best meals of our trip!!  Maybe the best!  That’s saying a lot!!  The desserts were amazing too. A chocolate tart that was super rich!  A lemon creme brûlée and again, in my opinion, the best dessert of the trip, a banoffee tart. Bananas and toffee. SO good. We are gonna be working on that one when we get home, so get ready!  It was another wonderful day in Provence!  They are all pretty amazing!  Tomorrow we have more Roman ruins and we will be visiting Arles, a great Provençal city that Van Gogh lived in for a while. I’ll have some great pictures and stories I’m sure!  The trip is winding down and we are so grateful to the people who trusted us enough to let us take them around France. They’ve been great!  We are also grateful to all of you who are traveling with us through this blog!  We love you all!!