Wednesday, November 6

Fall 2019 Day 17

Today was one of those Provençal days that you just dream of!  We had to wake up early this morning and drive our little van to St Rémy for our Market tour with Ashley from Curious Provence. We took this tour with her last year and we knew what to expect. She’s AMAZING!!  We just love her!  She takes us around to all of her favorite vendors and tells us which ones not to go to and why. She gets us samples of all sorts of cheeses, salamis, nougats, olive oils, olives and tapenades. We shop for things at the market like scarves, olive wood tools, clothing, whatever else you can think of practically. She also builds us a picnic while we are at all these vendors booths based on what we like and what she feels we have to try. We end the 3-4 hour tour with a huge picnic of our goodies complete with amazing baguettes and local wine!  It’s an amazing feast that we will all dream about for a long time to come!  No picnic can measure up to the spread she puts together for us. All the while we get to watch her interact with all the vendors who are her friends and really get a behind the scenes look at a real Provençal small town market. An amazing experience that I can’t recommend any higher!  We left there with bags of goodies and left over cheeses and snacks and drive to the nearby village of Les Baux. Its like you all of a sudden are driving on the moon. Rocky outcrops everywhere and just plain otherworldly landscape. It’s up in the hills or mountains depending on how you look at them and it was a fortress town in the 11th century until the 17th century. Now it’s in a beautiful state of ruin with a very touristy town leading up to it. The rocky landscape is amazing but the views down to the valley are incredible!  The olive groves, vineyards and even a golf course are all spectacular!  It’s pretty hilly and rocky but we all went slow and enjoyed it immensely!  It was a gorgeous day!  Sunny and around 60*. After spending a few hours there we went right around the corner to an old limestone quarry that they use now to show special movies about different artists works set to music in this amazing setting. Because it was a quarry there are walls, and rooms and niches all over and they project the movie on the walls, ceiling and even the floor. It’s a total immersive experience. This year the artist is Van Gogh which makes it even more spectacular!  The pictures I’m gonna post are amazing but they don’t even do it justice. These walls are huge!  We all enjoyed that so much!  It was a highlight to Emily and I. The whole day was a highlight!!  We drove back to Avignon and rested before having a delicious dinner in town. Emily had a Pumpkin soup that was amazing and then for dinner she had shrimp and I had veal. They were both wonderful!  And we got to watch the chef cooking everything in his open kitchen!  Emily and I love that!!  He is very talented and it was a joy to watch him work!  Another amazing meal in Provence!  For dessert we had some weird options, not our favorites so far. We had a cheesecake foam that was odd but ok.  We had some kind of quince dessert with fruit jellies, which are traditional here in Provence that was pretty good and a coffee flavored cake jelly, of that makes any sense with almond milk whipped cream. Very avant- guard which is not how I like my desserts. But it didn’t take away from the amazing rest of the meal. This was one of my favorite days so far. We had a blast!!!  Hope you enjoy these pictures because it really should make you all very jealous!  Anyone can experience these same experiences next year with us!  Believe me, today is one that you’d never forget!  Thanks for reading and we are very glad we are in the 60* weather instead of the crazy snow in Charlevoix!!!  We love you all!  Tomorrow should be another winner!!  They all are when you are in Provence!!

























































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