Grrrr, again I lament at my inability to upload macrons onto this keyboard. French looks so much better with macrons. I probably need to find a five year old to help me.

A travelling day today. I love our travelling days. They are a bit of a rest, for me anyway, and we get to see such beautiful and varied countryside. We were hoping for warmer weather as we continued to drive further south and we certainly got that today. Today we were hot – without climbing any hills!

Throughout our travels through France so far, I have loved seeing poppies growing wild on the side of the roads. They always make me think of Mum and Julie. I even saw a few small fields of them today as we drove along. Alas, no good photo yet. Then came the vineyards. And the landscape started to become more arid-looking.

Another lovely thing about venturing onto new places, are the lovely surprises that come along. Rachel C and Durelle have mentioned this to me, and it’s true. Opening doorways and discovering amazing sanctuaries, popping into a local eatery and discovering absolutely amazing food, hearing your husband speak french in frustration at another motorist (“le muppet!!”) – I had to pop that in ’cause it was so hilarious! Well today, we pulled over at an outdoor cafe for a quick coffee. The sun was finally shining, we were WARM and the setting was really lovely. So we decided to stay and order a wee bite as an early lunch. I chose bruschetta la palma for us, expecting a few wee slices of bread topped with cheese ‘n stuff, with accompanying fries. We were delivered a teeny expresso glass each of what we thought was some sort of mayonnaise for our “frites”. People often have that with fries in France, but you probably all know that. Anyway the waitress noticed our slight confusion, as we saw other patrons also being delivered the same mayonaise and eating it with a spoon. No frites involved. She explained that it was gazpacho – a cold soup made with tomato and other vegetables. Aha. I had heard about this, but never seen it. We hadn’t ordered it, at least I hadn’t ordered it on purpose, but we tried it and it was delish.

Then came our wee bit of brushetta. Hector Vector it was enormous! Plus the salad, plus a bucket of frites each. And then two bread rolls. Had I accidentally ordered bread rolls as well? I could only eat about half my bruschetta, and even Clive struggled. (I did order a boule (scoop) of nougat icecream though – just to be polite of course as I think nougat is a thing in that vacinity – I saw some signs. ) But then as I finished my icrecream of politeness, another waiter came out with yet two more espresso glasses, filled with some sort of delicious liqueur. It was wonderful, but we were starting to get a wee bit worried about the bill. Had they got our table wrong? I said merci and other hopefully polite things and then went and hid in the car as Clive paid the bill. Returning to the car with a serious (ok, even more serious than normal) look, he sat down and let out a big sigh. “Oh golly” I said. “Was it bad?” “Yep” he replied. “Just as well we got an extension on our credit card.” (We didn’t, by the way, he was joking – not like him at all.)

It was 29.50 euro – for both of us (that’s incredible after other places we’ve seen). Everyone should go there, seriously.

We made it to La Begude de Rochefort, which is ten minutes from Avignon. The owners of our studio, Celestine and Gautier, live next door, and speak really good English (not that they think so). The are both engineers but Gautier has had a career change and is now training to be a baker, specialising in bread. Bread is pretty big here. They previously lived in Aix-en-Provence, where we are to planning to visit tomorrow.

I wish you all good coffee and never-ending croissants.

p.s. I forgot to add the photo of Mr Stan Smith, the Adidas Man yesterday, so here he is.