It's Monday afternoon at the moment. I'm sitting outside in a gentle breeze with the late afternoon sun starting to dip below the tree across the road. The breezes weren't so gentle this past weekend as the Mistral came in. The Mistrals are the high winds that hit Provence from time to time. They usually last about 3 days and that's how long they lasted this time. The winds were indeed strong, knocking over signs and trash cans. We survived though, none the worse for wear.
On Sunday, Allen & I took Pam & Stan into the downtown area so they could attend Mass at Saint Saveur, the Roman Catholic cathedral for Aix. After dropping them off, we did a little bit of exploration, ending up in Les Plantanes, a village on the outskirts of town. Our big discovery was a boulangerie, where we bought some pastries and a couple of loaves of baguettes.
After they came home from church, we all ventured back downtown to find a place to eat. We ended up going back to the tapas restaurant that four of us enjoyed so much the other day. Being Sunday, they had a brunch menu, which we all enjoyed.
Following brunch, we got back into our cars and headed to Cassis, a town that clings to the Mediterranean. Sitting in a steep valley at the edge of the sea, Cassis is a popular escape for tourists and locals alike, it seems. We strolled around the town, which is mostly restaurants, souvenir shops, & boats. Since it was about dinner time, we settled down to another meal. By the time that we had finished eating it had grown dark outside so we decided to head back home.
On the drive into Cassis, as we tried to park, we sustained some damage to our Duplo. Nothing serious, but enough to warrant a trip to the car rental place this morning. They made note of the damage but couldn't offer us another, smaller car (like we reserved) at the moment. I think both Allen & I would be more comfortable driving something a little more compact. We'll see; maybe we'll get used to it.
Another, this time embarrassing, incident which occurred as we were arriving at the TGV station in Paris the other day was that as I bent down to pick up some papers, because it was humid and I was sweating, my pants split and ripped in a way that they can't be repaired. Since I only packed two other pairs of pants, I wanted to replace them. Well I've been on a quest ever since to find a new pair. Not as easy as one might imagine. French men, to the last of them, seem to be way too thin to describe. Thus their pants come in sizes that don't begin to approach the size that I need. I've started to give up on this quest, thinking of myself as one of those large Americans. C'est la vie.
Marilyn, Stan, Allen, & I tried a particularly Provencal activity this afternoon: a game of pentaque or boules. It's a game similar to bocci or lawn bowling in which you try to get your boules (or metal balls) closer to the little ball than your opponent's boules. It takes some skill and some luck, we found out. Knocking your opponent's boules out of the way while trying to get yours closer takes some doing. It was fun even though Marilyn & I lost to Allen & Stan. But it was a well-fought game.
The other excitement today was laundry doing, which doesn't really deserve a mention but I thought you'd like to know that we have clean clothes. Adieu.
Pictures below:
--Allen at boules
--Four dolphins fountain in Aix
--Cassis
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