To Market, To Market...

Mondays are market days here in Bedoin, so I thought I'd give you a little tour.  I hope you appreciate we got up extra early just to bring this to you!

This is looking down the main street from the top.  The market goes on for about a mile:

Would you like some saucisson?  Every flavour imaginable:

Or perhaps you have a problem with vampires:

Maybe you need a little cheese to go with the wine you will no doubt be downing later:

Or perhaps some nougat?  I told LT I'd take the bit on the top left, but she said no, how rude!

She wouldn't let me have any nougat from here either, even though the bits were smaller (They were still about 100 times the size of you! - LT)

She was more interested in the boring olives:

There's more bags here than even LT has made:

How about a little chicken?

Or more cheese and saucisson?  This guy had some really nice cheese, we shall have to bring some home...

There were vampire problems at the bottom of the village too:

But there was some very nice fruit there.  LT say it would stain my paws if I ate all that lot though:

Maybe you need some Provencal dishes to eat everything in:

Apparently that's where LT's patience with taking photos ran out, so that's the end of our tour, sorry!  Is there anything you want to see next week?  I can try and negotiate...

I’m Baaaaaack...

Did you miss me?  Did you?  Did you?  *Someone* just hasn’t been going on holiday, so I’ve been stuck at home all this time...

Anywho, I’ve now arrived in sunny Provence, so I had to have a drink and a little aperitif to celebrate.  I had mine, I wonder what the rest of them were having:

Then Jock appeared with some Pastis, he was positively diving into it, how excessive!  I would never do anything like that...

So we had a discussion all about it afterwards and I told him all about how one ought to behave when one has finally got one’s paws on some booze at the end of a long and tiring day:

On Sunday, we wandered down into the village for father’s day lunch, LT had already consumed one of our amuse bouches by this point, you just can’t get the staff these days...

Then we had our starter – courgette rolls with goat’s cheese, pine nuts and more courgette inside, topped with a sliver of tiger skin tomatoes, and with some local air dried ham on the side:

Next was the main course, huge prawns with stir fried vegetables:

Then, horror of horrors, there was no dessert!  Didn’t LT know that I was on my holidays?!  I was really quite put out about that.

After we had taken the longest walk home ever because *someone* can’t follow directions (um, excuse me, I can follow them fine, it’s just that there wasn’t a road sign where it was meant to be! - LT)  Whatever, after we had finally got home, it was time to lounge around by the pool where I made a new friend, Vincent:

Everyone needs a vole named Vincent for a friend don’t you think?

He’d had a bit of a run in with a nasty beast before we met him, but it was a little hard to understand him, wot with him being French and all, but he seemed to recover and run away in the end, even after Ann nearly stepped on him, twice!

We came back round to our patio so that I could finally get my paws upon something sweet.  They were a bit sticky afterwards, but it was definitely worth it...

*Belch*

Provence - Saturday 9th July - The Final Day :o(

Time for the long trek home... (Trek?  I doubt you’ll be walking far... LT).  Well you know what I mean!  Anyway, we got the car all packed up – I don’t think there was an inch of space:

And we did a check over of the gite:

And LT chopped up a pepper for lunch – it was another one of those giant ones that could have eaten me alive!

The woman that manages it was over an hour late and then she had a huge argument about whether or not we’d cleaned it!  Huh, it wasn’t exactly spotless when we got it!

So I have my seat, where’s LT’s mum going to sit?

We drove all the way up to Lyon, stopping briefly for a picnic, and stopped to get a photo in front of the train station end of the airport before we checked in:

Then the farce began... There are 2 flights that go at the same time from the tiny terminal 3, the one to Edinburgh that were on, and one to Marakesh.  They didn’t open check in for any of them until less than an hour before the flight – can you imagine over 600 people crammed, with luggage trolleys, inside a teeny, tiny space with no air conditioning in over 30C heat?  It wasn’t pleasant, and I only had to peer out the top of LT’s rucksack!  Then they opened all the desks for check in for both flights, but still no-one moved.  THEN they decided the Marakesh flight was going to be delayed by half an hour, so they’d prioritise the Edinburgh check in, so we had to try and squeeze past everyone.  It was a complete mess and very hot for little bears in fur coats! (It wasn’t that great for humans in vests and shorts!  So much for checking in online too – LT)

Eventually we got on the plane, and then the man across the aisle from LT threw up as we came into land.  A LOT.  It was icky...

After that we were lucky that lots of things were running late, as we got straight from bus to train to a small wait for a train to home, but it was after 9pm UK time when we got home, which was after 10pm on our body clock time in France!

Okay, so I’m ready for the next trip, where are we going? (Ha, nowhere for a while, that was quite enough! – LT)

Provence - Friday 8th July

Another day, another market missed, although LT says she practically ran round the one in Carpentras this morning before going to the Auchan hypermarket in Avignon.  They got loads of goodies to bring back home.

This afternoon though, there was an absolute travesty!  I was LEFT BEHIND!  I was supposed to have gone up Mont Ventoux with LT and her dad, but she’d popped me in her bag for the evening out already, and forgot to take me with her.  I might forgive her.  Eventually...  Anyway, here’s a few photos she took without me:

(This is the memorial for Tom Simpson, who died in 1967 at this point in the Tour De France.  Tradition has it that cyclists who pass and stop here should leave something behind – LT)

 (This is how close he was to the top of the mountain – LT)

(This cyclist, now on his way down, checks out how close he got – LT)

Eventually they came home, and took me and LT’s mum out for a final dinner to compensate.  Here I am with my final aperitif of Beaumes De Venise:

Followed by a kir royale:

LT forgot to take the photo at the beginning of the starter AGAIN!  You just can’t get the staff these days.  Anyway, this was us about half way through our salad with goat’s cheese on grilled tomatoes:

She actually remembered before the main course of scallops, which I washed down with a nice little white, while she had more diet coke – blech!  You’ll notice everything sliding down the plate, our table was on a bit of a slant!  We think that’s why the plates are turned up at one end, to catch the food before it slides off altogether...

And at last, pudding of a chocolate fondant with fresh raspberry coulis and Chantilly cream:

All washed down with a little coffee:

And a lovely digestif of the house, an apple and almond liqueur, which was made by our waiter’s grandfather, and which slipped down rather nicely:

I took rather a strong whiff, it would certainly knock you out if you weren’t careful!

It slipped down a little too nicely, I wanted everybody’s!

We wandered back past the evening craft market in the village square:

And also the weekly boules league matches: