Red Bikes (Won a month in France), Day 1
Three days ago, I got married. Straight from the party my new husband Rooster and I dashed into a car and departed on the first leg of our three-legged dash to Provence. Approximately 31 hours later, after a series of mishaps more ridiculous by the turn—a massive orange piece of lost luggage with our corkscrew and my favorite shoes in it, a payphone with a broken (and necessary) “4” button, two bank ATMs with no cash, a manual transmission rental car with a mysterious and elusive “trick” for shifting into reverse, and a wrong way trip down A7 at 110 km/hr—we finally arrived at our honeymoon destination: “The Baronnette” in Cabrieres d’Avignon. This tiny village in the Provence region is where we will be living for one month.
“The Baronnette” sounds like a pretty cool reality TV show about a trollopey French countess and her burning lovers set in the 1800’s but it’s not. It's even better. The "maison" is grand with tiled floors inside and a pool and an olive tree in the back yard. Our landlord walked us through the house talking a million (French) words a minute and motioning with meaning at the weirdly tiny French laundry machines, the oven and the pool controls, as Rooster and I nodded a lot and said “oui.” Sidenote: Rooster’s professed “peu” of French from high school turns out to be more like “une petite peu.” Nonetheless, we’re getting along just fine with my French dictionary and his pantomime.
The town of Cabrieres is paved with (what we now know are one way) cobblestone roads and the houses all appear to be made of hand-hewn stone. Each one is connected to its neighbor by thick walls which the village cats – of which there are many – use as their private roadway. Just down the winding street from “La Baronette” is a boulangerie/patisserie, a charcuterie and a marché with tiny wheels of thick-rined cheese for sale, each from a different local cheese maker. There’s no doubt about it, this is the Southern France I’ve been dreaming about. And I'm going to get fat here. Happily.
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