Saturday, May 24, 2014 - Day 2

Barely got out of bed in time to check out by noon and haul down to the rental house in time to meet the owners by 4pm to take possession of the house. It turns out that the French have speed cameras all over the expressways here. That could prove to be a problem based on today's attempt to make up time. Maybe they'll forget about it when the figure out it's a rental car rented by an American. Yeah, sure. Cie la vie! (I think that's spelled right).

I'll do photos tomorrow, but today was spent just taking everything in.

We're now settled in L'Isle-Sur-La-Sorgue, in south central France in the middle of Provence. The house is very charming and exactly as described on the website I rented it from. It's backed up to one of the rivers that run through la Sorgue. There are ducks all around, including one that is nesting in a bush in the back yard with what the owner says are 10 eggs the little duck is nursing.  It has a great back yard for sitting, drinking the local wines and eating the local cuisine. We'll hit our first farmer's market tomorrow.

The owners were great folks, probably late-50s. Between their slight understanding of English and Jan's understanding of French, we got through the walkthrough ok and familiarized with the functions of the house. Whenever there was a lull when we were each trying to understand each other, the wife would offer us some fresh strawberries. We got through it all well.

We walked around the town to get our bearings. We're 5 minutes walk to the center of town, which is chock full of antique shops. The town is apparently packed on weekends with tourists visiting the shops, and today was no different. We didn't go into any today. We'll save that for later.

We happened on a small wine and cheese shop on a small street and had to buy a few things and a bit of wine. We'll have those things tomorrow as we didn't want to spoil our dinner. More on those later.

There are many bistros in town, seemingly all right next to one another. We settled on one called Le Bouchon and ate outside along the river. BTW, you'll hear a lot about things being "by the river". There are five rivers that run through and converge in town, which is why it's called "L'Isle", because the center of town is essentially an island between all the rivers.

Dinner was excellent. I had a perfectly cooked confit of duck, the leg and thigh. The salad was interesting, goat cheese wrapped in bacon served over a typical Provencal salad of greens with a mustard vinaigrette. Jan had a grilled steak for her main, previewed by a salad of grilled asparagus with a small salad dressed with local olive oil.

The big local market is tomorrow, so we'll have photos then.