Friday, June 6 2014 - Day 15

Today was our last day in Provence. It's been a great time and I'm sorry to see it end. But it will be great to get home.

This morning we went to a shop looking for some placemats. We talked to a guy yesterday at the farmers market and he had some placemats we wanted, but not enough for us. He gave us the address of his shop in a nearby town. We went there today thinking we were going to a small store with placemats. It turned out to be much different.

We turned the corner and ran into a huge store with thousands of fabrics for sale. Jan was in nirvana! We found the placemats they were selling, and located three different patterns that would be great in our dining room and kitchen, for a total of 28 placemats. Jan didn't find any fabric that she wanted, and the prices are quite a bit more than in the U.S. But the placemat score was great.

With the placemats we just bought, and the fabrics for table cloths we bought earlier in the week, we've now exceed the about of space we have in our luggage. So this is the first vacation we've taken where we had to buy a suit case just to bring home stuff that we bought during the trip. Another new experience on this vacation!

We spent the afternoon in the town of St-Remy-de-Provence. We started with a little bistro named La Gousse d'Ail, which means The Garlic Clove. So now you know what dominates their dishes. The food was fabulous. They gave us a small bowl of mushroom soup to start. My starter was an onion tart with anchovies and a salad on top. Jan had a home made pasta course with a light pesto sauce, which tasted great and was a huge portion. Jan's main was a ratatouille of sorts with a goat cheese crust. Mine was a steak with potatoes and garlic (what a surprise) that included a couple of whole roasted garlic cloves. Everything was well executed. Another 2 hour lunch! I could get used to this, but my boss probably wouldn't.

We then went down the road to the Monastery of Saint Paul, which is a psychiatric asylum and has been for a very long time. This is where Van Gogh committed himself for a year. It's still an asylum, but only for women patients. We were able to see the room that Van Gogh stayed and saw the lilies and wheat fields he painted in the last year of his life.

We also saw a couple of "treatment bath tubs" from the 19th century, where they would barricade the patient in with a wooden door with their head exposed, and they would periodically surprise them with dowsing their head with cold water. This was believed to cure the patient's wayward thoughts because of the shock of water. Really, you can't make this stuff up. Take a look at the photos if you don't believe me.

We spent the evening getting the house prepped for turning it back to the owners. Bummer.

Here's a few photos.