Monday, June 2, 2014 - Day 11

Today is our 30th anniversary. Wow, it doesn't seem that long at all. It went by in a heartbeat.

Today's first stop was the Musee de La Lavande (Lavender Museum). We're a little too early to see the huge fields of pretty purple lavender that dominate certain areas of Provence because they don't bloom until June. The museum was interesting though. There was a 10-15 minute film about the growing and production, along with some history of the industry. The museum was dominated by the types of stills that have been used over time to distill the oil from the flowers, which was something I didn't know about. I did start to glaze over after about the sixth type of still, and from that point buzzed past them.

There was a small part of the exhibit dedicated to the production of lavender honey. There are bee keepers in the area of lavender fields that specifically make honey from the lavender flowers, which has a distinctive taste. It was funny to listen to the audio guide, as the lady described the interaction between the bee keeper and the lavender farmer in the summer:

• Bee keeper: "You must wait another fortnight (two weeks for anyone reading this under the age of 40) while the bees make more honey".
• Lavender farmer: "No, the flowers are at their peak and are ready to be harvested".

I suspect the farmer's real response was much shorter, something like just two words. But that could just be me.

Moving on from the lavender museum, we made our way to the town of Chateauneuf-du-Pape (CdP) for a wine and chocolate attraction Jan had read about. CdP is one of the top wine areas of the world, but unfortunately we would do no tasting today as we had acquired more than enough wine to get us through the week, and these wines need time to cellar. The chocolate attraction turned out to be a store where they made their own chocolate. So while it wasn't much of an "attraction", we did manage to do a little damage in the store with their tasty products.

While in the area, we went to the ruins of the pope's chateau, which is the reason the town exists. There is little left to the building that was the pope's weekend/summer retreat when the papacy was in Avignon. It's interesting that the papal palace in Avignon is in excellent condition while this building is practically gone, and both were built at the same time. The building at CdP is at the top of the hill so therefore subjected to all the wind and elements of the area, which is not the case in Avignon. Also, when the papacy returned to Rome in the 1400s, the church continued to own and use the building in Avignon, while I believe they abandoned the building in CdP. More research is needed.

The ruins themselves are still pretty interesting from the architecture that is evident. I took a lot of photos, which you'll see later. It's interesting that when we were last here in 2003, the ruin was pretty much on its own on top of the hill with nothing around it. Now there are grape vines planted by it, someone has put up a restaurant, and there's a tasting room for one of the wineries in the area.

We then headed over to the Pont Du Gard near the city of Nimes. The Pont Du Gard is the tallest aqueduct ever built by the Romans almost 2000 years ago, and it was done in 5 years. It spans over the Gardon river and is as high as it is in order to get up to the tops of the hills surrounding the river to continue to carry the water from a nearby spring to the town of Nimes. It's 360 meters long and 50 meters high. When up close, it appears that this too, like the Pont Julien from last week, was built without mortar, having the precisely shaped stones fitted together in order to keep everything in place. During the summer you can get up to the very top level which is where the water was carried, but that was closed. Still, a very cool monument.

Our anniversary dinner at home tonight consisted of some monster prawns we bought from the fish man at the farmers market. This, a fresh salad from the market along with some local white wine was all we needed. Oh, and some of the chocolate from earlier today.

Some frustrations about France came out today for both of us. I'm sure it's cultural differences, but it makes you wonder why a people would make certain things difficult for themselves (at least for the first two things). So bear with me while I rant for a few minutes. Three topics:

1. Convenience stores - They are practically non-existent. The only small stores that exist are little specialty shops (bread, pastry, meat, etc.), so if you want a couple of different things, you have to go to multiple places. The only places that sell everything in one place are mega mart food stores that take forever to get out of because there are only three checkout lines open during rush hour. So when you're driving along and decide you want a coke and some chips, forget it. The handful of town convenience stores that exist along the small roadways that dominate the countryside can't be parked at because the roads were designed 1000 years ago for horse-drawn carts. In this quest yesterday we encountered one of the few McDonalds in the area and were going to stop for some coke and fries, and they're out of regular coke. WTF? You're McDonalds and you ran out of regular coke??? Who runs this place, and gives a crap?
2. Random store closures - There is some kind of habit in this country that stores are open only for very specific hours on very specific days, and they're likely not posted anywhere. This is different from the fact that every business in the country except restaurants closes between 12 and 2 for lunch. We went through whole towns where every business was closed. The most fun are the myriad of stores we ran into that had signs out front stating "Ouvert 24h" (open 24 hours) that were closed. I guess the sign really means "we're open 24 hours except for the times we decide to close for any reason that suits us".
3. U.S. Credit Cards - Ok, this may sound like an ugly American thing. Not a one of the automatic payment machines in this country take U.S. credit cards because we don't use the security chip in our cards. I realize a bunch of other countries have gone to this technology, but can't the machines be designed to take both? We are the biggest economy in the world (sorry, that's ugly American). Then it takes forever to find the one guy in the business who knows how to use the machine they have that take swipe cards to read the magnetic strip on the back of the card. Nothing can be done fast.

Ok, I'm better now. Thanks.

You can find today's photos here.