Slept in and got a late start today. I spent a bit of time feeding Madame Canard. I was sitting on the porch trying to update my journal when she flew up from the river to the back yard, walked up the stairs to the porch and came right up to me and started yapping. I interpreted her "duck speak" for "I'm hungry. Get me something". So I spent some time feeding her yesterday's croissant, which she devoured. I did manage to video a couple of minutes of it, so if I'm able to get that uploaded, you'll be able to view it here.
We headed to the town of Menerbes. This town was the stronghold for the Protestants during the 16th century "Religious wars" with the Catholics. There are some building used for defenses still in existence, which we didn't get to see because of time constraints, but we'll try to get back here next week. We did walk the town a bit and got a shot of the "main drag", as it is, of the town.
We did make a stop at the Musee Du Tire Bouchon, otherwise known as the corkscrew museum. "tire bouchon" translates to "cork pull". It's inside the winery Domaine de la Citadelle. We couldn't take photos unfortunately. The guy's collection is really extensive, being literally thousands of corkscrews. They date back hundreds of years. Many are very decorative and probably meant more "for show" than "for go". The most cool for me were three that were a combination of pistol, small saber, and corkscrew. I don't quite understand the basis for putting those three things together into one unit, but they were clearly professionally made and very well done.
As the purpose of the trip is to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, we of course would have a special dinner planned. Since our real anniversary is on Monday, we decided to do our big dinner tonight. We went to Le Vivier (The Pool), the only Michelin starred place close by. It's run by a British couple that migrated here a few years ago after running restaurants in London. I think the name comes from the location, which is right where one of the rivers segments into two and goes through a couple of very small water falls. You can look out at this from the terrace, which is where we had our aperitif.
Dinner was their seven course "Menu Gourmand" and overall was nice, with the selected wine pairings. They did some unique things, such as the lobster meat in a crispy cannelloni enclosed with pureed avocado. The fish course featured mullet and octopus with a salty butter sauce and an excellent corn puree. The meat course was veal sweetbreads, which Jan tried for the first time and didn't mind them, although I think they won't be either of our first choice in the future. Dessert should always be great as the last course and this was, being a pairing of a chocolate lava cake and a chocolate frozen "lollipop". It was a nice setting and a great evening.
You'll find a handful of photos here.
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