Traipsing Through Provence

I have an update for you on our saga of glove and despair, of beast or famine, and it’s turned out brilliantly for one of the parties involved. (You’ll thank me for not providing you with a link, those of you who are not up to date).

Rémy was indeed in the latter stages of his life, thanks to the cyanide-laced apéritifs we had been providing him with, and Sir was able to remove his stiffening corpse and clean out his luxury accommodations underneath our sink and cabinets while I lay fainting in the boudoir.

Everything bleached, including my eyeballs, I can now go on and you no longer have to cancel your visits.

(If only we ran a real bed and breakfast in a gorgeous place like Provence, then you really could stay with us)!

When we galavanted around Provence, leaving our children in the capable hands of sullen teenagers at the Kids Club, Sir had the bright suggestion to leave off the GPS and land wherever the wind blows us.

You win some, you lose some.  This is Reillanne.

The remnants of a wall

a decent view quand même (all the same)

a rather forlorn church and rampart

and the irony of being sent on our way to a loud (but good) band, hidden in one of the dilapidated buildings and jamming cheerful swing music.

But it turned out to be a fortuitous thing to have ditched the GPS because while getting completely lost we stumbled upon the city he had been eyeing on the hill, but didn’t know what it was called or how to reach it. Now we know it’s called “Viens.” Like “come.”

“Viens” you say to your toddler. “Viens” you say to your dog. “Viens!” this city was clearly calling to us, and who were we to disobey?

Sir was attracted to it because all you saw from a long way off was stone walls and stone houses set on the mountain.

When we entered, the age-old beauty struck us immediately, even without the cosmetic help of the sun.

The winding streets reminded Sir of a medieval town he used to go to as a kid. They would run through the nearly deserted streets, five brothers whooping and hollering, and they would come to the edge of a cliff that held the sign:  This is the end of the world.

He would think, is this really the end of the world?

You know that movie where Chevy Chase quits his job to become a writer and they buy a house in the country so he can write? Except the community is surly, nature is unkind, the house is falling apart and he can’t write a single word. (His stay-at-home wife had her children’s book accepted for publishing though).

On the brink of a divorce, they agree to pay the townspeople $50 a piece if they will help make the town look like a paradise so they can sell their house. At one point someone releases a deer, which goes bounding across the lawn, just as a prospective couple steps up to the door looking around in wonder. You know the movie?

I think that’s what was going on here.

I mean, come on!

Who really lives like this?

That’s just downright medieval.

Except we swallowed the lot hook, line and knocker.

You, dear readers, would never get hoodwinked in such a way, I’m sure, and I fear I’m running out of your attention. So I’ll go on about Avignon, Ménerbes, Rustrel, Roussillon and Gordes another time. In the meantime, be warm and well fed.

As long as you’re not a rat. Living under my sink.

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