Provencal Villages

So the next day was our tour of Provencal villages.

 

The drive was really lovely.  I only wish I had gotten a picture of one of the fields bursting with poppies.  They were so beautiful.  Alas, we never did stop the van for that purpose, even though we all started yelling out 'poppies!' when we passed some.

Our first stop was the ochre-red village of Roussillon.

(You may not remember, but I had considered the name Oaks for Wyatt there at the very end, or possibly Oaker.  I kind of love the name, so I had a lot of fun saying and hearing the word Ochre so much while we were in Roussillon.)

First we hiked (okay, more like ambled along) the short Trail of Ochre.

We took a picture of all the people with splendid, ochre-colored hair. :)

This kid is such a little cutie!!  Did you know that in the thesaurus under 'darling' (noun sweetheart, favorite person) one of the synonyms is 'fair-haired boy'?  So fitting.

Jethro was bothering everyone else on this walk.  He's starting to be that way sometimes.  But I still love him.

This is the postcard Hazel bought after promising to pay Brett back a euro (well, a franc).  You know, I don't think she has done so yet.

Then we walked around the lovely village center.  Thus begins the series 'Bells in Doorways:'

Then we drove along more of the lovely Provencal countryside.

These (blurry) fields are lavender.

Had we come a month or so later, they would have looked more like this, so I am told:

 

But as the song goes, 'Lavender's blue dilly dilly, Lavender's green.'  And we saw it when it was green.

Then we stopped at the village of Bonnieux.  It was quite lucky we didn't run out of gas before we got there, but the gas station didn't open until 2:00, so we parked near it and got out to eat lunch and admire.

I had read a review of a really fantastic Moroccan restaurant in this village, and was anxious to eat there because I love LOVE Moroccan food, but we walked and walked and tried to find it and finally asked a guy who told us, in French, that it was no longer in operation.  Jethro has studied French in school this year, so we kept telling him he should be able to be our interpreter.  And he tried quite gallantly, but generally we hoped people spoke English.  :)  Anyway, I was sad about no couscous, tagines, or pastillas, at least we could just find the nearest pizza place and order already because we were all starving.

Oh yeah, it was also in this village that my favorite Orrin story happened.  I was carrying him piggy-back while we were searching for the restaurant, and suddenly a fire truck raced by with its sirens blaring. Orrin convulsed in spasms of glee the way only Orrin can, and yelled, "That's my favorite song!!"

We ordered four pizzas and scarfed them down in about three seconds flat.  One of them had a soft-fried egg in the center of it.  Another one had fresh pineapple on it and that was delicious.  European pizza is so different than American.