Day 11… say it ain’t so!

Tiny little cantaloupes for breakfast. And coffee… of course.  There is a Nespresso machine in the kitchen that has become our second best machine friend after Sean the GPS. The little Nespresso pods are way cheaper over here. Everyone can have whatever kind of espresso they want and as many as they want…

What is it that we haven’t figured out yet in the US? Why is the good wine, the good coffee and the good tomatoes so much less expensive and so much more abundant here? I have not seen a single American fast food restaurant… hmmm… could it be a question of priorities and values? Local economies? Do we put more value on fast vs good? I don’t know really… there is something fundamentally different though and whatever it is, it always speaks to me when we are here. Hello?

Anyway… off to Vaison La Romain. I think Sean the GPS may be getting a little too comfortable with us or else he’s getting tired of us. He normally tells me which way to go AS WE APPROACH a fork in the road. “Bear left” he says, “Frog right” I respond. We go left and all is good. This time he didn’t say anything and off I go … the wrong way on the A7. Argh. “Turn around” he says. Sure. Thankfully without much fuss he plots a way for us to get turned around and we get into Vaison La Romain about 10 minutes later than we thought we would. And then there’s parking. Parking is never a simple thing in these ancient places. Once we figure out where we actually are in the town, then we can drive around in random directions looking for the blue ‘P’ signs that indicate where there were parking spots until we got there. Eventually though, because the Roman gods take pity on us, there is success.

First stop, lunch. A cafe in a long line of cafes on the perimeter of a square with a fountain. Donna and Jack ordered Croque Monsieur. (Basically a big grilled cheese sandwich with ham in it. Lynn and I had the Plat du Jour… a LARGE ham steak with potatoes gratin and peas and other vegies. Lynn also had the starter salad and the desert. Jack helped. What is in Vaison La Romain you might ask… Old stuff. There is a bridge built by the Romans in the first century that has been in continuous use ever since. It is 29 feet wide and 56 feet long. Wide enough for two way car traffic. It has withstood floods that have washed away much newer and even modern bridges. It even took a WWII German bomb hit and remained standing. It was the only bridge across the Ouveze river in the area until a footbridge was built in 1858 ! and we walked across it… twice.

There are all kinds of Galo Roman ruins and archaeological sites around the city. At the top of the hill there is the Haute-Ville. Very fancy house ruins with mosaics and stuff. Or so we are told. The hill was very high and the temperature was very hot (88 degrees) so we thought… nah.

Off to Orange. What’s there you might ask… not much. It’s kind of a scruffy industrial town, basically flat but it has the Theatre Antique d’Orange. Holy moly. Being kind of a theatre person, I was expecting yet another tumbledown pile of rocks with some stone benches that looked like the other 50 Roman theatres I have seen in the last 17 years. But no, this is one of the best preserved Roman theatres in the world. It is the only one with its acoustic wall intact. The stage is 198 feet across and the back wall is 120 feet high. With seating for about 10,000 people, this is an impressive space. The theatre is used regularly and while we were there they were starting a rehearsal for a performance in the evening. 300 musicians of all ages. They were playing some pretty old stuff… Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Heart… We stayed for a bit and enjoyed the spectacle.

Then we kinda got lost trying to find our car.

Home with one last stop at the grocery store. We are out of coffee!!! and we need to pick up something LIGHT for dinner.