Drivin' around weekend!

With just about a week left in my fabulous winemaking adventure, I figured I'd better make sure I see as much of the area around

me as I can. So Saturday I drove to Beaucaire, which is about 20km NE of Bellegarde, just down the Rhône from Avignon. It's a pretty little town, with lots of touristy things to do.


Unfortunately I didn't know exactly what those touristy things were before I came. I looked on the tourism board's website, but I generally find it's better just to go to the tourism office and ask. Unfortunately that only works if they're open. I took this picture with my watch next to it. 'Samedi' is Saturday, the day I was there, so this would seem to indicate they are open from 9:30 to 12:30, then from 3 to 8, and as you can see from my watch, it's just after 4, and they're not open. What I missed was the conditional sentence above the time, which I didn't understand at the time, because I didn't know what Pâques was. It's Easter. What it says is, the tourism office is only open Saturdays from Easter till the end of September. Shoulda come last week.

So I ambled about for a bit, and stopped off in a cafe to write in my journal. The only other person in the cafe was this man. I don't know how well you can see in this photo, but he has only two teeth, and one of them is gold. Bling bling, Monsiuer, bling bling.

After a bit more wandering I stopped at another cafe. I was trying to find some of the many touristy things that I know must exist so close to the center of town, but one of the rough bits about French architecture and city design is that damn near everything looks alike. So, at the second cafe, I noticed again that it doesn't seem like French bar and restaurant employees are strictly required to be nice to all the patrons. I didn't see the whole story, so I'm not taking sides here, but what I saw was as follows: A family with children was sitting out in front of the cafe. A girl who looked to be about 3 got up from the table and went inside unsupervised, where she grabbed a handful of sugar from a table where some men were having coffee. The waiter/bartender stopped her, took the sugar away, chided the child, and yelled at her mother. The mother yelled back, and the child returned to the family. Weird thing is, the family didn't leave at this point. I didn't understand all of what was being said at their table, but I'm pretty sure she said something along the lines of 'I don't care what he says, he's just some prick who works in a bar.' A few minutes later the girl walked in again unsupervised, the bartender yelled at the mother again, this time he definitely asked them to leave, she said 'we're going' and they left. I paid and left as well, because I was sure I wasn't going to get anything more entertaining out of that place.

I walked around a bit more and did manage to find one of the touristy spots. Apparently this village is known for eagles, and they have some sort of Renaissance eagle-show in the old fortress at the top of the hill. Unfortunately I missed the last show of the day. Perhaps I can give it another go this weekend before heading to Paris.

So, yesterday I went to the beach. They had a specially designated areas for dogs to poo, so you know I had to take a picture of the sign.





I wend to a village called Saintes Maries de la Mer.
I swam.
The water was wonderful and warm, although there was a bit of a breeze in the air.
Also a very touristy village, and with the beautiful weather, and it being potentially one of the last really nice days of the year, the place was bustling.

All the restaurants were open to the street, and all of them serving paella and fresh seafood. This area is also in the Camargue, which is well known for salt and horses and bulls and honey and rice, so most of the souvenir shops reflected the theme.


I was wandering around town and saw some sort of tourist attraction, and I didn't know exactly what it was, only that there were people up on the roof. I found the door and it was only two euros to get in, so I checked it out. Turns out the walking on the roof was pretty much the whole thing, but the view was amazing.

Today was pretty mellow at work. We drew the press juice off the mourvedre skins so it can be de-cuved tomorrow. We're still in the process of putting everything away for the winter, today we put a bunch of the hoses and pipes in the storage room. The Moroccans are still working on end of season maintenance on all the harvesting machines. Just about all of the wines are finished and we're working on getting them in the cuves where they'll rest for the next few months.