French Fashion in Winter 2012

It was quite rainy and cold today, and the power went out, so I spent quite a while doing my writing by candlelight. 

It was a really nice day.  I just kept writing until the wick fizzled out.  Maybe that should be my writer's quirk.  Every day, I should light a tea light candle and just keep writing and writing until it burns right down to the end of the wick and the desk goes dark.  Considering tons of writers wrote standing in the nude or climbed trees nude before coming back down to write, having a candle quirk seems pretty normal to me. 

But after dinner this evening, Edith and I had a very long talk about fashion trends.  Vintage clothing is just becoming popular over here, though it's been popular in the US for a good three or four years now.  She laughed at the American habit of wearing Northface and Ugg boots in the winter.  I asked her if the French wear berets, and she laughed and made a gesture that I'm pretty sure is the equivalent of miming a nerdy guy pushing his glasses back up his nose with his index finger and said, "NO, Lind-zay!"

But okay, are you ready for what is going to be the hottest fashion trend in France this winter?  Ready??

That's right, ALADDIN PANTS!  Better start stocking up for next year, because apparently these are poised to dethrone skinny jeans.  I guess this style is nice if your thighs are your biggest insecurity.  Hopefully this is one of those flash-in-the-pan trends, like nautical striped clothing with anchor-shaped buttons was.

Les Baux de Provence at Night

This evening I was in Les Baux long after the sun had set and the full moon had risen.  Adeline and I walked briskly down the narrow, lamp lit cobbled roads together in silence.  As my white trench coat rippled behind me in the chilly wind, the bell tolled, and I felt as though we were walking through the first page of an adventure story.

Can't you just imagine what it would have been like to walk hurriedly up to the castle in the dead of night to deliver an urgent message to the king?  

Adeline and I went for a walk during our English practice tonight, just to make things more interesting.  Before we actually got to the town, we stopped a ways off so as to far away view of the Les Baux illuminated.  

I did not take this picture (the one I posted before this was the only one out of dozens to come out somewhat clearly), but I wanted you to see how cool it looked.  

Today was not a day big on action, but the experience, however fleeting, was rich.  

Harry Potter in French

This week I agreed to tutor Edith's cousin in English, because Adeline has a big exam coming up which will determine whether or not she gets a cool job which requires intermediate proficiency in one of four languages.  I guess I didn't really understand the logistics of this plan, because today Adeline came to the house, knocked on the door, and said, "We go?"

I did not know where it was we were supposed to be going (I thought the plan was that she and I would practice talking in English whilst going for a long walk), but I've learned to just live in a state of constant confusion.  It's easier to be confused than try to ask and understand what's going on most of the time.  Adeline and I drove through the winding country roads under the silver light of the full moon, and we eventually wound up on a farm.  She parked the car, and we got out.  It was not immediately apparent that there was a house nearby until I'd spent a moment or two thinking that this is how every horror story starts out, but we rounded some trees and came upon the home of Adeline's parents.

It's a very large farmhouse with a crackling fireplace and huge kitchen.  There were many antiques gathered in the living room, like old bird cages and grandfather clocks.  Adeline's father sat watching news coverage of the hurricane currently ravaging the east coast of the United States.  Her mother kissed my cheek and handed me an orange, and then I followed Adeline back to her bedroom.

We had a lot of fun just talking about whatever.  I think she mostly wants to get practice with audio comprehension, so we had normal friendly banter.  I noticed a Jane Austen book sitting on her desk, and I had to flip through the inside for a minute before realizing which one it was, because my literal translation of the title didn't directly correspond to any of Austen's books.  Once I saw "Marianne," however, I knew it was Sense and Sensibility.  Adeline also showed me her version of Pride and Prejudice, and then she brought out her whole collection of Harry Potter books.  Did you know that the French don't call the magical school of witchcraft and wizardy "Hogwarts" like we do?  They call it "Poudlard."  What???  The cover art was super different too.

You'll notice, too, that instead of being titled, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the first book is called, "Harry Potter at the Sorcerer's School."  The book is significantly thinner than its hefty English counterpart, too, which makes me wonder if a lot of stuff got cut during translation.  While in college, I learned that a lot of stuff goes on during the translation process that authors are usually unaware of, as it's hard to gauge the accuracy of your translated book if you don't speak the language.  And obviously, a lot of things flat out have to be changed, because many things just don't translate from culture to culture.  There are even differences between the UK version and the American version of HP. 

So most of our conversation was me flipping out about the differences between the French and English versions of my favorite books.  Adeline seemed entertained.

Birthday Parties in Southern France

Marseilles isn't my favorite city by a long shot, but the view off this monument there is spectacular.  If you stand in the right place, you can almost believe you're standing in the 1800's, because there's nothing to suggest otherwise.  Most of the architecture seems untouched.  

One thing that I love about Edith is that she shares my passion for impractical pleasures.  We were in a hurry to get somewhere while in Marseilles, but Edith had a serious sweets craving.

When Edith wants a sloppy Belgian waffle covered in liquid Nutella, she doesn't like a silly thing like having to drive stop her.  This picture was followed by twenty minutes of crazy driving through the city and phrases like, "Ah!  Hold my waffle for a minute!" and "Oh noooooo!  There is chocolate on my clotheses!"  One habit I haven't yet been able to break Edith of is adding an extra syllable onto the word "clothes."  It's a common error among many French people, I've noticed.  They just can't wrap their minds around the fact that "clothes" is already plural for some reason.  

Today was Nico's birthday, so we set up a banquet table in the living room and set places for twenty guests.

Looks like a wedding reception, doesn't it?  The French know how to dress a table in a hurry, and they do it often.  I think it's kind of funny that on Thanksgiving, whoever is hosting dinner is usually super stressed, but here they have four course dinners for 12+ people regularly, and the general attitude among hosts is always, "No big deal."  

Dinner was lovely, and there were these during appetizers:

France's answer to the pig in a blanket.

Joyeux Anniversaire, Nico!

Hippie Cafe

I'm completely exhausted, so this will be quick.

Today Edith and I went clothes shopping in Marseille, which was pretty sweet.  After, she had to go cut a client's hair, so she dropped me off at a cafe and told me to go inside for two hours.  She told me it was a "surprise."  Honestly, I was kind of sketched out by that description.  I thought for sure it was going to be some sort of burlesque show.

When I walked inside, the man asked me if I'd been there before, and when I said no, he told me to take my shoes off and put them on the shelf, and then head on down the hallway.  The hallway and beyond had a sand floor.  It was hippy-tastic, but also really cool.  Everyone sits on cushions and the tables are just three inch tall wooden platforms.  I got a pot of African tea and a citrus cake, and I cracked open my kindle and read until Edith returned.

After she picked me up, we headed to one of her friends' birthday parties.  It was positively lovely.  There were several people who spoke English (one of the perks of being in a main city), so I had the pleasure of several pleasant conversations.  There was even an ex-American who grew up in Boston.  He told me how he met God on the Paris subway one day in 1987, and after that he never dreamed of going home again.

Throughout the party there was a lot of singing, and after the cake was cut, there was dancing.  Real dancing.  Though I have no dancing skills, when some of the party goers pulled me out onto the dance floor, I had a wonderful time, because if the man knows how to dance, the woman can pretend she knows how to dance.  There was lots of swirling and dipping and all that fun stuff.

Today is Nico's birthday!  His LMFAO-themed party is next weekend, but today is his little gathering for family and older friends who aren't "Sorry for Party Rockin'."

French Grocery Stores

I'm becoming good at improvising meals with whatever ingredients are around.  Going to the grocery store is sometimes frustrating here, because I'll have an idea for something I'd like to make, but when I go around gathering the ingredients in my basket, I often discover that only 2/3 of what I need can be found.  The grocery stores here are truly tiny.  In fact, they more closely resemble gas station convenience stores, except there's a produce section and most of the food on the shelves isn't junk.

Ground beef is a little bit hard to come by, and if there does happen to be a package or two on the shelf, it usually contains only enough meat to make two hamburger patties, and it costs almost 6 euros ($8).  Cow is my favorite animal to eat, so this makes me sad, but the good news is that salami, chicken, and ham are all pretty cheap.  What I've come to discover is that the more popular something is in America (beef, peanut butter, M&Ms, or soda), the more it's likely to cost here.

Edith told me something interesting last night when we were discussing popular perfumes.  She said that most French people she knows thinks of America as the place where new fashions come from.  She was surprised when I told her that a name of perfume that is already three years old in France is just now becoming popular in the U.S.  I, in turn, was surprised that France, of all countries, would look to America for fashion guidance.  Haven't we all heard that Paris is on the cutting edge of designer clothing, elegant fragrances, and daring new foods?

I guess we all think the fashions of other lands are more fresh and exciting than our own.  Tomorrow Edith and I are going to head to Marseille to look at clothes and stuff.  She promised we'd go to a perfume store so I could smell all the latest stuff.

Best Way to Improve French Quickly

Today I decided to speak only in French, because my language skills have not been improving the way I'd like.  Whenever French people ask me questions, I have a mini panic time trying to figure out what they said and respond in a timely manner, which leads to some major stumbling over words.  After a few minutes of French conversation with Edith over dinner, however, it became much easier, and the words came more naturally.  Basically, I discovered that I'm not actually that bad at French; I just don't use the language enough every day.

That's definitely going to change with my next host family, though.  Unlike here, where both Nico and Edith speak English, at my next stop, only 1/4 family members speak English, and the one that does only speaks a limited amount.  Perhaps I will come back with advance French speaking abilities after all.

Lazy Day

It was kind of a lazy day today.  After spending about four hours curled up reading a book that turned out to be a bit of a letdown, I wandered outside and ended up at a bakery that I did not know existed.  I was hoping they'd have macarons, because I really really love those things, but they're not easy to find anywhere but Paris, but alas.  However, they did have this thing:

A sort of dark chocolate and clementine mousse.  Though I'm not usually a fan of the chocolate citrus combo, the flavors were so airy that I savored each bite alongside a cup of caramel tea.  

For dinner, I made an egg and potato casserole, with bacon cooked the way it deserves to be cooked.  It went nicely with red wine.

Tomorrow I have resolved to speak in only French.  My language skills have not been progressing the way I'd like, and it's largely due to the fact that Nico and Edith always speak in English to me.  Tomorrow shall be awkward but educational.  

Names to Faces

So by now you've been reading this blog for over a month, and you don't even know what the cast of characters in this story looks like.  Therefore, tonight you're going to see pictures of actual people instead of objects and places.

These beautiful people are my hosts, Edith and Nico.  See Nico being all metro with that scarf?  The men are classy with the scarves here, and it's awesome.  

Antics are common.

These pictures were all taken at a birthday party, which was for that woman in the grey dress you see there.  Her name is Geraldine.

That is Geraldine's boyfriend, Felipe.  He was fairly drunk at this point in the evening.

Nico has a friend named Olivier, who we often have dinner with.  They're very saucy together.

Olivier has five children who I simply adore.  They're so sweet!

The girls and I spent the most time chatting though.  We bounced on the trampoline for literally hours, playing the French version of "Truth or Dare."

Geraldine didn't have a birthday cake, so mayhem ensued in the kitchen while four of us whipped one up.

A little light on the words today, but hopefully you will be contented with the photos.

Foot Fungus Cheese

Edith and I had a grand time making dinner for her family today.  It was chilly and rainy outside, making it the perfect day for soup.  Healthy, homemade soup.

The colors of all the veggies delighted me.  We spent a couple hours peeling potatoes and carrots, chopping onions and tomatoes, and blending, blending, blending.  That bit of soup in the bowl was the first of about ten blender batches.  Don't let its slightly odd color fool you; it was absolutely delicious, especially with a bit of crusty baguette.  Edith decided, once that soup was done, that some variety would be nice, so she made tomato soup as well with her huge hoard of home-grown tomatoes.

Meanwhile, I decided to make an autumn American delicacy for dessert: Smores.

Fancy ones.  The French don't have straight up graham crackers, of course, but these nice flat biscuits are lightly flavored with cinnamon, so they worked just fine.  Edith had bought some strawberry marshmallow fluff, so this afternoon I raided her chocolate collection and assembled the smores with milk chocolate chips, pieces of dark Lindt, and marzipan Milka.  The French would obviously turn their noses up at our waxy excuse for chocolate (Hershey's), so the old standby was nowhere to be found.

During the post-entree cheese course, I popped the little beauties in the oven for a quick melt and then arranged them tastefully on a square plate.  For being what they were, they looked pretty high class, I must say.  All of them were devoured, and they appeared to be finger-kissing good.  Though apprehensive about the strawberry flavor, I too found them delectable.  

But I have go back to the cheese for a moment.  There was a cheese so horridly rancid that I shuddered a little bit.  It was like the foot odor of a hobo who wears Ziplocs for socks.  I have eaten several things which I found distasteful while in France, just for the sake of really experiencing the culture, but that cheese was where I drew the line.  No foot fungus cheese.

Harvesting Olives: How it's Done

There are many things that I've experienced here that I don't expect to ever experience again, after leaving France, at least.  Helping the Arsac family harvest olives from their orchard in Les Baux is one of them.

Their field of olive trees is nestled between the mountains, and getting there requires a rather hilly and precarious drive.  However, it's definitely worth it.  Not only is the scenery beautiful, but wind perfumed with  the plants of the region sweeps through, encouraging you to really savor every breath.  

I had no idea how olives were harvested.  I assumed it would involve picking each one by hand whilst carrying a wicker basket, but it's a bit more efficient than that.  

First, you surround the tree you wish to harvest from with a large piece of netting on the ground.  Then, being careful not to step on any of the olives which gather at your feet, you use a small rake to basically brush the tree's tresses, which sweeps the olives off their stems.  Since olives are constantly falling from overhead during the process, tons of them wound up rolling down my shirt, and I found like three of them in my bra later.  

Once you strip a tree of all its olives, you gather up the net and then carefully transfer all the olives into large plastic boxes, being careful to filter out most of the leaves that fell down during harvest.  

Perhaps if I'd grown up doing this every autumn, like Edith did, I would not find the task so enjoyable, but the novelty and peacefulness of the quiet, methodical harvest was really therapeutic, and five hours of constant labor went by without me wishing we could be done already.

Olive harvest is a family and friends affair.  Many people who know the Arsacs come to help during harvesting weekends.  Those ladders are kind of cool, aren't they?  I like the triangle design.  They're a lot more stable, and they're aesthetically pleasing, to boot.

Once we gathered all the olives, four of us went out to a Chinese buffet (they're much beloved in France), and then we saw some amateur theatre, which was pretty entertaining, even though I couldn't keep up with the dialogue.  Nico furiously whispered the plot points in my ear when things got crazy.  There were about eight love triangles in the six-character play.

One of the lovelier days I've spent here, and that's saying a lot.

How to Make French Macarons

One of the most popular pastries in France is the pretty little macaron.  They come in many different colors and subtle flavors, always providing two bites of sheer bliss, sprinkled with love and dreams.  They look like this:

At least, that's how they are supposed to look.  

Today I decided to try my hand at these difficult desserts.  I have often thought about attempting these petite cookies, but the recipes I've found are always so complicated and technical, often requiring a dozen things (like almond flour??) that I do not have.  As a result, the only macarons I've ever eaten have been in France and frozen from a box purchased from Trader Joe's.  Obviously, the frozen box kinds aren't up to snuff.  

But anyway, I decided not to jump into the whole macaron thing with both feet just yet.  Today at the grocery store, I procured a box mix for macarons.

Seriously, it's from a box; how hard can it be?  I also went to the trouble of obtaining a special macaron baking sheet.

Look at that, you don't even have to worry about making the batter form circles on the pan.  Who can screw up with so few things left to chance?

ME.  They didn't look too bad when they went in the oven.  Granted, I overfilled the circles a bit, but no big deal!  It happens.  So they'll be a tad misshapen.  

Sigh.  Not only did they merge into one another, I also burned them.  I thought perhaps they'd still be usable, so I took a bite of one.  It was like eating a spoonful of ash and chocolate sawdust, and I spent a couple minutes hacking up the particles.  

Needless to say, the entire batch was unusable, and I threw them away.  I tried another batch, and they came out mediocre.  

  

They look more like whoopie pies, but they came out vaguely circular and were chewy.  They didn't get the fluffy edges that macarons are supposed to get (see first picture), and the surface of the cookies was oddly porous instead of smooth.  However, after two hours of baking, I was just happy to have something edible to show for my efforts.

I can't decide whether to try again or just let this dessert remain a magical mystery forever.

First World Problems

Today during lunch I found the remaining bacon meat in the fridge and fried it up nice and crispy, the way God intended bacon to be.  Then I just sat on the couch and gorged myself on the pile of bacon whilst listening to the upstairs neighbor presumably practicing his parkour skills.

Here is a list of things that irritate me:

The post office is open for like four hours per day, and never the same four hours twice, it seems.

Haribo has stolen all but 2 of my hair ties.  I must discover where he keeps his hoard.

The flight booking company I use charged me $150 to change my departure city from Marseille to London for when I go home, even though my original itinerary had a connecting flight in London.  Essentially, they charged me extra to leave one of my seats vacant.  Bastards.

It was just one of those days.

However, I found the bombest-ass hostel ever to stay in when Lisa and I go to London this December:

It looks like Harry Potter's dormitory at Hogwarts!!

Bacon

The upstairs neighbor is doing some sort of noisy construction project in the room directly above mine, so several times today, I have stopped what I was doing to watch the ceiling to see if he is going to accidentally drill a hole through my ceiling.

Most of my day was spent scribbling in a notebook.  I've been working out the plot for a new story, and it's actually been really exciting.  Perhaps that doesn't sound like a great day for anyone else, but I got to spend the afternoon in another world.  And there were about six cups of caramel tea involved.

However, European bacon has disappointed me yet again.  Nico made dinner tonight, which consisted of Croque Monsieurs.  He told me that they had a surprise for me in them.  I carved into it and saw a little sliver of yellow, and indeed I did squeal.  Cheddar cheese!!  How I have missed it!  But the cheese was not the surprise, he said.  So I dug around the sandwich a little more, yet failed to find whatever it was that was supposed to surprise me.  When I looked up quizzically, Nico said, "Bacon!"  After inspecting the contents of the sandwich again, I realized that yes indeed, it was bacon.  Nearly raw bacon.

I exclaimed, "Yay, bacon!" and then slowly cut a bite with my knife and fork.  They studied my face to see my reaction.  After chewing the piece of Croque Monsieur for a good thirty seconds, I fought my gag reflex, swallowed, and gave them the thumbs up.

"It is the same in America?" they asked.

I hesitatingly nodded before saying, "It's... similar.  In the states, we usually cook it for a longer time."  Edith and Nico shrugged and happily went back to eating their lukewarm raw bacon sandwiches, and I labored to eat the edge pieces of my own, because the bits nearest the crust were slightly more cooked than the middle.    After twenty minutes, I said I was so full I couldn't eat another bite and gratefully moved on to the tea and biscuits portion of the meal.

It was an experience, certainly, but European bacon has sadly disappointed me yet again.

How to Name Your French Pet

This evening during dinner, Edith and I were talking about typical pet names in France and the U.S.  They tend to name their pets after common nouns.  In case you don't know, in France, every object has a gender. Calculators are feminine, the world is masculine.  Every inanimate object is male or female, and no, I don't know how they decide which words get which gender, so memorizing it is a huge pain in the ass.  You flat out just have to remember whether every noun in the French language is arbitrarily male or female, or the French will laugh at your ineptitude.

But anyway, that detail is actually relevant.  I was asking if Edith's moody cat, Chocolate, was a boy or a girl, and she laughed as if it was a really silly question and said, "But Lindsey, it's a boy name!"  I shrugged like, "How the hell would I know that?"  It turns out that when it comes to naming your pets, words that are masculine are assigned to male pets, and words that are feminine are assigned to female pets.  It makes sense, but it was something that had never even crossed my mind, just because I'm not used to thinking about inanimate objects that way.

So basically, if you were hoping to name your new puppy "Tampon," it had better be a boy.  I wasn't messing around when I said noun gendering is arbitrary.

The Place I Always Return To: Le Moulin de Daudet

My imagination keeps drawing me back into the woods.  I've written two entries about going there, but I've actually been there about a dozen times.  Today I took my notebook in there and climbed up the crumbling stairs to find a spot to write.  There was a very nice circular view of the sky.

Couldn't get low enough to capture the whole circle in one frame-- sorry.  The clouds kind of looked like smoke swirling overhead.

I'm calling this "Rapunzel's Window."  It doesn't look very big from this vantage point, but I sat there to do my writing.  It's all the way at the top of the little tower.  After scribbling a bit, I took the time to really study the rest of the ruins.  There's lots of graffiti in there.

Cossettini, how long did you sit there carving that into the wall?  Did you come here to hang out in your free time, like me?  I guess in 1920 you didn't have video games or television to distract you.  I wonder if this was your haven.

I did not notice this curious graffito until today.  It appears to be a strange wicked thing with melting black eyes.  He stands on the seventh step, and next to his head is what appears to be a page of writing.  I sat there looking at him for a long time, wondering what his story was, and why someone would paint him there. He seems like a villain's assistant.  

This is the actual door of the windmill (you might remember that I enter through a narrow crack in the wall, because the door is walled shut).  It seems like the door was covered quite hastily and with whatever rocks happened to be lying around.  I love that one little gap in the masonry, though.  The perfect size for passing letters through, if one found himself imprisoned here, but too small to even hold a visitor's hand through.

But later, on my way home, I noticed that the door to the church was open, so I stopped in.  All the lights were off, and the only light was coming from these candles and a few very small windows.

I was also the only one in there, so it was a peaceful yet ominous scene to encounter.

Then I went home and chilled with Haribo.  Haribo keeps trying to eat his bandaids off, so he had to be given a sort of bandaid waistcoat.

He is not a fan and refuses to do anything but squirm on the floor while wearing it, but eventually he just decided to take a nap.  I was cool with that, because he's been really bitey lately. 

French Parties

This evening we went to a birthday party at Edith's friend's house, and I spent most of the time conversing with the children.  It's much easier for me to relate to children here, the vocabulary disparity is smaller than with an adult.  I decided that I like the late twenties and early thirties age group.  They know how to throw really fun parties.

We jumped on the trampoline, drank Coca Cola, threw glowsticks around, and ate lots of delicious strawberry cake from a fancy bakery.  The French listen to a lot of American music, even though they don't understand it, because they like the sound.  It's curious to me that this appreciation of other cultures' music is not something that we seem to cherish back home.  The French have some good stuff, as do other countries.

When the party was over, Edith had had too much to drink, so she gave me the keys and had me follow Nico home.  At first I was terrified, because driving in France seems too chaotic and the French play pretty fast and loose with the rules of the road, but it was just fine.  Good thing Nico has an automatic car, though; almost everyone here has manual, and I flat out don't know what to do with those.

Purple Potatoes

Today for dinner, Edith prepared two things I had never seen before.  The first was a round mold of purple mashed potatoes, and the second was a sausage.  This morning, she explained to me that the sausage was made of animal blood and onions, so I'll be honest-- I got a little liquored up before the meal.

It baffles me that there exists a food which can naturally be that shade of purple, but I saw the potatoes before they were cooked, and they were definitely purple.  All of it wound up tasting pretty good, but I had to try really hard not to think about what that sausage was made of while I was chewing it.

In other news, Haribo got some sort of infection, so Edith took him to the vet and brought him home with a bald spot shaved into his side.  It was funny to watch him stumble about the house while the anesthesia wore off.  In case you couldn't tell, it was a pretty normal day, but those are the interesting parts.

Being Ridiculous

I am a story glutton.  When I find a book series or television show that I like, I devour it in as little time as possible.  There is no self control, no rationing, and no care for adequate sleep involved.  In addition, all other goals go out the window until I know how the story ends.

Right now, there are two things, a book and a show, which have so captured my imagination that I think of little else but where the plots could be going.  But today, when I wasn't chasing the plots of these things, we drove through gorgeous mountains to get to a town that wasn't so great to meet on of Edith's friends at a cafe.  We ordered lavish desserts; I got three balls of Italian gelato.  The pistachio flavor in particular was glorious.  After that, we drove through the mountains again and checked out a studio that Edith is thinking of renting for her haircutting practice.

All in all, not a terribly interesting day in terms of entertainment for you, but I was quite entertained yelling at my kindle and computer screen as the plot twists went rushing by.

Best Destination in southern France: Les Baux-de-Provence

If any of you plan to visit southern France in the future, the town of Baux en Provence should be at the very top of your list of towns to see.  So far, it is the most beautiful and purely lovely town I've set foot in.

The adorable streets were lined with tiny shops and restaurants.  Here are a few pictures from around town:

There was a candy shop reminiscent of munchkinland:

That sign up there says that photographs are prohibited.  But come on.  You arrange hundreds of colorful lollipops to look like a sugar forest in the middle of a tourist town and expect that no photographs will be taken?  At any rate, you made the mistake of only posting the sign in French, so good luck with a majority of your customers.

And after that I ducked into a little chapel.  One thing I like about the town is that there were tons of open doors.  If the door is open, just walk in and see what you find.  A lot of them were unlabeled, so it was always a surprise.  This chapel didn't look like anything from the outside:

A little ways away, there was a beautiful church that had the statue of a saint resting over her tomb.  She looked so real that when I touched her hand, I expected her to wake up.

I spent some time sitting in this beautiful area devoted to Mary:

After that, I walked into a tiny museum with photos of an American actress who married a French Prince back in the 60's.  I should get a job editing English translations for all the monuments I've been to.

There was a cemetery just outside the Baux castle, which wasn't as pretty as others I've been in.  However, one of the crypts was open, so the morbid side of me had to take a picture.  You can see the body shelves!

And now to the castle!

It was so huge, and do you know what my favorite part about French castles is?  Nothing is off limits.  They don't rope anything off.  It feels like you get to discover the castle, instead of being herded through a carefully orchestrated path which prevents you from breaking/touching/licking anything.  

Here's something which would, without a doubt, be roped off in America:

In our sue-happy culture, there is not a museum under the sun that would trust us to walk up these stairs.  But in France, they just post signs that basically say, "This is dangerous, idiot.  But if you want to go up, no one's stopping you."  So most people climb on up.

I got halfway and realized I'd probably made a mistake, because I was gripping that gate for dear life, but once you're halfway, going up or down is equally dangerous.  So I just climbed to the top.  It will entertain you to know that I was foolish enough to wear a dress on this excursion, and during a few difficult steps on this staircase, I had to decide between using both hands to avoid falling and leaving my skirt to fly in the strong wind, thereby flashing everyone who happened to be in the vicinity.  It wasn't that many people, so whatever.  The climb was worth it, because it made these spectacular views possible:

Breathtaking, non?  

After the adventure in Baux en Provence, Nico brought me back to the house, and I made juicy cheeseburgers and potato wedge fries from scratch.  This is a funny little thing:  you can usually tell when the French like what they're eating, because they will kiss the residue of it off their fingers every now and then. It's really subtle, but something they all seem to do subconsciously.

Nico told me I season meat like his grandmother used to, which I'm going to assume is a compliment.