An American in Provence

As this week is a big vacation week (due to August 15th being the national holiday of Ascension) we were warned that Saturday would be a red day for traveling- ie tons of traffic on the autoroutes. We decided to brave it, leaving a little after 10. Yep, it was a heavy traffic day. Mostly due to the tollbooths, huge bottlenecks. France has great autoroutes, but a lot of them you have to pay to travel on- and it is isn't cheap. Traveling for about an hour on one cost us 7.50€. So the trip took us about an extra hour and a half than planned. We arrived around 2:30, and had a barbeque of sausages. We managed to put away two bottles of wine between the four of us, then went to visit a nearby port for the Canal du midi. You can rent boats and travel up and down the canal.

We walked up and down for a while, then stopped and had a drink. Got back, ate dinner, went to bed. The next morning Alain and I went for croissants, and were disappointed when the local boulangerie was sold out at 10 am. We consoled ourselves with pain au chocolat. Next, Nicolas, Alain, and I went to visit the windmills. The entire valley is ringed with windmills. After a late lunch (and one more bottle) we hit the road back, this time it took 3 hours as planned. A great weekend.