Kiwi Roaming

Our wee village is very cute, it sits alongside the Carpentras Canal and a series of canalside walkways. As mentioned before it contains 40+ fountains, a number of small squares, restaurants, bars and churches. The buildings are in various states of repair with some renovated into apartments and others falling down or braced to stay erect. Paul has been able to run on a variety of paths in different directions and seen some fab other sites.

The village has one souvenir shop, probably 8 bakeries, about the same number of restaurants and a couple of bike shops – people seem to cycle everywhere here. The roading system in the walled city is crazy but seems to work with very few cars, outside the wall it’s also crazy and very busy with traffic. We take our empty bottles down to a recycling station next to the massive cemetery (reminding us of our villa in Tuscany 10 years ago when we had to do the same) and have enjoyed the twice a week rubbish and other recycling at the gate.

Steve describes our wee town as the Waikanae of the area, Carpentras as the Paraparaumu and Avignon as the Wellington (although has a population of 400,000 people there alone). There are supermarkets everywhere so we have been to loads of different brands. InterMarche is probably my favourite but Lidl certainly has the cheapest Vin (wine).

Our villa is a lovely place to chill out. Karen and Paul brought games, puzzles and pool toys which was an inspired move. There is also a villa cat which lives next door. We had strict instructions not to shut it in accidentally. I have tried to capture a montage of it sitting on people! The pool has a wee pool house with kitchen, toilet and shower. We have grapes – which are ripe right now and yum! Figs nearby and otherwise the dominant tree of the area is Olives.

The temperatures have stayed high 20’s for us and the pool steady at 26.5C. Steve and I have been bugged by mosquito’s in our room – just one each night really but they do their damage and prevent us sleeping at various times while we hunt them down.

On France generally, we’ve found eating out expensive, booze extremely cheap, lunch things about the same as at home, supermarket prices on a par except the range is very different and dairy products – especially cheese – very cheap. If you are polite in French, ask “parlez vous anglais” then the response is warm and helpful, I’ve observed some of the others just speaking English and getting French back. So far we haven’t had any negative experiences other than the usual attempts to scam us either.

And it’s just so beautiful here.