Wednesday in Provence

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 Senanque Abbey & Le Village des Bories
Our first stop of the day was in Venasque, which is a hillside town that Martha and Jim had stayed in during one of their trips to Provence. We also stopped in Pernes to see an old cemetery. We then drove up a very steep hairpin curves road to the Abbey de Senenque. When Martha was last here the fields of the Abbey were full of Lavender, which they were just getting ready to harvest…. But today, alas no lavender in sight…. Not a flower to be found at this time of the year, except in the gift shop. We did the tour of the Abbey. It was all in French but we had an English brochure to help us along.
It was so cold in there (I only had my wind breaker coat and not the warm sweatshirt that I Normally have on under the wind breaker… but thank heavens I did have my gloves in my pocket…. Man it was cold and that French Guide talked and talked.and talked…………..but it was very interesting. They had a fireplace (the only fireplace in the Abbey) in the warming room (no fire today) but it was built so they could burn a whole tree trunk at once without cutting it up. Also another room was the only room that anyone could talk in and the ceiling was made so the acoustic were so good that they did not have to talk loud to be heard. Enjoyed seeing the Abbey and we found really nice bookmarks for our reading books as a souvenir (we do not buy many but once in a while we find something small that we want) Hope this is all typed good… we are drinking wine while working on our journals and I am beginning to feel pretty good after a glass of white wine.
Then we stopped in the town of Gordes and found some great large postcards that I could take pictures of before the shop owner walked out to see what we were doing….needless to say we left quite quickly. We then drove on to Le Village des Bories, which is a group of homes made out of layered stone (without any mortar) done during the Gallic times in the 17th century Very interesting to see these round stone huts. Back to our Hotel
In L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue…. With a quick stop at the local Imtermarche grocery store to buy foods.. this is where we got that great wine… we were soon back in our rooms typing these blogs. Hope this fines you all well and happy…..know that we should sleep good tonight. We still plan to later take our last bottle (they are small bottles) of wine, our strawberries and a baguette (a long stick of bread) out to the park to enjoy before calling it a night.
Av revoir for now…………….