[Itinerary Page]The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
May 8 - Around the Luberon
The saying goes that to find a prince you have to kiss a lot of frogs. This whole house-hunting thing took a frog-like turn this morning when we looked at a place in the neighboring town of La Thor. All the specs were there on paper -- walking distance to the main part of town, on the river, newly renovated. And the house, in fact, was not bad.
It was just that La Thor itself was so shopworn and shabby that we couldn't imagine that anyone -- including ourselves -- would feel terrific to have landed there. So we made nice with the owner, took some pictures, hit the boulangerie for some pastry and high-tailed it out of town!
The weather today was threatening. Most of the time it was threatening rain. Occasionally it threatened to clear up. With that uncertainty literally hanging over us, we didn't want to go too far afield so we extended our exploration of the Luberon valley. The first stop was Menerbes, where Peter Mayle wrote his famous novel, A Year in Provence.
We had tried to rent a house here but the places were booked up a year in advance. We did find the houses we had inquired about and they would be a terrific place to spend a week. Menerbes is a pocket-sized hill town built of rough stone, perched on a rock outcropping. It had all the narrow lanes and classic charm that we have come to love in places like this ... even if they do all start to run together in our minds after awhile.
We didn't find anyplace that struck us as a casual lunch stop, so moved on past the hill town of Lacoste, (home to an extension of an art school in Savannah, Georgia!) and on to Bonnieux, another perched village, where we finally found the pizza we were after.
The skies were still threatening so we headed for home. I purposely did not challenge the rain gods by getting the car washed ... although it needs a scrubbing desperately. But even that was not enough to hold off the inevitable and the heavens finally opened with a vengeance pummeling our little stone cottage with torrential rain for several hours.
Fortunately we had enough food in the house that we didn't have to go out, so we turned on the heat and cooked up dinner while the rain beat on the roof. When it cleared up, the world was washed off. The sun made a final brief appearance, the ducks and horses returned ... and we even saw an otter swimming past the house. All is well and life is good on the River Sorgue.
© 2006 Restaurant Doctor