Another Market, Bories, Senanque, Venasque

Tuesday is market day in St. Saturnin, so on July 28th, after another very good breakfast, served along with pleasant conversation by Jean-Claude and Annie, we drove into town and parked in front of the Post Office, which is on the highway, across from its intersection with the main street up the hill. Mary Joy needed some stamps and I needed to mail a key to Switzerland. With the enthusiastic help of a woman in line and the postal clerk, the key was soon in a padded envelope and on its way to Gimmelwald.

We then parked in our usual place, in the lot up by the Salle des Fetes. On that or the previous day Mary Joy spoke with a German who had parked his BMW in town overnight, only to find it the next morning crowbarred open. Nothing had been taken, but the car suffered serious damage. Every parking lot we went to in Provence had signs warning you to leave absolutely nothing in your car. Provence is, as you might guess from that, famous for car break-ins.

The market was nice.

We bought a bottle of wine, some napkins and a table runner. We went back to our room to drop off our acquisitions and to make a reservation for dinner at Le Table de Pablo, a highly recommended restaurant in nearby Villars. We used Skype, and the call went through, but there was apparently something odd about it, because the man at the other end sounded confused, asked where we were staying, and immediately called Au Point de Lumiere, so Annie was kind enough to make our reservation again.

That business done, we went to the Village of the Bories, near Gordes. Bories are odd huts made of thin stone slabs, piled up in layers, meeting at the top.

There are about 3,000 of them in the area, but the Village des Bories is a group of about 20 of them, hundreds of years old, occupied until the 19th century.

Then we headed north on the D177 to the Abbey of Senanque. Just before the road goes down into the valley where the abbey is located, there is a turnout overlook that provides the best-known view of Senanque: the abbey below, surrounded by fields of lavender

. When the plants are in full bloom, it is a spectacular picture. Unfortunately, this day the lavender was a little past its prime, so the color was comparatively muted.

Coming down into the valley, we were disheartened to see cars lined up at the abbey gates and parked and parking along the road is it continued up the other side of the valley. We considered parking out there, but later were glad that we didn’t. Once you got into the gate, there was plenty of parking in the lots near the buildings.

Other than the church, the abbey is open to the public only with a guided tour, in French, though brochures in other languages would be provided and, with a limit of 50 people, it might be hard to hear anything anyway. In any case, Rick Steves says that it isn’t worthwhile, so, after some time in the shop, where we picked up some more lavender products, we went into the church, very plain and spare, like all Cistercian monastery churches—very quiet and prayerful.

We continued north, driving through some impressive gorges, coming out at the D4, which we took west, to Venasque. There we had lunch on the pleasant terrace at the Restaurant Les Remparts. We both had a tomato tarte tatin, with a salad of greens that had bits of tomato and zucchini. I had a Kronenbourg 1664 Blonde beer, while Mary Joy had a nice glass of fresh cherry juice. That tomato tart was very, very good.

The 6th-century baptistry of Venasque is, according to Michelin, one of the oldest religious buildings in France. We visited it. We also looked out from the city toward Mont Ventoux, to the north. Ventoux is famous as one of the most grueling climbs in the Tour de France.

We went on to St.-Didier, where we parked and walked around a little. We couldn’t figure how to get into the church, and the town didn’t seem to be of much interest, otherwise. From there we went to Pernes-les-Fontaines, stopping in the tourist information office, but we decided that we didn’t have time to wander around there, so we drove back southeast on D4. Instead of turning onto D15, however, we decided to go to Rousillon, a mistake. The town was crowded to the gills with tourists, and, rather than trying to hunt out a parking spot, we went back to Au Point de Lumiere.

I had very explicit directions from Google Maps as to how to get to Le Table de Pablo, which was out in the country south of St.-Saturnin, but we nevertheless missed some turn along the way and ended up getting there by a more roundabout route, following signs for the place. This should have soured us once and for all on using Google Maps directions in France. I should have ditched the directions I had printed out at home and relied instead on getting detailed maps of where we were going. But at this point we couldn’t have printed them out, and I had other things to think about than getting directions for places that I thought were no problem to get to.

We were the second group to arrive at the restaurant, right at 7:30, and throughout the evening we were served by the restaurant's tag team of two waitresses--an older woman who explained every dish in exuberant French, and a younger woman with very good English, who explained that by saying she must have been English in a former life, since she had never been to an English-speaking country..

First, we were offered an aperitif of perry (pear hard cider), followed by an amuse-bouche of a little salmon mousse and a little tomato stuffed with a tuna paste. We ordered a liter bottle of sparkling mineral water and a 50-centiliter bottle (I.e., 2/3 normal size) of local Ventoux rose wine. We decided to take the three-course menu, but first we each received a tall, thin glass of gazpacho--Mary Joy chose the green one (we didn't hear what made it green--she thought it was avocado), while I chose the orange (a hint of pineapple). For the first course, I had a pistou, a thick, tasty Provençal vegetable soup. Mary Joy had the chef's "trilogy": a zucchini mousse in a drinking glass, a poultry pate and a small block of goat cheese that was designed to look exactly like a piece of white nougat candy, with pieces of hazelnut and pistachio visible in it!

My main course was a cod mousse--pale-yellow, creamy and light--with a number of small grilled vegetables. Mary Joy had roast pigeon. The thigh of the bird was stuffed with foie gras. Unfortunately, never having had pigeon before, she now learned that it was a little too gamy for her taste.

The older waitress now suggested that we have some chèvre cheese from Banon (which we had passed through the day before, on the way from Forcalquier to Sault), toasted a little in marc (brandy distilled, like grappa, from grape stalks, skins and seeds, byproducts of the winemaking process). I don’t remember what we had for dessert, but I do remember that is was very good.

These two waitresses and one busboy covered the whole, packed restaurant. Mary Joy had a good view of the station where they staged what they were about to serve, and she says that the precision, speed and efficiency of the process was very, very impressive.

What they had to serve was wonderful, except for the fact that Mary Joy discovered that she doesn’t like pigeon.