(Vacation Vacation Part one Avignon)
Daniel and I went on a vacation from vacation. There was no way I was going to spend the summer in Paris and not go wine tasting and see the French Riviera.
AVIGNON!
We spent the last two nights in Avignon which is part of Provence. Aside from the vineyards Avignon is
known for being the Pope’s short time home sometime during the 1300’s. Apparently another thing Avignon is
known for that we were not aware of was hosting a huge Theatre festival during
July.
We got off of an 8 hour train ride that involved getting
up at 5:30 a.m. and landing in the
middle of a street clogged with actors hulking show flyers, performances in the
street and every inch of every walk, fence sting hanging between wall and fence
covered and recovered in play bills.
This picture doesn't really capture the unendingness that was the posters.
Lavender Ice cream! And it matches my shirt!
We took and easy afternoon and laid in the park on the island across from the city.
After a dinner we took a ride of the ferris wheel and
enjoyed the street performers. The
novelty of street performers has long worn off for me but street performers
during a theatre festival are really stepping up their game, there were break
dancers, Asian silent magicians, native American chanters in full gear, belly
dancers... not to mention all the weird get ups the actors were doing in hopes
of luring you to their show.
You were just tripping over actors.
WINE TASTING!
This is what we came for... wine. Sans our own car and having no
idea how you go about wine tasting we hired a guide Mike who runs a business
called Wine Safaris.
Mike is awesome.
Mike is Dutch so he
spoke excellent English and taught us way more about wine than I ever thought
there was to know. He took us to
vineyards and talked to us about the plants and how they grew, the south of France
grows hardly any grapes I have ever heard of. I also learned there are 7,000 kinds of grapes, we way under
guessed. Aside from being super
informative, I did not realized we had signed up for an educational trip, he was very relaxed and a bit goofy so none of that wine pretentious feeling. By the way there is a whole decoder
ring affect looking at the label on the bottle of wine I learned enough to know
thing and know there is no way I will be able to translate it later on.
They first winery we went to was super mom and pops, we meet
the owner in a t-shirt and camo pants, made me laugh to realized vineyard
owners are just farmers when you get down to it. After a tour through the wine making room and a lesson in how
you make wine, I now know how to
make white wine from red grapes, and by "know" I think I know how other people
make it but am probably wrong. We
sat down to a wine tasting in their dinning room while grandma was cooking
lunch in the next room, sadly we were not invited to lunch, though she did come out for a quick chat with Daniel in french..
We showed a lot of self restraint and after trying 9
wines were not wasted. There was a
lot of spitting, don’t worry it is classy spitting. Sadly this vineyard does
not distribute to the US so we bought a bottle of the good stuff and headed
down the road.
Mike dropped us off at a lunch spot with amazing food and
little English.
I asked what the
lunch of the day was and despite not understanding the response at all said
sure. It was a wonderful meat kebab
with veggies and some odd but good melon and flavored ice thing. Medium rare does not seem to be an
option in French restaurant and when you say rare they mean it, but what can
you expect from the home of the tartar.
Daniel ordered this amazing dessert again having no idea what it was until it showed up. We liked it so much we asked the waitress to write down the
name of it and I am going to figure how to make it once I figure out what it
is. I also believe I will be
designing my back yard to look like this restaurant once I have a back yard
again.
Our second winery was a bit more what I imagine with
grapevine covered wall and lavender shutters. We took a stroll through the wine cellar with all of its
classic wooden barrels and fifth generation of wine making heritage.
We were slightly less restrained in our
tasting of 7 more wines in the afternoon...
And ended up buying 4 bottles of wine. Again not really set up to ship
cases home, too bad we would have.
We had a little extra time so Mike took us up to adorable
medieval town on the mountainside.
I swear Daniel came with me despite having photo proof.
Useful things I learned about wine:
All wine is improved from being decanted for a couple hours.
Wine does improve with aging in the bottle so long as they
use an actual cork.
Slurping air when you drink it does make the taste more
powerful
White wine is good to clean the pallet after red wine.
Wine will turn to vinegar within two weeks of opening it
Blended wines are absolutely as good as single grapes.
We saw a French show!
Daniel and I decided it would just be too much of a shame to
miss out on seeing theatre when we had stumbled on a theatre festival in France. After the wine tour we sat down with
the monster show guide and shifted through the 107 theatres each with their
half dozen to two dozen different performances for something that night that we
stood half a shot at understanding.
Luckily there was a key for shows not French speakers could follow. Editing out the concerts and dance pieces
we were left with about half a dozen “theatre” performances. We debated a while between the
performance piece and a play we figured out would be in French and finally
decided to man up and watch the French show. The show “Rêveries d'une Jeune Fille Amoureuse” "Musing of a Young Girl in Love" claimed to be a
visceral enough show to follow but had the midnight slot as it was for mature audiences.
The theatre, not as stabby as looks.
We had a quick conversation with the girl we bought our
tickets form who asked us if we thought we would be able to understand the show
since it was in French , our response “We are going to find out.”
Very nude, sexually intese, very cool, artsy show in french.
The show was an incredible experience. Reading the synopsis before hand, super
helpful, we understood the story revolved around a young girl discovering her
sexuality and a commentary about how society views sexuality. We had figured there would be nudity
given the time and subject matter ... and by the end of the show I had seen all half dozen of the female actress nude, so yes definitely nudity.
The show was very intese sexuality charged piece that was as much performance artie as theatre. Though I missed the dialogue about half
the scenes were presented without dialogue, with heavy reliance on music, so it
wasn’t that hard to follow the major themes and action of the story. At times it was very raw and violent
and other times were beautiful visual moments of love. Despite some shaky tech elements, a performance art piece
like that needs really sharp lighting and sound which is just hard in a space
you are sharing with six other shows, it was a really moving piece of work.
We did catch up with the girl for a few minutes after the show and even spoke a few of the cast members. Everyone was interested to know if we understood the show. Which
was hard to get a cross that we didn’t get the words but we got the show,
missed the finer details but got the concept. We didn’t hang out for very long, you hate to hold someone
up after a show. We exchanged emails with the ticket girl, but forgot names, she is coming to NYC in August so who knows.
Figures we finally have a chat with a Parisian and forget to
exchange names.
It was a great experience and I am really glad we didn’t
chicken out in going, I am very interested to read the script and figure out
everything I didn’t get.
And that was Wine Country next ... the beach.
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