Sudden-ers

I got to visit my friends (aka my people=aka my French family) in Avignon!  🎶Reunited and it feels so good🎶.  The word relief comes from the old French word to raise up or alleviate and that's exactly how I feel when I'm with them.  It's great with these people, even with a 1½ year break we just picked right back up where we had left off.  I spent just about a week with them down in the south.  I got to take off a layer or two and enjoy some of the nice weather; made it for both of the meetings, went out in service a few days (which in this beautiful corner of the earth is basically preaching/sight seeing) but mostly we ate together, my favorite type of vacation 👌🏼😉.  There is no such thing as too many cloves of roasted garlic.  With this lot lunch will always end at 6:00pm and include conversations of architecture in paradise.  I managed to bring down some 'maroille' cheese and beer from the north with out any accidents or stinky cheese clothes and my American presents were well received (think root beer scented soap and books about hamburgers...).  We have come to the conclusion that l'Abbatiale is 👌🏼 and I only just know figured out that most of these beers are brewed in Saint Amand.  We were almost bipolar with our drink of choice having the best beer of the north and the best wine of the south: beer or wine beer or wine?🙇🏼  Im happy that got to spend a little bit of time with most everyone in this lively little group but very happy I got to spend a bunch of it with my peeps the Moutons.  

After spending a night with the Graziani's in their charming house in a town that is surrounded by smoky valleys, cypress trees and vineyards, complete with a warm fireplace at my feet (labeled by jasmine as a comfort sandwich), Jackie and I took our belated Camargue trip.  It was nearly fantastic; first stop was Arles the gateway to la Camargue which I had never seen, we went to the market and walked around the famous coliseum-esque arena.  Like always we ran into some witnesses, some from the English group nearby, at the market and snagged an English tract from them hoping that we could make an opportunity to witness, didn't happen but we were ready if it would have!  Next we zoomed off to Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer the REAL capital of the Camargue.  If you've never heard of the Camargue it is basically a large Everglades nature preserve on the southern coast of France; they are famous not only for things like salt (fleur de sel) and rice and even rosé but also for being French Cowboys.  They have famous white horses, black bulls, and flamingos.  It's a wild and crazy (not, its really laid back) place.  Turns out we came to town on the last day of the run of the bulls in the arena so we saw the camargue cowboys on their horses and ladies in traditional provinçale dress.  We had an excellent lunch at La Casita, which I highly reccomend, and moved out to go to our tour on horseback.  I had a crazy horse but Jackie's was great, we rode in the wetlands and on the beach admiring the landscape, flamingos and how wild it all was in the ever regulated French landscape.  After our afternoon ride with wet muddy legs and sore butts we headed off to see Aigues-mortes (the dead waters) a fortified town nearby.  We were too late to walk the ramparts and we left rather unimpressed with this cold stone city, but we were glad to make its acquaintance.  Overall a well spent day in the windy sunny salty Camargue.  We finished off the night back with the Moutons for hamburger night and maybe a very special 2010 Bordeaux...and many embarrassing French mistakes.  Good times good times.

So I got to visit Avignon again, walk the cobblestones and make sure the Utopia was alive and well.  Maybe this is me being greedy but I'm hoping to visit them once more before the end of my stay.  This trip is the first time I've used ouigo, a cheap but restrictive high speed train from Avignon to Paris, I hope I can find good tickets again for another visit.  I'm hoping to lure the southerners up to visit me in my beautiful little corner of France but I think my talk of northern weather has frightened them.