Monday was an "offal" day, both dining and weather. Rain once again but we decided to drive to Lourmarin for lunch, wander and explore. We went back to the little brasserie where we had lunched on Friday and since we were returning to La Cloiserie in Ansouis for dinner we did not want a three course set menu for lunch but simply one dish from the carte. I ordered an anduilette and a beer, still more food than was necessary, but....

Saturday morning dawned grey, fog-shrouded and cold, continuous, unremitting and relentless rain.

A slight digression here; in the last couple of months we have become great fans of the Nespresso coffee system. Small counter-top footprint, very easy to use and really good coffee. Our little house here has a machine and our hosts had generously left us a couple of sleeves of coffee with 10 Nespresso capsules in each....

Beginning a new format for the blog today. Virginia has not had an opportunity to add her share of insights and observations to my jottings so, from today we will be adding some "She said" sections so that all points of view can be represented....

Yesterday was, for the most part, cloudy, overcast and periodically threatening but today dawned hot, bright and sunny.

We had originally planned to spend the day in Aix but the weather was so charming that we decided on a drive to Cassis for lunch. My only previous knowledge of Cassis was as the critical ingredient in a Kir Royale but the town, as we discovered, is an extremely pleasant place to spend a sunny afternoon, on the water with massive headlands and cliffs directly behind the town....

Today is our first full day in Les Roux, a very small hamlet of 59 inhabitants located between Peypin-d'Aigues and La Motte-d'Aigues two slightly larger villages about 30k from Aix-en-Provence.

Red-eye flight from Toronto to Paris, a 2 hour wait at the CDG TGV station at the airport, a 3.5 hour train ride and, after picking up our car, a very kicky little Peugeot, an hours drive through the countryside being misled by the GPS which didn't know the location of our village any more than we did. Fortunately we had arranged with the caretaker of the property to meet us at a little village that the GPS could find who led us to our home for the next 10 days...