Pope feasts and warm milk

Palais des Papes

Dining Hall- the 95k loaves were served outside :)

Un peu de modern art

On Sunday, I ate a sugared Belgian bread with butter for breakfast.  Joëlle is Belgian and the family used to live in Brussels before moving to Carpentras five years ago, so they like to eat a lot of Belgian things!  For her birthday, Steve gave Joelle cooking lessons in Avignon, and she was scheduled to go on Sunday.  Steve and I dropped her off at her class and then he showed me around Avignon.  In addition to Paris, this is another French city that I recognize somewhat because we spent a couple of days in Avignon when I came to France with the high school trip five years ago.  (For anyone who's reading/interested- this is the city that had the bridges and it's where Renee and I accidentally got lost on a run!)  It's the site of Palais des Papes, which was home to the popes between 1309 and 1377.  From the sounds of things, it was the site of some ridiculously large and important gatherings.  I listened to an audioguide that told of a feast that required 95,000 loaves of bread in addition to hundreds of cows and thousands of fowl.  Interestingly enough, the Palais des Papes was also playing host to a modern art exhibit.  This one was made up of more muted colors, so it didn't stick out like a sore thumb like the one at Versailles, but it did make for some interesting sights nonetheless...  Who knows, maybe they had upside-down elephants at these crazy feasts?

Me and the Pont d'Avignon

The other famous part of Avignon is the pont d'Avignon, which is just that- a bridge in Avignon.  The bridge, which was originally built around 1180, crossed the Rhône river, but floods damaged it multiple times and after a huge flood in 1668 swept away a large section, they decided not to repair it any further.  So now it's still a bridge... but it only works for half of the river :)

Steve and I visited Joelle during the end of her class, when the students were eating the "fruits of their labor" ;) and I bought several French books for 3 euro at a nearby market: Sherlock Holmes, Roald Dahl, and one called Les Médecins which was written by a French doctor about the problems facing the medical community and healthcare in general.  It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think it'll be very interesting!

One stand at the market

Monday brought Bryce's 19th birthday!  I can't believe my favorite little brother is so old already... time really flies.  I wish I could have been there with him, but celebrated for him from abroad.  Monday is also the day of a weekly marché in Bedoin, a small town just down the road from Carpentras.  Joelle and I went together to check out this week's options.  There were all sorts of stands- including but not at all limited to fruit and veggies, bread, ham, shoes, purses, spices, and children's toys.  We heard people speaking all sorts of different languages- Joelle made me laugh when she told me that she thinks Irish sounds like a maladie de la gorge which means a problem/illness of the throat!  I did a lot of looking, but only bought un rustique, which is a type of French bread.

In the afternoon, Joelle and I went to the supermarché pour faire des courses, which basically means that I went grocery shopping!  While the basic layout is very similar to any grocery store you might find in the US, it was interesting for me to see how many differences there were.  For example, I'd like to think that as a Wisconsin girl, I'd really know my cheese.  However, in the aisle that was full of cheese on both sides, the closest I came to recognizing something was Camembert, which I wouldn't say is common in the states.  Likewise, the aisle with milk was... not refrigerated.  I know- what... what?!  Yup, you read that correctly.  The French milk comes in three options:  Entier, Demi-écrémé, et Écrémé.  Joelle recommended that I get the second option, which I think would fall somewhere between 2% and whole in the US.  She said the ecreme doesn't have much taste, but I think that it might work just fine for on my cereal.  It doesn't have to be refrigerated until after it's open (so they tell me...) which is interesting.  I was happy to see that they did have peanut butter!  There were two choices: store-brand or Skippy, with only one size of each available.  I picked the store-brand since it was the larger size, but will definitely bring peanut butter back with me from the states, since the (small) container cost something like 6 euros!

I'm getting closer to being entirely caught up, but will leave you at this for the moment.  More nouvelles to come soon!