Market at L'Isle-sur-la Sorgue

We woke to the alarm at 7:45 and opened the bedroom curtains to a blue sky and could clearly see the white tower at the top of Mont Ventoux, something I last saw in July on my favourite TV programme - Le Tour de France - finish line of stage 15!

We took off in the car early, as advised by our landlady, to find a parking spot for the huge Sunday market which commences at 8:30 at L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue .  The small town is built on an island in the middle of the river Sorgue and is absolutely beautiful - surrounded by water and has little canals everywhere - and on Sunday mornings, the whole town becomes a market.  Our plan was to do a bit of shopping and to have breakfast at a cafe in town.

The market was fabulous!  Grapes, melons, figs, strawberries, tomatoes, capsicums, olives, cheese, cold meats etc etc, lots of clothes, French linen, knives, soap, antiques, and fortunately straw hats because the sun was quite strong (I gave the one I bought in Burgundy to Brian).

There are dozens of bars and restaurants in the town but they all seemed to be selling only coffee and wine this morning, and were busy gearing up for big lunch crowds.  We finally settled for a cafe that had little tables and chairs set up under a canopy by the river and I went into the bar and ordered, in what I thought was excellent French, "un cafe au lait et un double espresso".  The charming French lady obviously didn't understand my Perth accent and brought us 1 white coffee and 2 short-blacks!  

So we decided to buy, for what was now becoming brunch, a cooked chicken and roasted potatoes.  Rotisserie chickens cooking and dripping hot fat over chopped potatoes are quite a common site in France.  they sound dreadful but they smell and look fabulous.

Then a drive back home, unpacked all of our fabulous goodies and sat down for brunch.  The olives, tomatoes, strawberries, grapes and bread were spectacular (best bread we've had so far) and the chicken and potatoes were ordinary to say the least!  That's the problem with buying food when you're hungry - things look better than they really are.

And this afternoon, I did some washing and hung it on the clothesline in the sun and had a little game with the beautiful black and white cat who was hiding behind one of the olive trees in the garden.  We did some planning for the remainder of our stay here and had a leisurely walk around this little village.  Simple dinner tonight, another backgammon tournament and now it's bedtime again.

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