As there’s nothing more annoying than someone prattling on about their trip to [insert exotic place here] for months after the fact, I will limit myself to some brief comments here, and then the blog will settle back in its normal routine of comments about the Formosa Tea House, technology, Island Life, and how horrible the Festival of the Lights is.

Our trip came at the confluence of three events: Oliver starts Kindergarten in the fall, so this was a last patch of school-free life for our family; having Johnny here at Reinvented meant I could be comfortable leaving the day-to-day firefighting of the business for a while; and Catherine and I wanted to experiment with a long-form vacation (after many trips of what my friend Oliver calls “monument-hopping between hotels”).

I also wanted to put the whole “I’m a digital worker and can work anywhere” idea to test and see whether a “working vacation” would work.

As I’ve detailed in this space over our time away, we were largely successful at the “vacation” part of this. We saw a lot of the area around Aniane, from Nîmes to the east down to Perpignan in the southwest, as well as some interesting parts of the country’s spine on our way to and from Paris. We tended to alternate our days: one day I would work and Catherine and Oliver would spend time in the village, the next we would set our sights on adventure. While we did visit many of the “monuments” of the area on these adventures, because we weren’t on a whirlwind tour, we also got to see a lot of the “everyday life” of the area: playgrounds, public libraries, shopping malls, car washes, and the like.

Indeed there’s a long list of things we didn’t see in the “monument” category, things like the Pont du Gard near Nîmes, the entire city of Toulouse, and the area right along the Mediterranean, which we only caught a short glimpse of. So we’ll have to go back.

Catherine and I agree that we liked the “staying in one place” part of the trip: we didn’t have to pack up shop every night, we could cook most of our meals ourselves, and we got to know the village of Aniane in a way we never could have with only a short 2 or 3 day visit. I’m pretty sure we’ll try to do this again, perhaps even back in Aniane.

Oliver seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the trip. He didn’t seem to find it odd at all that we left home and pre-school and family for a month to uproot to a different place with bunk beds, chocolate croissants, ice cream and merry go rounds. Nor did it appear to stike him as odd that everyone spoke a different language (perhaps because he’s new to language period even back here). He made friends quickly on the playgrounds where language wasn’t required (his favourite technique: find a cute little girl, go up and hold her hand), and became immediately curious about what the French word for everything we encountered was (and therein stretched my vocabularly recall to its limits). Yesterday on the flight from Montreal to Charlottetown he said “Merci” to the flight attendant when she handed him his orange juice.

For me one of the best parts of the change in venue was getting to spend more time with Oliver. Every morning Oliver and I would get up and walk to the boulangerie to buy bread; I came to value that 15 minute morning walk, and I realized that, with my crazy sometimes all-consuming approach to work back here at home, sometimes several days will go by without a similar time together. I’ll have to work on that.

And of course Catherine and Oliver and I spent a lot more time together as a little family “doing stuff together” too, which was nice. I think we managed, by the end of the trip, to find a good balance of time together and time in various sub-groups (i.e. Catherine and Oliver go to the park while I work or Oliver and I take a walk while Catherine goes to art gallery).

That all said, sometime Catherine and I are going to have to go to France alone to allow us to explore the kinds of things — long dinners out, copious wine drinking, visits to the opera, jumping off cliffs, etc. — that don’t work well in a family situation.

Language-wise, Aniane is no Montreal, where most everyone you encounter, especially in the service industry, speaks some English. That said, language never really proved to be a real stumbling block to anything. There were a couple of times when, in the late afternoon low blood-sugar period, I failed to adequately find sustenance because I couldn’t muster the energy needed to translate my needs into French. And we did struggle to communicate our desire for “just the handle parts of the shutters, without the rods” at various hardware stores when we decided we needed to procure parts for installing wooden shutters on 100 Prince St. But, whether through my recalled French, Catherine’s pure moxie, sign language, roping in helpful English speakers we encountered by chance as translators, or a combination of each of these, we survived.

We found the house we rented in Aniane through a listing in the Vacation Rentals section on Craigslist. Owned by a professor in New York, the house was a well-outfitted four-storey townhouse on a narrow alley right in the heart of the village. On the first floor (which was more like a basement) there was a washing machine, bicycle storage, and a bath and shower; up a steep flight of stairs was the main floor with kitchen at the front and living room at the back opening onto a small walled garden in the back yard. Up another flight of stairs there was a small bedroom with bunk beds (leading Oliver to develop his first rhyme about “bumping my head on the bunk bed”) at the front, a bath with tub and shower in the middle, and master bed room at the back with double bed. On the top floor, more of an attic, there was another double bed, a television, and doors leading to a roof terrace. I turned this attic space into an impromptu office space, thus allowing me to work while gazing out over the village.

The house had almost everything we needed: sheets, towels, pots, pans, wine glasses, corkscrew, and so on. The only thing missing was tea towels. We used the washing machine in the basement to do our laundry, and dried the clothes outside (Catherine will attest that this was the least vacation-like activity of the trip).

We made all of the rental arrangements by email, and I sent off a $350 US deposit by courier a few weeks before we left. There was a “woman on the ground” — the back yard neighbour — there to meet us when we arrived, and she took the full payment for the 21 day stay, and showed us how to use the stove, the (weird and complex) heater and told us which cafes were good and where to buy groceries. Although we didn’t need to call on her again, she made herself available to us if we ever ran into problems, which was a nice comfort to have.

The 21 day rental cost us $750US, plus an extra $30 for the electricity we used, for a total of about $960 CDN, or $45 CDN a night. We would return without hesitation.

The village of Aniane was a good home-base: it had all of the things we needed for everyday life, from bakeries to grocery stores to a hardware store, a health food cooperative and several restaurants and cafes. Everything was within walking distance, which let us try out the “shopping for food everyday” lifestyle (result: it’s way, way better than a weekly trip to the Superstore). The village had a playground, and lots of alleys and passageways, and an excellent glacier for ice cream, so Oliver was well catered to.

We were about 35 minutes drive from the city of Montpellier, which seemed about the same size as Halifax. We enjoyed the several trips we took into the city, and came nowhere near exploring it to the extent possible.

While we’d originally thought of going vehicle-free for the trip, using public transit to get around, we ended up leasing a Peugeot Partner for 29 days through Peugeot’s “Open Europe” program. We made the arrangements through the Quebec-based Europ Auto Vacances and the process could not have been easier: after filling out various forms here in Canada and couriering them up to Montreal, we received a package back from them with details about what to do when we arrived in Paris. At Charles de Gaulle airport we simply picked up a courtesy phone to request a shuttle, signed a couple of forms at the pickup depot near CDG Terminal 3, and got the keys. Returning the truck was just as easy. Total cost for the 29 day rental was about $1700, or about $60/day.

The Partner was brand new (it had only 1.7 km on the odometer when we got in), and with the exception of needing to have the headlights aimed (done by a dealer, for free, in Millau on our way home) it was entirely problem free. When we returned it on Wednesday morning, there were 3523 km on the odometer, so we obviously made good use of it. As a vehicle the only downside of the Partner was that, because it’s quite tall (which is good for headspace inside), it’s affected more by the highwinds on the highway; passing a truck at 130 km/h when it was windy felt vaguely like driving a bucking bronco. Otherwise, though, it was a pleasure to drive, had enough space for the three of us and all our luggage, and was relatively inexpensive to operate (we averaged about 800 km to the 60 litre tank, for about 7.5 litres/100 km).

I don’t think we could have managed with out the vehicle: although Aniane was self-contained, we would have been hard-pressed to explore the countryside by bus, and I would have had a difficult time wardriving for WiFi without a way of getting around. If we had been content to stay put and conduct a realistic simulation of everyday life, we could have managed; the “vacation” part of the trip, however, needed the truck.

As to the “working” part of the “working vacation,” the greatest drawback to the setup was lack of Internet access. I knew that the house we were renting was telephone and Internet free going in, so I knew I would have to rely on spurts of free or for-fee WiFi for my connectivity. I compensated for the lack of Internet by setting up a reasonable facsimile of the webserver I was developing for on my Apple iBook; this let me develop web applications without the web, so to speak. But I still needed web access for email, to update the productions servers with new code, and to respond to any server problems that needed my attention.

While the lack of home-based Internet did take me on some interesting adventures wardriving for WiFi in mediaeval towns, I never did find a space nearby enough that had reliable WiFi and a good place to set up. What I did find was just enough WiFi to get by, either in nearby Clermont-Hérault (15 minutes) or in downtown Montpellier.

That all said, I did find, as I mentioned here earlier, that not having the distraction of the Internet always available did make me more productive because all I could work on was the work at hand. It provided interesting exposure to a sort “uni-tasking” that I’m not used to. I did get a lot of work done, and the projects I was working on I choose specifically because they demanded a lot of focus.

But I think to move the shop to Aniane (or anywhere away) for a longer period would require a better net access solution.

The saving grace, techology-wise, was my mobile phone: it not only allowed me to participate in conference calls with headquarters, but as I slowly uncovered the capabilities of the phone (a Sony Ericsson T610) and the network (Orange France), I was able to use it to check email (using the built-in IMAP client) and even to get my laptop online from the house using it as a GPRS modem (although at huge expense; a couple of web pages and a check of email in a minute or two could cost 5 euros; I was never sure how I was being billed for that access).

I would not want to have been without the phone, as it was the lifeline back to home base that really enabled the “experiment in working from anywhere” part of the trip. The phone itself cost me $150 on eBay. Before I left for France, I bought an Orange SIM card from Telestial for $59US (I’d dealt with them before and recommend them; good selection, fast service, good documentation); in France during the trip I purchased pre-paid time for the Orange network in blocks of 30 euros from tobacco shops (just asked for a “Mobicarte Orange” and they would take my cash and print me out a little chit with a 14 digit code that I entered into the phone). The Orange network worked everywhere in France; I never had a problem with access. Although all of the documentation, the website, and the voice prompts for things like recharging the account were French-only, I was able to understand enough to get buy (Orange has service in the U.K. as well, so I could glean some information from the English-language website).

In the end, I’d rate the “working anywhere test” a qualified success. Certainly I found that I could combined vacation and work without really detracting from the other; I’d been afraid, going in, that I would either end up working all the time, or end up getting no work done at all — neither happened. With a little more work on the net access side, I think I could really be comfortably nomadic.

The entire trip — airfare for three, truck rental, house rental, gas, hotels — cost us about $6000 CDN, or about $66 per person per day. Food and other day-to-day costs (which I don’t include in that total) were about the same, roughly, as here in Canada (food was cheaper; hard goods a little more expensive). So it’s not a trip we’re able to take every month. Or every year. It basically took “all of the money we had in the world” to pull off. But for the variety of experiences we had, the people we met, the places we saw, and the new approach to travel it allowed us to explore, I’d count it worth every penny, and recommend similar travel to anyone able.

As usual when I fly west from Europe, my body clock got me up at 5:00 a.m. this morning. As I type it’s 7:47 a.m. (yes, Ann, 7:47 a.m.!). I’ve already almost cut the end of my finger off this morning (cutting a bagel for Oliver, who woke up at 7:00 a.m.).

I believe (although I am not sure) that we are home now, on the other side of the Atlantic. I’ll know for sure in the morning when the jet lag wears off.

As I type we are sitting in the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, waiting for our flight to Charlottetown by way of Montreal. After 29 days of life in France, we find ourselves again in the company of English speakers and I’m struck both by how inelegant English sounds when spoken (no wonder the French never came over to our side) and by how relaxing it has been to understand nothing of what is ebing spoken around me.

See you on the other side of the ocean.

For some reason the city of Limoges made me uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the change from the fields of Aniane to the grittier urban environs. Perhaps it was staying in the microhotel. Perhaps I was just sad that things were drawing to a close. But when I got up on Sunday morning, I just had to get out of there.

Careful readers of this blog will note that things in our family tend to go horribly awry only when we forget to eat. Limoges was no exception. We had decided not to take the 3,40 euro Formule 1 breakfast, and instead to fend for ourselves. What we forgot was (a) the Formule 1 was located in an industrial park, far away from any corner boulangerie, (b) it was Sunday, (c) it was a holiday (VE Day). As such, places to grab a quick coffee and croissant were few and far between.

What we should have done is to hop on the A20 north and stop at the first rest stop. They’re always open. What we did instead, or rather what I did, being the catatonic underfed grumpy driver, was to randomly drive through the countryside in a primitive forage for food. I think I hoped that, as if by magic, I would round a corner and see a neon sign, above the world’s best boulangerie, flashing “Stop Here Pete!” It didn’t happen.

We did manage to see a lot of the rural areas around Limoges. It’s a lot like Prince Edward Island, in fact, except that there is a much greater proportion of Limousin cattle about, that being their “home place.”

Eventually we ended up getting on the A20 north, stopping at the first rest stop, and managed to get enough food in us to keep us going. Crisis averted.

Having no idea of our destination, we decided we needed to get off the A20. The autoroutes in Frances are an excellent way to quickly get from point A to point B. In a sense they are like traveling at “warp speed,” as things move by too quickly to really focus on at 130 km/h and there’s not really any scenery to speak of in any case, as the land given over to autoroutes is generally the land not needed for anything else.

So at exit 18 we slowed from warp speed and switched to impulse power and headed east towards the village of La Châtre. Not that we knew anything about the village, but it had a pleasant dot on the map.

It turns out that La Châtre is the birthplace of George Sand. I must admit that, short of a vague recollection that George Sand was someone important, I’d no idea who she was. This was remedied somewhat by a visit to the George Sand Museum in La Châtre which is housed in an ancient tower in the middle of town. The Museum is home to a huge collection of stuffed birds, a giant wooden village, various paintings and sculptures, and a decent collection of George Sands memorabilia.

An email to my English-major brother Johnny filled in the gaps for us in the George Sands story:

George Sand was the pen name of Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant, a French writer and feminist. She was perhaps as famous for her numerous love affairs (with Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin, among others) and her flamboyant bohemian libertine lifestyle (she preferred dressing in men’s clothes when it was seen as quite scandalous to do so and as such is often speculated to have been a lesbian) as for her writing.

La Châtre turned out to be a rather pleasant place. It being Sunday, and VE Day, everything was closed up tight, however, and we thought it might be nice to stay overnight and get a taste of the working town in the morning. However all attempts — and there were many — to find a place to stay resulted in failure. We found closed hotels. Locked hotels. Full hotels. Hotels with crabby managers who claimed not to be able to accommodate three people in a room. We found a charming riverside hotel located down a flower-lined country lane that could have come from the pages of a novel. It was closed up tight.

Although Catherine did eventually find us a room, in a hotel on the edge of town, the room was rather abysmal, which we took as a sign that our romance with La Châtre had to end. We got in the truck and headed to the City of Bourges.

To find a hotel in Bourges, I simply pulled out my Orange mobile phone, fired up the web browser, and selected “find a hotel near me.” Through some magical “we know what cell you are using and thus where you are” method, it gave me a list of three. We choose one, Les Tilleuls, and followed the directions provided right to the door. The delightful manager arranged a room with two beds (one big, one little) on the top floor. The hotel was a welcome change from the prison-like conditions of the Formule 1 the night before (prison-like but, of course, 1/2 the price, which is the point).

Bourges turned out to be the perfect city to end our trip. Small enough to walk around, large enough to have enough to entertain our senses, we ended up staying for two nights. Complete report to follow later.

As I type, I’m in the Hotel Étap near the CDG airport in Paris (getting here is a tale of its own). We leave tomorrow morning for Charlottetown.

As I type it is still pre-dawn (okay, it’s actually 9:00 a.m., but the blind is closed) on Sunday morning. Catherine and Oliver are still asleep. We’re hunkered down here at the Formule 1 hotel in Limoges, about a third of a way up from Montpellier to Paris on our slow ride home.

We spent Friday in a whirlwind of linen laundering, floor scrubbing, and shutter shutting as we worked to clean and close the house for departure.

Oliver and I made our last trip to the boulangerie; I told the woman there that it was the last day of our trip, and said something resembling “thank you for your excellent products” to which she responded “thank you for your excellent patronage.” The chocolate croissants were still in the oven when we arrived, so we had to be satisified with regular ones on our last day, appropriate because that’s how we started off.

We went through a similar scene at the Point Coop, our favourite grocery store. We bought oranges and hand soap, and thanked the winking grocer for his store. He asked me if I was from Belgium, which I took as a compliment.

By noon we were ready to go. House was clean from top to bottom, shutters shut. All of Oliver’s toys gathered up and the truck packed. We found our woman on the ground, handed over keys and payment for electricity, and headed out of Aniane. I’m almost certain we’ll be back.

We had planned to spent the previous night planning our route north to Paris — we have almost 5 days to drive the route. Unfortunately a wonderful meal got in our way, and so heading down the road to Gignac we had no idea of our destination.

Earlier in the day, having coffee at the Glacier, Catherine got some advice that the western route, through Limoges, was much nicer than the eastern route, through Lyon. From two parties. That sealed it. We headed north to Millau. I was secretly glad of the opportunity to see the super bridge — the Millau Viaduct — one more time. I was not disappointed.

We decided, as we had driven over the bridge on our way down, we would drive down into Millau proper and see it from below on our way back up. This was an immediate lesson in why they built they bridge in the first place as a drive over the bridge takes about 10 minutes compared with a trip of perhaps an hour down into the valley, through Millau, and back up the other side. Apparently in the middle of summer this is a two hour trip; a couple from England I talked to in Millau said that the bridge now made it possible to drive from the north coast to the south coast in one day, something they’d not been able to do before.

The only defect with our Peugeot Partner truck has been that its headlights were aimed much too high; every time we’ve driven at night we’ve been “flashed” at by half the drivers we pass. Catherine insisted we do something about this, so we pulled into the Peugeot dealer, and I conducted a complicated mime exercise in which I explained the problem at the end of which came an exclamation something like “oh, you want your headlights regulated, but of course!”

The truck was ushered into a bay, a complicated looking headlight aiming machine brought out, and 15 minutes later we were on our way. No charge. Very nice shop. If you need your Peugeot serviced in the south of France, go to Millau.

Of course we had to stop to take pictures, the best of which was perhaps this one, taken from the edge of a subdivision up a hill in suburban Millau:

We headed back up the other side, Catherine marvelling all the while at how the local farmers could plow fields on a 45 degree slope (she took as many sloped fields pictures as I took of the bridge; you’ll have to look to her blog to find those).

Our tentative plan was to head west to Rodez at exit 41.

At exit 43 we realized we’d gone to far. Rather than doubling back, we decided to head out overland on a third-class road and see what we could see. As it turns out, this took as right up the valley of the River Lot (confusingly also called the River Olt, it seems), then up into the mountains on roads that, if you know PEI’s “scenic heritage roads” you will be familiar with, and finally, about an hour later, out to Rodez.

From there we headed north on the N140, and when it started to get dark we started to look for a place to spend the night.

We ended up at a hotel-restaurant under the shadow of the hilltop town of Capendac. For 50 euros we booked into a double room that gave Oliver three beds to choose from (and thus many “Goldilocks” games) and his own shower. We had a view of a chicken farm tucked into the bottom of a mountainy hill. It was very serene.

We took dinner at the hotel restaurant and in doing so experienced, after 23 days, what was our first meal in a “French” restaurant.

The menu was somewhat difficult to decrypt, as the emphasis was not on the food itself but on how it was prepared, so there were lots of confits and other verbs that we were unused to.

We settled on two of the stock menu, each offering a soup, appetizers, main course and dessert.

I settled on the faux filet de boeuf after extracting from the waiter that it was a the filet that was faux and not the boeuf. Catherine ordered something involving canard which we cleverly recognized as duck (it turned out to be three duck legs, which was confusing).

We both started with a salmon tartare (which I’ve only just learned now from Catherine was raw salmon; it was very good nonetheless), and I plunged in and ordered escargots de la maison, reasoning that if I was ever going to eat snails now was the time.

Eating snails is not conceptually different, in the end, from eating mussels or lobster. Indeed the taste is somewhat similar. Snails are, however, more cuddly than either mussels or lobsters, and thus it feels more like eating a trusted friend. I survived. It was actually kind of pleasant. Oliver, not aware I think of what he was doing but eager nonetheless, had one himself. He liked it.

The main course was rich and tasty and involved pounds of butter. For dessert I had the best chocolate mousse of my life, Catherine had a pear and chocolate pie and Oliver had, as you might expect, pistache ice cream.

All of the staff at the restaurant were very accommodating of our naivete, and we emerged feeling rather victorious.

Saturday morning we woke up to a misty, chilly day. After a quick breakfast at the hotel we checked out and headed up to the mountaintop walled village of Capendac-haut, reknowned for having held out against Julias Caesar at some point in the past. It was easy to see how, as the village is very high up a hill, surrounded by rivers on two sides, and circled by a thick high wall. We toured the village, had a coffee and hot chocolate, and headed off on our drive north.

In no particular order, the day saw us: not buying a door knocker at an antique shop that was priced a 700 euros, stopping at a large flea market in the town of Martel (no doubt run by Pat Martel in his spare time) where Catherine ended up buy two door knockers, eating too much vegetarian pizza, experiencing two great playgrounds, and covered about 300 km. We ended up here in Limoges where Catherine rested while Oliver and I bought running shoes, ate at Mcdonalds, and came back to the hotel to fall fast asleep.

Today it’s on to… well, we’re not sure.

May 5, it seems, is a holiday in France. We’re not sure exactly which holiday it is, mind you. The first we noticed was on our way through Gignac to Montpellier where we’d planned a fun last afternoon in the south of France.

We’ve encountered two types of gas stations in France: those that are completely automatic and operate only with credit card, and those more familiar, with an attendant. The automatic ones don’t accept any of our credit cards — perhaps because they require a “smart” credit card and ours are “dumb.” We’d planned to get gas at the Gignac hypermarket’s gas bar, as it is has an attendant. Except that today is a holiday, so it was on “automatic” mode, and we were out of luck.

I foolishly thought to myself “it must just be a holiday in Gignac — we’ll just keep going and get gas in Montpellier!”

As I said, I was foolish.

Every station we found in Montpellier was either closed, or running on auto-pilot. And then the “you’re out of gas” warning buzzer came on in the truck. The manual says this means there is 50km more driving in the truck, and also warns that, the truck being diesel, if you actually run out of gas you need to “prime” the fuel system. Catherine, remembering the complex process of doing this to diesel tractors, painted pictures of fuel spilling all over the place. We started to panic.

One of us — we’re not in agreement who it was — suggested a trip to the airport. Surely, [this person] reasoned, there would have to be gasoline available there. We stumbled our way to the airport (which, confusingly, is known by two different names, thus making one think there are two airports). And there was a gas station. And it was open. And there was a real person there to take our money.

With a sated truck, we were now free to enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

We headed into the centre of town, and found that, despite the holiday, most everything was open. This explained the “special opening on Thursday: 10h - 19h” signs I’d seen at the Polygone shopping centre earlier in the week (and ignored).

Catherine and Oliver went off to ride the merry-go-round and I went hunting for Internet. I’d been led to believe that the Place de Comedie was saturated with free WiFi; while there was a lot of this in evidence, I couldn’t find any WiFi at places where it would actually be useful. I’m willing to go to great lengths to feed my net addiction, but sitting on the pavement in front of a balloon cart in front of thousands of onlookers is too far.

So I returned to Avril’s alley, just off the square, and found the WiFi I’d used two weeks earlier. It was strong, and the stares from onlookers as I balanced on a concrete post weren’t enough to put me down.

As I typed away, Catherine and Oliver did, indeed, ride the merry-go-round. Then the hopped on the last tourist train of the day and toured the city. And then got some ice cream.

We met up at 6:00 p.m. and I suggested, this being out last day in the city and all, we investigate the pony rides through the park that had so intrigued Oliver on our last visit.

I had passed this stand several times, and I’d just assumed that when it said Location de Poneys it meant something like “rent a pony with trained professional pony leader.”

I was wrong.

What it meant was something like “here, have a pony; bring it back.”

I, being the designated pony leader, was given 7 seconds of training in pony management: the wrangler handed me the lead, showed me where to put my hands, and told me to follow the arrows painted on the pavement. Oliver climbed on board. And we were off.

One would expect a four year old to be afraid of riding an awesome beast like a pony. He was not. I, on the other hand, was sure that the pony was going to see a squirrel and run off with Oliver on his back.

Catherine, being smarter than I am about all manners related to the animal kingdom, assured me that the pony had done all of this before and I had nothing to worry about.

And of course she was right. This was one smart pony: every time I even thought about deviating from the course the pony offered gentle corrective tugs on the lead as if to say “this way, Pete, this way.” There were very strong Dr. Doolittle vibes. With the exception of an unfortunate incident where the pony, through no fault of his own, stepped on my foot, we made it down the course and back.

If you ever in Montpellier and in need of a thrill, ask for Bambo at the edge of the park.

On the way into town we’d seen signs pointing to a guinguette newly opened on the shore of the Hérault between Aniane and Gignac. They claimed to serve tapas and saveurs orientales et exotiques. And they had pedal boat rentals. We were in.

It proved to be one of the highlights of our trip.

La Famourette is an open-air restaurant about 30 feet from the banks of the river. Tables are gathered under a simple roof on a wooden platform; there’s seating for perhaps 100, although there was only one other couple when we arrived. There are a variety of table settings, varying from the traditional to the easy-chair. At one end is the kitchen, at the other end a set of washrooms.

To get there requires driving down a wendy-windy set of one-lane dirt tracks for about a mile. When we arrived at the parking lot a small white dog emerged and Oliver suggested that we simply follow him. We did, and he led us right to where we needed to go (we followed him back out at the end of the night too).

The menu offered a variety of cooking styles, from Indian to Mexican to Turkish.

We started off with a plate of appetizers: humous, an eggplant and tomato tapanade, and a very tasty mixture of olives, garlic and anchovies, all served with fresh bread.

For mains, Catherine had ginger-encrusted salmon, I had the kefta with tabouli (with shimmers of Charlottetown), and Oliver had a petite assiette that let him share.

And for dessert Oliver had pistache ice cream, and Catherine and I both had ice cream sundaes, hers of coffee ice cream with coffee sauce and cold coffee, and I of chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce (thus remaining true to form).

This was all served by a dreamy waiter who knew exactly what we needed when we needed it, spoke just enough English to make things flow alone through my rough spots, and was about the nicest guy you’d ever meet on the banks of a river.

Throughout this all we were entertained by the antics of two newborn kittens and the aforementioned white dog. Mid-meal the owner came over to ensure that we were getting along well; we had a pleasant conversation with her in which she revealed her feeling that Canada is a wonderful country.

Around 10:30 p.m., three hours after we arrived, we rolled ourselves into the truck and finished the trip with the short drive up the hill and around the corner to Aniane.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

In Aniane, as elsewhere in France, there is a problem with dog owners letting their dogs shit where they like — streets, sidewalks, alleys — and then just leaving said shit there for others to avoid or, if unlucky, drive over or step in.

There is a campaign here in Aniane, however, to change dog owner behaviour. From the look of the streets it is not a terrifically successful campaign, but perhaps we’ve caught it early.

School children are on the front lines of this campaign; here’s a random selection of their poster are against crottes:

Here’s a photo I took yesterday from a plateau overlooking Aniane. The tower to the left is the “Tour” in “rue de la Tour,” which is our street. Our house is roughly in the middle of the picture.

1. Bicycle tires in France have different valves, complex yet ingenious little things that screw out (to inflate) and back in (to seal). Perhaps this style is more widespread than I know, but this is my first encounter.
2. Car radios are smart. There’s a switch you can flip that will keep the same radio station (or network) tuned, even if you’re traveling a long distance and the actual frequency changes several times.
3. Escalators are on the other side. Which is to say the “up” is on the left, not the right as it is in Canada. And vice versa.
4. Milk for tea is served hot. And it also appears to be something of a novelty to order milk with tea at all, as when I order, as instructed by my phrase book, thé au lait I’m often greeted with a quizical (in French) “you mean you’d like some tea, with a little pitcher of milk on the side?”
5. Aluminum is still in vogue. I couldn’t figure out with the space-age light material that various spoons were made of until Catherine told me it was aluminum. There are also three standard spoon sizes, with an intermediate size betwen our “tea” and “table” spoons.
6. Credit cards have PIN numbers. Whenever we pay by credit card there is confusion because we don’t have a smart chip in our cards, and need to actually sign the slip rather than typing in a PIN number. I assume this means the French system is an amalgam of our “Interac” and credit card systems, but I’m not sure. Oddly, when paying road tolls on the autoroutes I’ve been able to just slide my card in the slot, and it comes back to me immediately and the gate opens with no “we’re checking to make sure you have enough money” wait. I wonder if they’ve just decided to eat any charges that might arise in return for smoother flowing traffic at the toll plazas.
7. Milk is sold in “last forever” sterilized packages. Try as we might we’ve not been able to find milk in the “fresh” form that we’re used to at home. Grocery stores have entire aisles where milk is sold in Tetrapak or similar containers, sterilized and sealed and with no need of refrigeration until opened.
8. Everyone says “bonjour.” Really. Well, perhaps not in the big cities, but here in Aniane everyone we meet, from child to adult, plasterer to businessperson, strange and familiar, says “bonjour” or “bon soir” to us (and to each other) on the street. It’s very endearing.
9. The country has an excellent tagline. In the annals of three-word phrases, you gotta say that Liberte Egalite Fraternite is a pretty good one. And it appears on every public building, school and piece of official documentation we’ve seen. Canada needs branding like this.