Look Upward, Grateful

I don’t know what you imagine when you think of biking through Provence.  Certainly a primary vision in my noggin’ was rolling into some small village and ordering food that puts a pause on the world and wine that makes you look upward, grateful. 

We were fifteen kilometers or so into our journey, our derrière muscles adjusting, to the pounding of the bicycle seat along the gravel road that wound along the mighty Rhone River.  Off then and we cut a path through one field and then another.  It was already 2:30PM or so on a French country Sunday.  I was reminded in part of being in the U.S. of my youth when things were actually closed on Sunday and any number of Muslim countries where things are closed on Friday.

Rolling into the village of Boulbon, my daughters pointed to one and then another shop front.  “Sorry baby.  They’re closed.  It’s Sunday.  Remember, they warned us.”  We proceeded ahead a bit further and turned through another deserted village road.  And then, we turned to an open plaza where twenty or more people were dining under a row of old Plane trees.  This will most assuredly do.

I went inside, beneath beyond the green canopy, to the tin roofed bar and asked.  “Four people or lunch?”  The first woman, literally said “puhh” as one might do, conjuring some silly French stereotype.  Oh dear.  “Puhh?”  She turned, rather exasperated and directed me to the proprietor-looking guy with the protruding stomach.  “Sure. But only salad.”  Hmm.  What does that mean?

Well, that meant we could get three different kinds of ravioli, the best salad Nicoise I’ve ever tasted, a plate of escargot, some fries and white wine so dry it seemed filtered through Alpilles limestone.  I sat there staring, savoring with Van Gogh-maddening clarity feeling like I had arrived.  Beefsteak was out.  The table over beside us had enjoyed the final plates of beefsteak.  No worries.

We ordered another bottle. We had to.  And, a bit slower, perhaps, but sated, we proceeded on ahead, through more fields of sunflowers, passed more olive groves and on to our accommodation near Graveson.