Saint Affrique to Millau to Montpellier

So a full week of 10 hour work days in the absolute middle of nowhere made for kind of a bizarre turn in this trip and certainly rounded out our farming experiences in interesting ways. Spending a week in a centuries-old farm house among a family that truly embraces many traditional ways of life gave us a very real perspective on French provincial life, manual wheat husking, kitten drowning, plenty of quality goat time and all. Très bizarre. We said our goodbyes to our eclectic family and caught a ride with Marielle, her mother Marie Claude, and her son Jayan to the Friday morning open air market of Millau (which is apparently famous for its sheepskin gloves, and an absurdly large bridge). We had an hour or so to kill which was well spent strolling through the expansive market, collecting some of the addictive local strawberries, saucisson sec, an aged cow cheese (just to spice things up), and of course the compulsory baguette that seems to be standard issue for all walks of life here. 

Goodbye, fuzzy friends

Viaduc de Millau (makes even the moon look tiny)

Cindhu was humming this while we strolled through the huge market

Our day and a half in Montpellier following our return to the modern world has done well to reinforce any vague, romantic impression of the french way of life - well stocked with random carousels, plentiful patisseries, countless streetside dining options, and so on and on and on. Being in a country where I have a semi-functional grasp on the language has been rewarding. Often enough my attempts to interact in French end up (some times more quickly than others) with the local mercifully switching to their better grasp of English, but I have enough entirely-in-French interactions under my belt to allow myself a small bit of pride for holding onto a bit from two semesters of beginner French in college. I'm often reminded of our experience ordering prosecco from the train station cafe in Abruzzo, when after repeating the word about 6 times, finally communicating successfully when I enunciated "pro seeehh co" in what felt like an almost mockingly exaggerated Italian accent. With French's guttural R's and well rounded syllables that are quite foreign to our solidly neutral American accents, I often find that when I pretend (discretely in my own head) that I'm making fun of the accent when I speak, is when I'm most successful in being understood. Small victories.

Crêpe with chocolat noir & chantilly - I can't quite say we're trying too hard yet to branch out from the more obvious French experiences

They're a bit more creative with their playgrounds here

Along with the vintage Ducati that rolled up throatily next to us in Panzano in Chianti, I'm determined to own one of these sometime in my life. 

Fitting right in.

We're off to Marseille tomorrow, almost entirely for the purpose of seeking out the famous soupe de poisson. We haven't had a ton of great seafood on this trip, so I don't feel too bad about such a singular mission. We'll have two days there, three in Lyon (also an entirely food related destination, but hey, that's pretty much what we do), then three more in Paris before we catch our surprisingly cheap flight onto Dublin. Good to be back on the road!