Bike: from apartment to grocery store, boulangerie, chateau, and back, 4 miles
Accommodation: Les maisons des Balmes (Booking.com)
Today is a rest day. We wore our regular shorts and sandals to bike to the grocery store and bakery. At the grocery store, the guy behind us in line asked about the mirror on my sunglasses, and the guy in front of us listened and smiled and waved to us. (At least every few days, someone asks about my mirror. This has been happening since I started to wear a mirror about 20 years ago. Ken gets a kick out of how much interest Europeans show in it. We've never seen anyone in Europe with a mirror. Often people ask if it is "smart." It is not. But I guess it's unique!)
Our next stop was the boulangerie a few blocks away. The guy who was ahead of us at the grocery store was just coming out of the bakery--and he laughed and waved. Just a few days here, and we already "know" the locals.
On our way back to the villa, we circled around the property to look at the chateau our hosts are restoring. It is about a quarter mile down the lane from the villa we are staying in, where they live above us on the first floor. The chateau will eventually be an event space for weddings and such. Chloe was weeding the rose gardens when we went by, and she invited us to join her at 13:00 when she would be giving a friend a tour of the inside of the chateau.
The chateau was built by a farmer in 1856, and it has quirky features that Chloe and Frank are trying to learn the meaning of--like trefoil windows in the towers, crescent moon spires atop the towers, and dragons in the tile floor of the main entry hall. The chateau is much larger inside than it appears outside. For many years, it was occupied by a family that could not afford to maintain it and who divided it up and rented out parts of it. Chloe isn't sure how it was decorated originally, but suspects it was not elaborate or particularly elegant. She and Frank have hired contractors to renovate the first floor. Any renovations to upper floors (there are two above the ground floor) would require special permission and huge amounts of money to basically built a support structure within the walls of the original structure, and they can't afford that.
The joys of owning a chateau. Lots of work ahead for them. And they are also working on the villas, plus tents they have purchased for a glamping area. They hope to have room for 40 people to stay next summer. I'm glad we got here now, when we have the entire place to ourselves. It will be quite a different place after this year, I think.
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| Chloe and Frank are renovating the chateau, terrace, and fountain to host grand events. |
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| In front of the chateau (I just turned around after taking the previous photo), they have created a lane bordered by white roses, olive trees, and fields of lavender. They have stones to build an elegant gate at the entrance to the lane. When guests attend events, they will enter the stone gate, drive up the lane, park at the side of the chateau, and then walk around and through a second gate leading to the fountain and front terrace. |
