It was the tail end of the summer of 2010, I was with a group staying in the Dordogne for about 10 days. We wanted to check out the Paleolithic paintings at Lascaux caves, but to get tickets you have to stop in the town of Montignac first.
We drove there early one cool morning and as we turned onto one of the main streets, a burst of color greeted us.
Bright handmade flowers were strung above the narrow lanes and between buildings. They seemed never-ending, each street we passed by brought new color. It was a wonderful surprise.
Later we found out that Montignac was the host the Félibrée or Felibrejada (in Occitan) Festival that year.The towns of the Dordogne take turns hosting and this was Montignac's fourth time.
The festival occurs on the first Sunday each July. It began in 1903 as a way of celebrating and preserving the Occitan culture with some good old-fashioned traditional costumes, dancing, singing, eating, and drinking.
Something along these lines:
The townspeople are in charge of all the preparations, including making and stringing the flowers. I found a post, La Félibrée, about the process at a blog called A Year Down the Line.
It would have been nice to come for the festival, but just stumbling on the flowers was enough to make my day and they were a wonderful backdrop to a sleepy riverside lunch.
So if you're ever in the Dordogne at the beginning of July, give the Félibrée a gander.
As I'm working on getting my first Vignette Guide done, I think it's time to revive my Daydream Destination posts for a little Friday inspiration and escape. They will be short and sweet posts of places and spaces from cities to specific restaurants to tiny village corners.
Just to set the mood--and because I've been a bit obsessed with this song for a while--here's some Carla Bruni.
Today's destination is the Lourmarin market in Provence.
Each Friday morning it unfolds throughout the narrow streets and into the main square. The lovely setting, from plane trees to time-worn, ivy covered shops, makes it easy to meander from stall to stall, even when the quiet of the early morning fades.
Like most Provençal markets, it's a mix of fresh food, housewares, linens, lavender, soaps, clothing, "Provence stuff," and miscellaneous odds and ends.
It was, by far, my favorite market from the trip. I think part of it had to do with being able to walk out of our front door and be in the middle of everything. But Lourmarin has a nice feel to it. It's compact but not cramped, time-worn but still lively.
I mostly did a lot of looking (and drooling over the food, despite having just eaten breakfast). I have a rule about only buying things that I fall head over heels in love with when I travel.
This time around , it was soap. The owner of our house left us with different types to try. One particularly questionable looking brown square turned out to be an amazing verbena. And that was that, I had to have a stash of verbena and lavender soap. It was in this market that I finally found exactly what I was looking for and bought about $30 worth. It lasted me a year. I wanted to cry when that last tiny sliver slipped from my hands and went down the drain.
So, what I'm trying to say is, if you're in Provence and in the market for soap, Lourmarin's market might be your place. If you want soap-buying tips, then drop me a note because I could go on and on. . .I'm only half kidding.
Besides soap, my second favorite part of the market was the sausage guy. He was at the back of the main square, wearing a great hat, one of those old leather butcher's aprons and drinking beer, beer, and more beer. He was jovial. Don't let the picture below fool you.
That man could probably convince me to give him my watch and then sell it back to me and I would probably leave a happy customer until a few days later when his charm spell wore off. He was fantastic!
Needless to say, we bought a lot of sausage.
I'm not sure how much more romantic life can get than waking up in real linen sheets in an antique bed in Provence, having coffee with whatever looks fresh and delicious that day at the bakery, and then walking out to a beautiful, bustling market with an empty woven basket that is just begging to be filled. When meandering gets tiring, you can wander back into town for a Perrier menthe or a small pitcher of cold rosé and snack on the 700 types of sausage you bought on impulse, because it seemed like a deal at the time.
After Juno, Henri was insistent that we see a bunker/museum called Le Grand Bunker - Atlantic Wall Museum in Ouistreham.
It was late in the afternoon and the rain started to pick up. We were all exhausted and chilly, but his enthusiasm was enough to convince us to go.
By the time we arrived, the museum was near closing. After we took a look at the tanks and stuff in the front, we entered into a gift shop, quickly bought our tickets, and pushed through a turnstile.
As we walked down a deserted hallway, a small sign in explained the bunker’s story.
The 52-foot (17 meter) concrete tower was on prime real estate surrounded by town buildings and housing just behind Sword Beach. It served as a command center for the German batteries on the Orne estuary.
On D-Day, a British shell hit the bunker and crippled its ability as a command center. The Germans inside, however, were able to stave off Allied commandos.
On June 9th, Bob Orrell, a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, and three other men carried out orders to take the bunker.
Their main obstacle was a huge, armored door.
First, they tried to blast it open using six pounds of dynamite on the upper hinges. That didn’t work.
Next, they used a sledgehammer and a mine bar. That didn’t work either.
It eventually took ten pounds of explosives to break through the door.
As the men walked into the bunker, voice called down, in a flawless English accent, from one of the floors above, “It’s alright, Tommy, you can come up.”
“Bugger off, you come down!” answered Orrell
With nowhere to run, 51 German soldiers and two officers filed down and surrendered to Orrell and his three men.
The bunker is now laid out as it was on D-Day, but there is also a ton of information about the Atlantic Wall throughout the rooms.
Maybe it was the sound of the rain and the fact that we were the only people wandering through, but I found the bunker quite eerie.
I don’t think the mannequins helped.
That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, of course. I loved it. If it hadn’t have been for Henri, we never would have come here.
My favorite part was stepping into the lookout/rangefinder room at the top of the tower and really realizing just how much they could see from there. It was nearly a perfect 360 degree panorama.
Just as we were able to reach to top of the bunker and take a good look around, we had to leave.
Back in the car, we three exhausted, yet satisfied, tourists thought the day was over.
But Henri had other plans. Henri always had other plans. Better plans.
And just like that, we were off to Honfleur for dinner.
As usual, it was a harrowing drive. We toured a roundabout at great speed for what felt like an hour as Henri tried to remember which exit to take. I imagine the Vomit Comet produces a similar effect on the ole stomach.
When we arrived, as soon as Henri put the car in park, he was off. This was, apparently, an important mission. A food mission. He stormed through the streets too fast for us to take any good pictures or see any real sites. But we got enough of a look to realize that this was a town that we wanted to see again.
We ate at a tiny, packed place on the harbor. Since we had an early flight the next morning, none of us were adventurous enough to eat anything too exciting.
Henri, on the other hand, ordered a huge seafood platter. I recognized mussels and shrimp. Everything else came in shells that were entirely new to me. I tried to figure out what they were and I filed most of them under: “I don’t know how I feel about putting that in my mouth but I might try it once.” He loved everything.
We were well into the evening when we got back to the car and started to make the long trek back to Paris. It was after 1 am when got back to the city.
The streets were very quiet. It felt like it was just us and the streetlights awake.
Henri, bolstered by a quick espresso stop earlier and his omnipresent zest for both adventure and talking, turned to us and asked, with genuine excitement, if we wanted him give us a tour of Paris.
"Right now?!?"
"Right now."
We sleepily declined. It would be a miracle if we got even two hours of sleep since we still had to pack and be ready to leave for the airport at 6 o'clock. He dropped us off at the hotel and we said our goodbyes.
Looking back now, I wish we had let him take us around. Who needs sleep when can speed through Paris with an eccentric French tour guide at dawn?
So that, in six parts, is the story of our day trip to Normandy. Henri actually stole the show. I think it's really the story of the time we let a kooky tour guide with a barely street legal car and a penchant for raw milk take us for an amazing ride through space and time.
