Friday 17th part 3
After dropping off Neil and the kids at home I headed out to Gordes. It's a hill top village with a castle at the top. What more could a girl ask for. Gordes is in all the guide books so I could not miss it, unfortunately though neither could all the other tourists. It was very pretty with lots of winding thin streets and ancient houses with quaint windows and doors, but it was too touristy and was loosing a little of its charm. Ironically one of the best parts was the view you got of the town when approaching. You were high up on an opposite ridge so could see all the houses and streets really well. I arrived at this lookout just as the Japanese tourist bus was leaving which was good timing.
There was no rush to get home as we were going out for dinner, so I went on a few kilometres down the road to the village of Les Boires, a settlement of ancient bee hive dwellings. Part of the fun of this adventure was negotiating the supposedly two way road which was wide enough for one car, so thank goodness most of the cars coming from the other direction were happy to practice their reversing skills.
The village was cool, being entirely built from stone using no mortar. All the fences, dwellings and animal shelters were bee hive shape and were an engineering marvel at the time. They even had silkworm pens, usually over the wine caves. It was now early evening and time to go home and freshen up for dinner. On our first night in St. Saturnin-Les-Apt we discovered you need to book for almost all the restaurants and definitely the one we were going to. It was recommended by the owners of our holiday house and the food was delicious and half the price of the other more touristy restaurants. No kids menu but they adapted something for them and were very accommodating. The food was fresh, local and the service good (extraordinary for France). We will be back before we leave Provence as we can't miss another meal like that. The deserts alone were worth going back for, again and again. It was a long, full day for me but very enjoyable.
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