Poet Laval, Nyons, etc

Today we had a lazy day exploring the surrounding villages in the Drome. We started off the day by getting buzzed by GIGANTIC wasps called fro-something in french:

that's my finger next to it for scale.

We drove south to Poet Laval (one of the official "Plus Beaux Villages de France"), wandered around for a bit



through the narrow alleys and then up to the chateau.

Near the top there's a fancy looking hotel restaurant called Les Hospitaliers.


We continued south, through Dieulefit (unremarkable) and stopped in Roche St. Secret, where we bought some Lavender and Oak honey. By now, our stomachs were growling, but we held on until Le Pegue, a pretty small town with no open restaurants. By the time we passed the beautiful villages of Rousset les vignes, we were too hungry to even stop and continued on into Nyons. In Nyons we found a nice pizzeria where I had a pretty unique pizza with tapenade, mozzarella, zucchini and eggplant.

Allow me to go off on a little tangent about a little experience I had in the restaurant. In many places in the world, people install what is essentially a glorified hole in the ground in place of a toilet. In fancier establishments, this might be a ceramic hole in the ground, perhaps even connected to a water source, but a hole in the ground nonetheless. The pizza restaurant had one of these in the mens bathroom (not in the woman's bathroom, Chloe has informed me). As it turned out, the little sprayer which dumps water into the hole in the ground was a bit over-tuned, and when I pressed the button, my feet, sandals and shins were sprayed with water of questionable provenance. There were no obvious clues regarding the path that the water had taken, but you can imagine my horror at the possibilities. At this point I panicked and actually considered flushing again as a rinsing procedure but quickly decided against it. I walked out of the toilet room and into the ante room with the sink, high stepped to the counter, and began soaping up my feet under the faucet. Then, hopping on one foot, I looked for paper towels, but discovered that the bathroom was only equipped with one of those useless air dryers. I leaned back and pulled a big section of toilet paper, and managed to dry off one foot and then began sponging down my sandals with pure liquid soap. During this time, I was nervously trying to keep my back or other foot against the door, since there was no lock and I didn't want to have to explain why the toilet room was inundated with "water" or why my foot was jammed under the faucet, or for that matter why my hands were filled with balled up toilet paper. I finally managed to wash everything off satisfactorily, but now the ante room was covered in water from my dripping feet, which I quickly mopped up with more toilet paper. Despite the soapy cleansing, my sandals were still speckled with water, which made it look like I had peed all over them. After a little more hesitation about how to avoid being seen exiting the bathroom with urine stains all over my sandals, I gave up and quickly and surreptitiously slipped back to the table. It was all pretty exhausting.

After all that bathroom excitement, we walked to the Roman bridge,

past a restaurant called "the cat drawer"

then up to the Tour Randonne,

which looks like a fort with a chapel stuck on top because that's essentially what it is. The placard indicated that it was first built in 1280 by la Baronne de Montauban as a dungeon, but was later converted into a Chapel. It's got a charming little enclosed garden with dense shade trees and benches which look out over the miniature ramparts over Nyons and the valley.
. Strangely enough, the local authorities haven't really put much effort into preserving the profound sense of history that comes with such a building and have installed basketball courts, low income housing and seagull murals right below the chapel


We bought some supplies for the Gite (gites don't come with toilet paper!) at a grocery store, and continued to our next destination: the impressive Trente Pas gorge.


From there, we continued north to Crupies to see the lovely Chapelle St. Jean. Yes they have a web site!, despite its being kind of in the middle of nowhere. The Colors of the rock that they used to construct it and its proportions blend in well with its surroundings.


We continued on to Bourdeaux to see the ruined castles



and wander through the old town, with very interestingly shaped buildings



and then hit the road for our final stop of the day: Poet Celard.

This is another hilltop fort which had been various peoples property including a Belgian lawyer (!) but is now owned and managed by an association devoted to its restoration.



after a modest dinner, we headed back to Grenoble, where I managed to park our car in probably the smallest space I have ever seen

oh yeah.