L'Isle Sur La Sorgue

The last city on my parents' visit was L'Isle Sur La Sorgue, a little place to the east of Avignon. Some of the guidebooks call it the Venice of France, but I'm convinced these people have never been to Venice. Sure, it has little canals that run through it, as it was once a city who lived off of miling, but Venice is just a tad more grand than LISLS (abbreviated because the name is too darn long). The city was cool though, don't get me wrong. It was a fine place to spend our last two days because it was calm and interesting and located close to a pretty drive through the Luberon hills. We got settled in the hotel and headed to the tourist office to find a map. After picking up the map from the office we decided to take the little tourist circuit around the city just to get our bearings and find out what there was to explore. I can't say the walk was all that exciting. They had us walking down some pretty boring streets, but we did see lots of waterwheels! These were used in the city's milling history. We saw the old church, that was built in the baroque style, which dad was not fond of, but it was a bit different than the rest of the churches we had seen on the trip, so interesting none-the-less. After searching for a restaurant on the first night we ended up at a little place that had a delightful dinner of beef canneloni. The one thing about French restaurants is that they all serve the same thing (beef, duck, fois gras, salmon, entrecote, etc..) this canneloni was definitely new and scrumptious. Mom had a dessert that she about died for. It was a house dessert with three little desserts made from orange. She couldn't stop saying how wonderful it was. Chalk that place up to a success!

The next day we decided to take a Rick Steves drive through some of the little towns around Provence. We drove though one of the most beautiful towns in France, Ménerbes, but it was pretty deserted, so we just walked through the town a bit. Then we made our way to Vaison la Romaine which has an "upper" city and a "lower" city. The upper city is the old medieval town, whic the lower city is the modern day town, still old, just not as old as the upper city. We walked across the old Roman bridge and through the medieval city, but it was also pretty dead. It must have been the time of year that no one (aka tourists) really inhabit the city. Finally we stopped in Suzette for a meal at a Rick Steves' recommended lunch place. After inconveniencing the owner to make up a table for us, we proceeded to have an unplanned 2 1/2 hr lunch. We tried to be patient and enjoy being on vacation, but we're American, we get antsy after sitting and waiting for food for an hour. At least it was good!

Back in LISLS we did some walking around town and checking out the antique shops, part of what makes LISLS a destination. That night for dinner we went way different and ate at a modern little chinese place. It was packed, which is usually a good sign. The food was good, and very different than our cuisine from the rest of the trip, so a nice change up.

The last morning of our vacation we woke up and headed out into the town to partake in the markets. My mom and I had expected just antique markets, but there was good, and clothes, and dogs, and cassettes, and mattresses, and soaps, and well, just about anything you could want. It was festive and entertaining, but a bit draining. We decided to head off to Lyon early, but wanted to grab some lunch. We stopped at a place and were the very first people in the door and placed our orders before anyone else arrived. An hour and twenty minutes later we got our food. There was serious discussion as to whether dropping 40 euro on the table for our entrees and leaving would have been acceptable. Unfortunately this long lunch pushed our whole day back, but we made it to our desitnations and got on trains, me heading to Clermont for 4 more weeks and mom and dad to Charles de Gaulle in Paris for their flight home the next day.