Vauvert, St. Brès, Montpellier

Unfortunately, Elizabeth woke up with a stomach problem. We're sure it was the pizza we ate for a snack the day before and not the dinner later that evening. We'd eaten one of the best dinners we've ever had at Restaurant Les Alizés, 36 bis, Av. Th. Aubunel. The Madame who ran our restaurant was very proud of her cooking. She walked up and down between the tables watching closely to see if anyone needed anything. Occasionally she stopped by our table asking, C'est bon?" I had Soupe de Poisson again and a very garlicky, and spicy hot Rouille, which I loved. I followed this with grilled Sardines. Elizabeth had a poached dorade with sorrel sauce. It was all really good. We drank pots of local Rosé.

We cycled north back up through the Camargue climbing slightly for most of the day. By noon the salt marshes turned to vineyards and we crossed the Canal du Rhone and headed into the small town of Vauvert where we planned to stay the night. We took a room at Hotel du Louvre FF150 ($44.00 cdn). Elizabeth was feeling crummy enough at this point that we needed to get her some medicine from the small pharmacy just down the street from our hotel. The fashionable pharmacist who looked after us listened intently. She had long, honey colored hair and was dressed more for an evening out on the town than for dispensing drugs, I thought. She gave Elizabeth two sets of tablets. She was very nice and made sure we understood. Pointing to one she said, "For stop."

Later that evening I had another great dinner, one of the best dinners of the trip, at the small restaurant La Broussaillarde. The owner was just opening up as we came to the door and was very solicitous to Elizabeth's stomach ailment. He had his chef cook up a special dinner for her of poached fish (Rascas), rice and vegetables. This simple dinner was made delicious because the fish was so fresh. I had a wonderful warm cheese on a bed of beet root followed by beef stew (Onglet) with a mousse made of local vegetables on the side. The wine was one of the best red wines I've ever tasted. It was Castièrs de Nimes D.O.C. Cuvée Carmagaise, La Cave de Vignerons Vauvert.

Elizabeth woke up feeling terrible, she even had a slight fever. We decided that she should sleep as much as she wanted. I went out for a ride to explore Vauvert which turned out to be much bigger than I had realized. I came back to the room at around 10:00am to see how she was doing and found her up. She wasn't really feeling very well, she said, but didn't want to spend the day in bed in Vauvert, so we packed and left. We decided that we wouldn't cycle all that far. Little did we know how wrong we would be.

It started to rain at around lunch time but before we could get wet we ducked into the small town of Marsillargue where we found a café next to a Camargue bull fighting* ring. It had a large open verandah where we could sit and have lunch along with the coffee purchased in the café. This seemed to satisfy the owner and gave us squatting rights to eat lunch out of the rain. How lucky we were. For the next 1/2 hour it rained hard, then ended just as we finished eating.

We had a wonderful day of cycling small roads through beautiful small towns but began to have trouble finding a place for the night. Everywhere we went, people would indicate we'd find something in the next town. When we would arrive at the next town, there'd be no hotel. This went on for several hours. At one town we did find a hotel but it was closed. (All its rooms faced the busy national highway so we probably wouldn't have stayed there in any case.)

Finally we came to the small town of St.Brès. It had a hotel which looked okay but it was on the outskirts of town in an industrial park so we decided to move on to Baillargue 10 km away. We knew there was a hotel that was open because we'd seen advertisements on the highway. We cycled on a very busy road that was full of commuters and construction, dust and exhaust fumes. It was bad and certainly not made any easier by the fact that we were tired already. We arrived at the hotel..... Aughhh....!!!! It was terrible. Just awful. A kind of newish looking highway hell hotel with rooms as big as your thumb. Every room had a view of the parking lot. It was in an even worse industrial park than the last one. So....we decided to cycle back through the traffic, construction, gas fumes and dust to St.Brès.... Aughhh...!!!

When we arrived back at the hotel in St. Brès we had a scare. Although it had been open an hour earlier the doors were locked and there were no lights on. I had to bang and rattle the door to get anyone's attention. Eventually the Madame came and opened up. She didn't look very happy. She was holding a white cloth up to her face. When she put the rag down for a moment I noticed one of her eyes was the size of a hockey puck. She could barely keep her head up, she was in so much pain. We later learned she'd just had an operation on her eye the day before. She gave us a key to look at a room. By this time it was 6:30 pm. Elizabeth was so exhausted and I was so depressed, we had no choice. Even if we didn't like the room we'd have to bite the bullet and take it anyway.

Aughhh....!!! The room here turned out to be even worse than the last one in Baillargue. The room we had was tiny and it had no windows and stank of cleaning fluid. We had to enter the room through a small cramped garden path with a long line of doors leading to the other rooms. It was claustrophobic. While we slept that night, we had to keep the door open to get any air at all. The garden reeked of cat piss. I can't believe we got used to it enough to even get any sleep at all, but we did.... It was still awful.

Dinner was the only saving grace. We found a little café beside a Pétanque ground where the middle aged motherly Tunisian woman who ran the place took us under her wing. She kept telling us what to order because she had made it herself. She let us try several dishes before we each settled in on lentils with pork belly. We drank pitchers of red that she provided with the meal and we talked together the whole time about just about everything. The food was good but not great. But we had a really good time. Her Punk Rocker daughter came in halfway through. Actually she looked more chic than Punky - very fashionable and quite anorexic. She and her mother chatted happily while the daughter took over serving us. When she mentioned chocolate mousse for dessert my eyes must have lit up. She asked, "Grosse ou Petite?" When I answered with the first choice everybody laughed. Well...? What was I supposed to say? Even the anorexic daughter tucked into a bowl.

Continued.....

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