Pezenas

For the past couple of weekends it has rained, but we decided not to let it put us off from now on. After all, more than a month has already passed and we only have 7 more to go!! So despite it being a bit wet yesterday we set off with friends (English-speaking locals!) for Pezenas, about 20 minutes south of here. The guidebook calls Pezenas 'one of the most singularly beautiful towns in the French Southwest' (how do you choose?) and it certainly was pretty. However, our focus was the market. We had a quick look at some of the old town streets (no dog poop here!), then entered the 'animal products' section of the market, between a paella stall and a mobile charcuterie. There's been a paella stand at every market we've been to - even the tiny one at Aniane, and it does look good, full of mussels and big red prawny things. If only I liked seafood.

We bought lots of food at the market - saucisson - roquefort and fines herbes (that's 2 kinds), cheese (can't remember the name but it's sharp tasting with a texture like softish cheddar - you have to eat it with grapes or apple we were told - tried it last night and it was good!), a couple of tuna steaks - the fishmonger was chopping up the whole fish right there at the market, several kinds of olives (I think Al has decided that olives count as a vegetable), some dried figs and a whole rotisserie pintade (guinea fowl - free range of course). That's another thing ubiquitous at markets - the rotisserie stand (sometimes the same proprietor as the paella). A large (1 metre x 1 metre?) wall of electric elements on a barrow provides the heat. The cook threads the chickens or other fowl onto a long metal skewer and hooks it onto the front of the heat, and the birds turn and cook. As cooking proceeds the skewers are moved downwards so that the least cooked meat is on the top and the most cooked is on the bottom of the wall. This way the fat and juice from the upper birds baste the ones lower down. At first I thought this might be a bit unhygenic but these birds are wildly popular - we had to wait 15 minutes before we could buy one - and the things are constantly turning and being heated. Well, we ate ours yesterday and we didn't have any problems.

After the market and a coffee and a chat we wandered round some of the elegant old houses that date back to the 15th century, when Pezenas was the seat of the Languedoc parliament. You can enter the courtyards of some of these palaces, which are very well-preserved and beautifully designed. Every now and then Al and Antoine would just disappear from the street and we would find them in a courtyard, admiring the stones, or the architecture, or engrossed in some historical plaque.