So at the the risk of my explorations of the garlic and baguette planet fading rapidly from my memory, I now continue my epistle. Thuir, the tiny village we stayed in, is home to Cusenier, who make Cinzano, Dubonnet and other alcoholic beverages, so it seemed fitting to do a tour of the factory to see the world's largest oak vat, and my word, it was worth seeing, as was the warehouse filled with bags of sugar that are dumped into said oak vat, which holds 1000 200 litres. Now, I'm not much of a drinker myself, so the smell alone was enough to have me weaving about like a drunken sailor...or maybe it was the vertigo...but whatever, I'd imagine that falling into one of these enormous vats would be a very happy way to go, if you like that kind of thing. And I did taste everything, so perhaps it was the ten little glasses chucked down my throat in rapid succession...
There is an abundance of vineyards and baguettes on this planet, and mingled with the doughy smell of freshly baked bread and fermenting grapes, a lovely scent of chocolates and pastry wafted down the little cobbled streets, like a gourmet Pied Piper, calling to me to follow. While I can resist the urge to drink my body weight in wine, I am usually far less able to resist the rows and rows of truffles, pecan pies and e-normous eclairs that are displayed artistically in the windows of the local chocolatiers and patisseries. Fortunately for my waistline, my bank account imposed severe limitations on the number of truffles I could purchase and scoff. But the garlic planet is stuffed to the gills with gorgeous food and shopping Auchan, the huge supermarket in nearby Perpignan, had me in raptures of delight.
Only the French can do food like this. A cavernous shop, the size of an aeroplane hanger and filled to overflowing with the most divine, succulent, pungent, delectable (you get the picture) jars and bottles of pates and pastes, fromages and fruit, mussels, crayfish,oysters freshly plucked from the rocks, crabs still smelling of sea water, a veritable crustacean cornucopia of delight. I'm salivating at the memory. And not just ordinary old cheddar cheese either, you understand. No, fancy creamy, smelly, stinky, old-sock-flavoured cheeses that were begging to be purchased and polluted the fridge for days to come. Wonderful! I think there's something about eating these cheeses with a piece of baguette ripped off a fresh loaf, on the side of the road in a picnic spot in the Pyrenees, that makes it all the more special and delicious. And I haven't even mentioned the local market yet.I'll let the picture do the talking shall I?
Food featured prominently in the trip, for me anyway, because it is all so wonderfully presented and what we on the New Planet consider exotic, to the baguette eaters is simply every day fare, and I say this with a Gallic shrug of my shoulders. Even pottering around ancient Carcasonne with its fairytale towers , crenelated battlements and the obligatory winding, cobbled streets, it was impossible to escape the chocolaty, fudgey, coffee-scented smells wafting towards me like an exotic dancer weaving her magic spell around her awe-struck audience. A trip to La belle France, would not be complete without a sugar covered crepe accompanied by a cup of molten hot chocolate (and nougat), that sticks to the top of your mouth and drips down your throat with a typically French attitude. Yum, and to hell with the diet!
I can honestly say that I fell in love; with the tree-lined streets, the old crumbling monasteries and churches, the villages perched like mountain goats on impossibly steep mountain sides, the people with their shrugging and lip-pursing and wonderfully melodic language, the exotic and foreign foods and the sense of being stuck in the past at every bend in the road. What more can I say? Vive La France. (And very happy to have finally uploaded photos...)
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