A bit of déja vu

We were sad to leave our lovely gîte this morning, and mostly sad to leave its wonderful pool. We spent yesterday there in a zen state, in our favorite spot under the olive trees, though I did bestir myself long enough to capture amazing cloud pillows on the horizon. God’s shaving cream?

Before we left our area of the Luberon, we had to make a small detour.  Don’t we all owe a bit of homage to Peter Mayle for our ideas of Provence? Well, Detective Don found that his house (not the original property that was the subject of the books, but his current estate) was a mere 7 kilometers from our gîte. So we had to find it and at least wave to the man who created the fantasy of living in this lovely part of the world. He learned his lesson well from his first home. It’s clear you can’t just drive up to the house and drop in for a pastis here.

We headed next for the Museum of Lavender, located in Coustellet. This museum is part of the Château du Bois – and the commercial outlet for their essence-of-lavender products, which are really pricey. We visited their farm on Monday, so this closed the lavender loop, so to say. And yes, we walked away with some products guaranteed to reverse the aging process, kill pests, cure warts and smell good.

And then we came to Vaison-la-Romaine, a town dating from the Bronze Age, which the Romans quite liked and invested in heavily. Then it went through the usual cycle of upheavals, religious and otherwise, for many centuries.

So we were having lunch, strolling through the ruins, and finally came to the tourist office, at which point it hit us – we had been here before, earlier in our trip.

In fact, we suspect we ate in the same restaurant.

What does this teach us? That many Roman ruins begin to look like many other Roman ruins after a while? That we are consistently drawn to the same menus? That maybe, just maybe, we covered this area pretty well on our first visit in April? That we are losing our minds?

Lots to ponder here. In the meanwhile, we have moved on to the town of Mornas, which we are pretty sure we have never seen before and where we will be spending the night.