From the tree & the vine? Oil & wine!

Tuesday, 6-Sept. We really liked Aix. Why? Because Brice (AKA “Antoine”) had another surprise. See, the outside of his rental looks like:

Despite a famous architect—who did employ right angles—designing it, it looks like an ordinary apartment building showing some age. 

However, when we opened the door:

It looks sleek, modern, and stylish. Like a page out of IKEA, right? The thing is…

It is IKEA. All of it. The cabinets, the furniture, the fixtures, the lamps, the tableware, the silverware, the glassware. At first, it was cool. Like, interesting, the plates are IKEA, just like the fork. And the glasses. And the kitchen cabinets. 

When everything had the logo, it became odd. 

Now, this was pretty cool. 

The scheduled event was a tour and tasting of two wineries. Excuse me, chateaus. That is a French rule that requires that everything (grow, harvest, ferment, age, blend, bottle) occur under the same ownership. Goes back to the day noble families had vineyards around their castle (“chateau”).

One of the vineyards had an olive grove (zoom on photo). Fun fact: Olives are related to peaches, pistachios, and cherries.

Our tour had a guide-driver. That meant one can finish every bit of their sample portion. (Let’s see, each sample was about 1/3 of a glass. We had 6-8 samples per chateau. Two chateaus. Yeah, choose a tour with a van driver.)

In foreign countries, my ear was sharp to the sound of spoken English. Any kind. American, British, Australian, Jamaican. An instant solidarity happens, like lifeboats in an ocean. 

Hence, we became fast friends with a retired Scottish couple on our wine tour.  Conversation was especially easy after discovering the wife’s (black dress) name matched my mother-in-law, Sandra (yellow top).

When we returned to Aix, we decided to try a restaurant they recommended, Le Brocherie. Looks amazing, right? Yeah, we never made it. It is in old town Aix. That means we spent 1.5 hr trying to find it in the mouse maze of narrow, one-way streets. Never got there. Could not find a parking space anywhere close.

Why? Besides not being local, this is the size of many cars in Aix.

This is the Hyundai hybrid SUV we had. 

We decided to go the Casino supermarket with a parking garage. (That’s a brand name, not a gambling hotel.) It had the usual and lots of stuff we don’t commonly have in the States. Everyone should try normal shopping just for the experience.

Ravioli and jarred bolognese sauce augmented with vegetable meatballs was on the menu that night. Magnifique!