Friday, July 14th: adventure #2 of the day wasn’t exactly an adventure, but we did park and walk into the town of Prates to a kebab shop for a quick filling lunch before embarking on adventure #3. The kebab shop was bustling, with half a dozen groups sitting in shaded tables out front. While we waited to place our order at the counter inside, a cute little French girl (age 6 or 7 maybe?) was twirling and playing while her mom paid for their food at the counter. She looked at me with big eyes and I said “bonjour” quietly, and smiled at her. She came up really close to me and looked up at me with bigger eyes and half-whispered something in French. I did not understand what she said. Jeff told me she had asked “what did you say?” So I told her bonjour again. Jeff explained to the girl “nous sommes Americains. Parlez-vous anglais?” The girl nodded, so Jeff switched to English “what is your name?” She answered! I forgot her name, but it was adorable. By this point her mom was done paying and joined us. Jeff asked her how she learned English, and the mom (in French) told him she started learning English when she was pregnant with her daughter. It was a fun little interaction. Kids are always the CUTEST when they speak non-English languages.
The kebab shop people were super nice but they misunderstood my order and put what looked like half of a sliced raw onion in my kebab, so I had to dig deep with my finger and pick all of them out. My hands smelled like onions for the rest of the day. Once I got the onions out, the kebab was delicious!
Adventure #3 of the day was another half hour down the road: St. Martin’s Abbey. It was pretty hot, so we had to prioritize our activities. We opted to do the Abbey hike first and if we had time/energy, we would climb up to Fort Liberia on the way home. When we were here 15 years ago in 2008, we missed our bus to the abbey and ended up jog-walking the curvy narrow uphill 3 mile road between Fort Liberia and the abbey trail, so having a car felt extra decadent. As we drove up to the trailhead, we marveled that we had managed to run-hike up such a long narrow uphill road.
The trail to the abbey was about 1.5 miles of steep climbing. We parked, strapped on our hydration packs, and sweated it out, alternately holding out-of-breath conversations and hiking in silence. The birds were singing beautifully in the trees, even though it wasn’t early morning and we had the trail nearly to ourselves. Solitude was not something we were expecting to find on this trip, but Eus as well as the abbey trail ended up providing soul-filling silence.
It took us about 45 minutes to hike from the parking area to the abbey. On the way, we decided that we wouldn’t try to squeeze in a visit to Fort Liberia in the same day, so we could take our time at the abbey. It was a good call. The abbey looked just how we remembered it, all majestically nestled into the mountain like it was growing out of the rocks. We bought tickets to the next tour (4pm) since we had all that extra time, and while we waited for the tour to begin, we hiked up above the abbey to take a picture. We attempted to recreate our 2008 picture from that spot, but an ugly mesh fence was added sometime in the intervening 15 years, so the picture didn’t look great. We climbed to a different vantage point and got a better one.
The tour was lengthy (close to 90 minutes) and given not by a cute little nun like last time, but by a short enthusiastic ponytailed young guy with studs in his ears and a tattoo on his arm. He waxed on and on and ON about the pillars in the cloister, and we stood there for 20 minutes! I lost my ability to comprehend anything more than 20% (at best) of what he was saying, so it felt extra long to me. Jeff remembered information from the tour we took back in 2008, so when the tour guide asked our group a question, Jeff raised his hand and answered with his insider information! At the time I understood neither the question nor Jeff’s answer, haha. Jeff explained it all to me on the hike down the mountain later.
After the tour, we hiked down the mountain in just over 20 minutes, and hit the road homeward in our little rental car. We stopped at Villefranche (mini-adventure #4) to walk around a little and go to the bakery. On our way to the bakery, Jeff saw a soap shop and remembered that I was hoping to get soap as a gift for my mom, so we went in and bought a bar of fancy soap for each of our mothers. The guy at the counter was super friendly and helpful. He recommended the same lake that our Airbnb host Antoine recommended to us earlier, so we decided to go there the next day. If two locals say it is the most beautiful lake in the area, we figure we should go check it out!
After the soap shop, we found the boulangerie. They were out of baguettes that late in the evening, but we did buy two tasty looking pastries, and the kind lady added a third for free because it was the end of the day. One last stop on our journey home: Super U grocery store, for dinner foods. We found these nifty little containers of microwavable fresh pasta with different sauces on them. We chose three to share, and had a delicious dinner at home in our stuffy hot Airbnb cottage in Millas (which we learned is pronounced in the Spanish double-L way (Miyas), not with the French double-L (Mil-las) like we thought—French is a confusing language).
It was a good end to Bastille Day. We saw no indications of celebrations anywhere we went on July 14th, and didn't even hear any fireworks that night. We weren't sad about it.
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