The hot air ballon that I usually see was much closer to me today, so I got some better shots of it than I had previous attempted. The lens on iPhones is not great for distant landscape. I was close enough today that I could actually hear the gas burner...BTW, I'd never go up in one of those.
In Rouissillon I did my usual thing, bought papers, cafe au lait, and a croissant.
I returned to Le Mas Perreal just in time for another great breakfast...fresh grapefruit juice, yogurt with cinnamon and watermelon cubes, and finally quiche lorraine.
Then we headed 100 km northeast to the Gorges de Verdun, which is France's answer to the Grand Canyon. The ride went by quickly and we saw some great fields of sunflowers and lavendar.
Most of the lavendar in this area has already been harvested since their spring was so warm (thank you global warming) so the fields did not have the brillance that we've seen in previous years. But today we actually got to watch a field be harvested and that was fascinating...and it smelled amazing too.
Before driving along the Gorges, we stopped in the village of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, which is nesteled right into a very rocky portion in the Alpes de Haute Provence.
This village is a huge tourist stop, it's famous for its pottery. but the scenery makes the crowds tolerable. We had a great lunch, (carpacio of beef with pesto and french fries) with our table looking directly over the cascades that go right through the town, and then did some souvenier shopping.
The village is very hilly, and with the high temperatures, we didn't shop too long before getting back into our air conditioned Fiat and headed for the drive along the Gorges.
The drive is incredibly scary. I wasn't sure if I could do it, but we survived, and even found a couple of spots to pull over and take pictures of the river and lakes below the road.
The water looked especially inviting and we could see lots of swimmers and boaters who were obviously finding relief from the oppressive temperatures.
The white spots in the water in both of these pictures are people in boats.
We made it about 10 km along the road before we turned around and headed by to our B&B.
The return drive went fast and we stopped twice, once for cold drinks from a convenience store, and a second time for some ice cream in the village of Cereste. The award winning ice cream and sorbet at Scaramouche couldn't have been better.
We got back to our room at 5 pm and just relaxed before heading out for dinner at 8:30 PM.
We had dinner in the nearby village of Viillars. We've eaten their every time we've visited the Luberon, it's one of our favorite places. Our meal was excellent.
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