Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Viviers - 11th May

Viviers - We have a café in our square that normally does a roaring trade every lunchtime and Thursday nights, however the builders have moved in next door and their noise has driven the clientele away.

The older gentlemen, in the above photo, meet at about 7.00pm and as the night goes on more people arrive with a stool, a bottle and a complaint about Macron; they are our peaceful neighbours.
Between 5.00pm and 9.00pm, we have the lady that screams at her partner, the young mothers who air their babies' lungs outside our window, the barking dogs let out for a shit on the pavement, the guy next door with the loud Playstation, the church bells (we can always tell when it's six minutes past the hour) and the boys on their two-stroke motor-scooters, who drive past loudly & regularly to impress the chicks.

The plan was to have a lazy day today because tomorrow we have a long drive to a new destination and apartment. The town of Viviers was my pick for a leisurely visit; we had driven through it a few times and noted that the three peaks surrounding the town all have statues on them. So of course I had to go find the geocache on one, in this case the Archangel Saint Michael; not a restful way to spend the day. I have no idea how high it was but the geocache finder said from the car park it was 485 metres as the crow flies, which isn’t that much different from the path we took which was pretty well straight up.

From the top you get:

• 360degree views over the area, including the Rhone and speedy blue train
• You can (nearly) see the area's two main power sources; nuclear power cooling towers and a hydro power-station. Because big boats transport goods throughout France on the river a canal has been built to divert the boats around the power station.
• a statue of the Archangel Saint Michael slaying a dragon who was put there to represent the City of Viviers surviving WWII
• a small restored stone building where in the middle ages they use to confine plague victims; they would die getting here
• a couple of Americans who reside in France and a Frenchman who appeared to just run up for exercise
• a geocache, the most important item
• and last but not least, two very friendly goats. Luckily for us the Americans had brought the goats some offerings to keep the peace, which temporarily kept them from wanting to eat our sweatshirts and phones

Hopefully all of the above is covered in the photo’s below.

Two Americans and a restored stone building. Willhemina has a new friend who won't allow her sleeve to be chewed on.
The above shows the view(left) and what the hill looks like from below. There is no railing. There is about 1m from the statue plinth to the rocky edge. It is a long way down. It is dead scary! What we went up to see (left) and the French guy and two of his horny new friends keeping an eye on things

Cheese Experience No.20 Macaroni Cheese Is this a French dish? Well, of course it is; we saw a sign yesterday outside a café saying the dish of the day was Gratin Fromage Macaroni = Macaroni cheese. It was in touristy Gordes so probably aimed at the American market. To reduce the amount of food we have to take to our next destination this dish was the best use of leftover cheese. [Ed - shades of Frommer's "Europe on $10 a Day"]