Thursday Market in Nyons and a Visit to Vaison-la-Romaine

Thursday morning we walked into the center of town for the market. The market stretched throughout the center, along several side streets and in the large parking area next to the town hall.  There were lots of food vendors, but also sellers of cloths, pottery, clothing and other non-food items; hundreds in all. We bought cheese, snails with garlic, butter and parsley, raviolis, and vegetables, and also stopped at a socialist-leaning bakery in town to buy one of their whole grain baguettes.  On the way back to our gite we stopped at the butcher shop and picked up our roasted pintade.

Tower High Above Nyons Market

The cat greeted us as we approached our gite, and waited around for lunch.  It was a little too cold to eat outside, so we had our lunch in the dining room and gave the cat his plate of pintade in the courtyard.  He devoured it, so we gave him a second plate. With the pintade we had the Grand Cru Chablis that Ghislaine had given us at the start of our trip.

In the afternoon we headed off to Vaison la Romaine again, which looked very different without the market occupying all the streets in the center of the village.  As the name implies, Vaison was a Roman settlement, and its Pont Romain (Roman Bridge) actually dates from Roman times, having been built in the 1st Century, as opposed to the Pont Roman in Nyons, which was built in the Roman style in the 14th Century.  We spent a lot of time wandering around Vaison, starting at one of the Roman excavations and the ancient cathedral in the lower town, then crossing the Pont Romain to the upper part.

Views of Vaison-la-Romaine

After leaving Vaison, we headed towards Nyons and stopped at a couple of little villages that I had wanted to see.  First up was Entrechaux, with an ancient tower and church high above the town.  The church was abandoned in the 1800's when a newer church was built in the lower part of town, which is where we parked.  We walked up the hill to the upper part, which had great views of the surrounding hills and the lower part of town.

Entrechaux

Our next stop was Mollans-sur-Ouveze, a small village on the Ouveze River.  Once again we parked in the center of town and walked up to the top of the village.  The chateau at the top of the village was privately owned, and clearly included a residence within its walls.

Mollans-sur-Ouveze

After leaving Mollans we drove back to Nyons, and parked at the parking area near the river so that we could stop at the ice cream shop connected to the lavender distillery. We picked up some rosemary ice cream, left the car in the lot for the night, and walked back up the hill to our gite., where we had aperitifs (no cat this time) and then dinner.