Marie is here today and we are off to the small, nearby town of Lezignan-Corbieres. That is Marie’s suggestion for a day out. The route takes us through Capestang, the town with all the road work, only this time it’s 100x worse. We are at a full stop for at least 15 minutes to let TWO “convoi exceptional” (trucks with wide loads) go by. I swear we had to suck in our breath to make the road wide enough for those trucks to go through.
We stroll through the town. The church looks interesting but we can’t go in. I’ve never seen so many real estate offices and hairdressers. (Catherine later says that many/most French women go to the hairdressers once a week so the services are much in demand.) We look high and low for an interesting restaurant. We finally go back to a cafe we saw when we first started our promenade. The chalkboard said “Croque Monsieur,” essentially a cheese sandwich with béchamel sauce on it. It is a fabulous French specialty. We sit down and order a beer, a welcome refreshment after a pretty long walk. But the barman says they are not serving lunch! So now what?? I remind Howard that we passed a small pizza place before we got to the main street. We go back and are amazed that what looks like a little pizza place has a huge and beautiful garden. We have our lunch al fresco and we are hardly bothered by the wind. The place is called La Fumée. We both have nice salads. I order a pizza with olives, bacon (nicely smoked) and crème. Howard orders a pizza with chorizo and merguez sausages. We had a very nice lunch in a completely surprising environment.
When we get home I find that we have received an email from a lady in Lucca who is interested in dog sitting while we are there at the end of the month. She is a Great Britain-trained vet who is now a certified tour guide for Lucca. She also has a room for rent on Airbnb.com. We look at her Airbnb profile; I search on the Internet for any bad postings for her. She appears to be just as she says she is and we make a deal. Hurray! She is going to help us set up a tour plan in and around Lucca. Her dog-sitting services are way underpriced; she says she is new to dog-sitting. I tell her what we are paying Marie and that we would agree to pay her the same. She is delighted.