Ah, the Weekend, September 11 & 12

Saturday morning, SCAD's chartered bus took all us students to the market in nearby Apt. Here you should not be thinking of watermelons out of the back of pickup trucks. Imagine Walmart—or better, Super Target—taken to the streets.

There was fresh fruit, of course–amazing berries, melons, peaches, nectarines—and all sorts of other food items. But there were also vendors selling fabric, clothes (new, used, and handmade), shoes, socks, small electronics, jewelry and what appeared to be the French equivalent of Depends underwear.

At the food venders, shoppers tear away a plastic bag and fill it with the fruit or vegetable of their choice. This bag goes in a larger, usually woven, shopping basket. The last stop is to the owner of the stand, to have each plastic bag weighed and purchase tallied. It surprised me that there didn't seem to be much bargaining going on, at least with the food vendors. 



After the shopping trip, we were provided a picnic lunch by the Pont Julian, an old Roman arch bridge just down the hill from Lacoste. The sub sandwiches were of course on baguettes.

Pont Julian

After rejoining my patiently awaiting wife after lunch, we set out to explore Lacoste a bit. It doesn't take long. You could run a circle around the village in less than five minutes—if it weren't built into the side of a hill, that is. The roads are made of round, slick cobblestone and are very steep. Each row of buildings climbs successively higher than the one before and at the top sits the ruined castle of the Marquis de Sade. Pierre Cardin owns the castle now along with a café in town.

North end of town - SCAD's cafe is just around the corner.

Rachel in the door to our studio.

My orientation and tour of the SCAD facilities was Sunday morning–all of it. Following brunch, Rachel and I set out to hike to Bonnieux, the village about 5km across the valley from Lacoste (visible from our window). What started nicely turned into confusion, however, when a trail marker seemed to point us into the ditch of a local farm house. We searched around a bit for signs of the trail but eventually gave up and returned to our apartment, leaving that trail to be conquered another day.

Lacoste from the trail

 p.s. - if you are not on Facebook, click here to see the album of other photos we posted from our time in Spain. There are a few on our Flickr as well (see top right of blog for link).