It’s Sunday and since most shops are closed we seized the opportunity to sleep in a bit. Our room is a cozy ‘family’ room with two beds and a pullout couch. The only downside is that Dale saws logs, so we end up dreaming of dirt bikes, chainsaws or old lawnmowers with pull starts. Somehow we manage to sleep through it all and start the day ready for adventure. Today’s adventure started with late morning omelettes and potato juice for Dale. That is what he ordered, jus de pomme de terre. Thankfully this wasn’t the waiter’s first tourist blunder so he brought Dale some apple juice instead.
Speaking of food, we finally located the macaroon shop and to our surprise and delight it was open. We knew that eating macarons in France would probably make them taste a bit better, but we wanted mind-blowing. We wanted it to be the best macaron tasting experience ever, so we climbed the ‘mountain’ overlooking the city to eat them.
The hills here aren’t exactly the Rockies, but many refer to them as mountains. And being able to climb a mountain in thirty minutes gives you a wonderful sense of satisfaction, a great view of the city and the ideal place to eat macarons. You could call it a ‘Mountaintop Macaron Moment’ or perhaps just ‘Triple M’ for short.
We rounded things off with a quick trip to the Museum, Musée de l’Arche. It’s a tourist destination, but also one of the only things open on Sunday. The most interesting thing we learnt was about the colourful buildings. We’d been wondering why the majority of the buildings were painted so brightly and apparently they haven’t always been so. Historically, they were known to have muted tones of white and beige with only limited use of yellow and red. We still aren’t clear as to why the bright colours were introduced, but it might have something to do with a visitor from the early ninety hundreds calling the town “a study of gray and brown.” And what the heck, it looks lovely and undoubtedly makes it easier to find your house in a snowstorm.
Today’s jackpot was Cathy Simon. Cathy runs a small tourist shop on the main road and sells custom painted pottery. Oddly enough a few years back she’d brought a photographer in to take photos of Saint Pierre for souvenir postcards and books. Understandably, we were very excited to meet her. With enthusiasm she started to help. She pulled out the local phonebook from behind the register, about ten-pages thick, and started cold calling people. Perhaps it’s not a cold call when whoever’s on the other end knows who you are, but still.
Our feet are tired from climbing ‘mountains’ and exploring. It’s time to get to bed before Dale so we can dream of macarons instead of lawnmowers.
Plus de macarons demain.
