I also took an afternoon to explore Apt more. It is the major town in the area, although its population is just around 10,000. It looks bigger than that. There is a substantial commercial area, lots of services on the perimeter, several hotels and restaurants, and some industry. It's more of a work-a-day than tourist town. There's a very nice movie theatre where Susan, Emma and I saw the latest Woody Allen movie another day---in English with French subtitles. The headquarters of the Regional Park of the Luberon is there, also. This is not a national park in the sense we know in the US. It is a large tract of private land that is sort of zoned to preserve its ecology and traditional way of life---at least in the case of the Luberon. There are several of these regional parks through the country, some more environmentally focused---like the park where our house in Normandy last summer was located. On my afternoon exploratory excursion I happened to pick a neat restaurant for lunch---just while wandering through back streets. It was a small place, but busy with locals obviously taking their lunch break from work. The food was good, but the people watching was better. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, lots of cheek kissing and "ca va's" going around. And I was disabused of the notion that all French women are thin and chic. Many of these ladies would have fit right into any American workday lunch scene.
I decided on Sunday to go for a more ambitious hike, but near town. The Randonneurs have a map of hikes in the area, and I chose one that was about 8 km, and headed out of St. Sat. north on the streets, then turned on to a path and came back through a steep valley into town. I got up the road and to the path, and started hearing lots of dogs---then some shots. That's when I remembered it was hunting season---for sanglier, the wild boar. I kept walking for a bit, then, after an internal conversation, decided that was a stupid thing to be doing with all those hunters and dogs around, so turned around and walked back toward town. By then the dogs were quiet, and no shots for a while. So I had another conversation and decided I was silly and I really wanted to hike so back I went to the path--le sentier. Along the way, I saw three hunters with guns, but no dogs, who assured me I would be fine down in the valley. So on I went. Ran into some serious mountain bikers who rode back up the steep rocky path I had come down. Then I happened to look up to the ridge line above the valley and see a dog and hunter looking back down at me---just a bit unsettling, but I was committed by then. It turned into a lovely walk, with much turning and twisting, some of which I didn't do exactly right. I wound up near town, on a road clearly not right, had to ask for directions and finally got into sight of the ruins so I could get my bearings and make it home. I think I turned an 8 k. walk into a hot, sticky 12 k afternoon adventure.
The next night I was invited to a birthday party. There was a really nice English girl, Emma, at the school the previous week, who was staying for 2 more weeks. I had invited her to come with me on last Sat. to explore a couple of small villages, and enjoyed her a lot. Her birthday was Monday, and Francis invited me and Susan to come over to have dinner to help her celebrate. Since Francis was a patissier when he was younger, he made her quite a birthday cake:
Alice will be here next week, and things will become much livelier.
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