Venasque

While Ria was in school, Thom and I walked the twenty minutes up hill, and through glorious Provencal countryside, to Venasque, our little village. It is a walled village perched on a hilltop with grand views of the surrounding landscape of cherry orchards in bloom, grape vines still appearing to be dormant, stone houses and barns, and other fields and trees. The streets are narrow, a fountain marks the center of town, and the bakery is run by a woman so kind and happy it must be the warmest place in town.

At the square in front of the castle we saw an American father playing catch with his two very young sons, five and three I'd guess. The five-year-old kept yelling "I'm open! Over here!" to his father, apparently not understanding that, in baseball, that's not really relevant. I bought stamps at La Poste, so perhaps now we can actually mail some of the post cards we have purchased. It's amazing, really, that I can pay about one dollar to a tiny village in France and they'll see to it that a card I've written is hand-delivered to someone in Bellingham.