By Proxi

Monday started off much the same as our last few days: big plans of waking up early then realizing weg'd oversept by about an hour. This did not cause us nearly as much regret as it probably should.

Jen went off on a morning jog with Gregg and Ross and attempted to locate a French dentist that may be able to figure out something with her tooth. They found a dentist but apparently the exceptionally rude receptionist informed them that it would not be possible. The receptionist even interrupted them when they started to give them their phone number because she was so bored by the numbers that it started with informing them that, "Of course it starts with those numbers if it's around here!" Sounds like someone hates their job!



After breakfast we drove a short distance to Grignan for lunch at Le Clair de la Plume which was recommended to us by Gregg and Ross. I'm glad they recommended it because we passed by several places that were much more ordinary looking that we would have otherwise had stopped at and not had quite as memorable a lunch.



Jen had a fantastic salmon brochette with a puff pastry vegetable tart and I had an incredible tuna sandwich which I liked even though it had cucumbers on it (though I did successfully remove them from a large portion of the sandwich.



We also had some incredible teas which we had had for the first time recently at Paul and Caolan's place in Baltimore. The version I had was called Marco Polo and it may be the best tea I've ever had. I got it on the recommendation of the waitress. Jen taught me how to ask her which tea she would personally prefer and by the time she came to the table I had forgotten and panicked so Jen just asked her for me. Jen ended up unknowingly ordering the same one she'd sampled from Caolan. You can tell they're quality teas because it looks like each tea bag has been hand sewn (and probably has).



We drove back by way of Dieulefit because we'd heard of this quaint little place called Super U. Inside we found a market so incredible it had to be preceeded by the word super. I guess you could say it was a super market.



Then we found our way back to Châteauneuf-de-Mazenc where we had an afternoon snack of baguette, cheese, delicious little plums, tabouleh, nougat and wine.



After an afternoon of endless snoozing we had a few before-dinner drinks then decided to make some dinner. We headed over to the local Proxi to discover it was closed. At this point it was 8:00PM. We looked in the window at the sign displaying the store hours. Apparently we had just missed being able to shop there. It closed at 1:30PM.

So we got in the car and drove a few towns over to go to Les Éléphants. That too was closed. By this point it was approaching 9:00PM. There was no sign that it had just closed or been open recently. This place had been closed for hours. Perhaps the worker(s) at the Proxi had gone for an early dinner after closing the Proxi and Les Éléphants had closed shortly after around 3:00PM.



So we came back to the apartment and had a nice dinner of some leftover couscous, baguette, Le Vieux Pané and Babybel cheeses and wine. We finished it off with some yogurt and Bastogne cookies we'd gotten at the Monoprix in Paris. I'll be on the lookout for some more of these Bastogne cookies to ship home.

During dinner we found a Placido Domingo CD and listened to it as we dined. After we let the Placido play while Jen struggled through her recent Bill Bryson purchase, A Short History of Nearly Everything. She has put a tremendous amount of faith in Bill Bryson to be the person to convince her that science is not all bad. I'm afraid even Bill Bryson cannot make Jen want to think about a proton without her head exploding.