想飛 I WANT TO FLY

I am talking about dog poop, contrary to the usual impression of the grace and elegance of France. Dog poop is literally everywhere. I was kept reminding of watching every step so I wouldn't step in it, although sometimes I wasn't lucky. There was one time when I was sitting on the bus, the driver waiting outside on the street for other passengers tried to kick away a piece of newspaper lying on the street but dog poop was found to be under the newspaper, and so he kicked right at the target. How hilarious. Maybe the French government should impose a fine for the dog owners to clean up after their dogs!

We heard that the city Gap is surrounded by Alps and is quite beautiful, so we drove there during lunch time. Since we didn't know where to go or what to do there, we stopped by the Information Office and figured that we can still get some useful information there.
Well, we forgot to take consideration of French's habit....the office is closed between 12pm-2pm. I am becoming very envious for their casual life in France....the working hour starts from not too early in the morning, close for 2 hours for lunch, and close again when it gets dark. Also, people get 6 weeks of paid vacation in a year (8 weeks in Netherlands). As for us Taiwanese, everyone is forced to be a workaholic. We don't get ANY vacation during our first year in a new job, and only 7 days for the second year. I don't see we have more productivity under this policy, yet the quality of life keeps us from being as happy.
Anyway....enough for complaining about the job. We called a friend for restaurant suggestions, and he directed us to this restaurant where it offers traditional food "tourtons".

I think it is a must visit place without doubt....it is just like a place only exists in a fairy tale. Although I already saw the pictures of Gordes in the travel book, really being there and looking at its beauty is totally different---it is just too breathtaking!

So I guess a lot of you have seen this background scenery from the travel book (both my Chinese and English travel book used this picture as the cover page). The building is Abbaye de Senanque, which is surrounded by lavender. Well, the picture I took is somewhat different....you don't see the beautiful purple color of lavender, because the lavender grows only in July and August. Just imagine that I am standing in front of a tranquil sea of beautiful purple lavender!

I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but we found this restaurant from the travel book Routard. We ordered fish (the whole fish again, which surprised me a lot) with couscous and chicken with banana. The reason that I am writing this is, I think this restaurant offers really great food and the food is not expensive. The African restaurant owner was so excited that his restaurant is recommended by Routard, and he took our book and showed it around to his wife (the big chef) and other African customers and only returned it to us after 10 minutes. With food and drink only cost 25 Euro. And the fish was not fishy at all and tasted really like Taiwanese style. I was wondering if millions of years ago maybe China and Africa continents were connected. This is definitely a restaurant that I will recommend!

So this is how you eat it....everything in the fish soup.
How did I like it? Well, if you must know, the first several bites were quite good. But then after the soup got cold, I started to feel a bit sick of it....imagine there were 4-5 different fish in it! And the whole thing tasted kind of fishy....I just ended up finishing all the bread! It was kind of fun to do some "work" on the bread and let it flow in the soup tho.

Voila! Here comes the Bouillabaisse. You will see 3 major plates on the table: one with the fish meat, one with fish soup, and one with bread and paste (don't know what that is). First of all, you should pick up a piece of garlic and rub on a piece of bread for several times, and put some paste on the bread, spread some cheese. Secondly, put the finished bread in the fish soup. Thirdly, you eat the bread with some fish meat.

I've already read some articles written by an author who writes a lot about great food in France, and I've got the impression that Bouillabaisse is expensive and only few restaurants offer good Bouillabaisse. So basically we have to be really careful to pick a good restaurant. However, the good restaurant recommended by that author and most travel books is Miramar--whose Bouillabaisse costs 60 Euro a person, and you have to order two Bouillabaisse, which means if you want Bouillabaisse in Miramar, a minimum of 120 Euro is inevitable! Of course for someone who likes great food like me, I can never leave Marseille without having Bouillabaisse....So we picked restaurant Oscar, whose Bouillabaisse is only 30 Euro, and we don't need to order two of it. So here it was....the waiter brought a big dish with 4-5 fish (note: they come with the whole body!) and other kinds of seafood on it, and started to scrape the fish meat to another big plate....