All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [42]
Arriving in the center of Avignon by train from Paris is like stepping out of a high-tech transportation corridor into a medieval fairy tale, with fourteenth-century stone palaces and narrow, winding streets. Charlotte greets me at the hotel with a bottle of Côtes du Rhône to inaugurate our trip. From the start, it turns out to be a comfort to travel with someone I’ve known my whole life and a pleasure to expand not only our relationship but also my understanding of all things French. Whereas I speak only a few phrases, Charlotte is fluent; though I can appreciate an extraordinary meal, she can dissect its ingredients and technique.
In the morning, we wander around, stepping out onto the Pont d’Avignon bridge that stretches over just half the Rhône. We could admire the town’s imposing palaces and whimsical shop windows all morning, but our noses lead us to the market instead. There, we are overwhelmed by the baskets of baby vegetables, bunches of fragrant lavender and thyme, mounds of olives and capers, and perfect rounds of cheese. We buy a few ripe figs and then meander to a pâtisserie, where we savor a flaky pastry stuffed with spinach and goat cheese. Charlotte is so knowledgeable about French food that I nickname her “Cousine Cuisine.”
We meet up with our group in the morning and begin our cycling in a tiny hilltop town, Crillon-le-Brave, which has a splendid view of Mont Ventoux, the bald-headed mountain that dominates the region (and that the poet Petrarch climbed in 1335, becoming the first person in recorded history to go mountain climbing for fun). The hotel is a collection of centuries-old stone houses cobbled together with lush pocket gardens. When we check into our suite, Charlotte opens the latches on the windows overlooking the villages and valley below, then twirls around the room. “Okay,” she says, clapping her hands, “I’m happy.”
We take a warm-up spin around the Plateau de Vaucluse, where the fields are thick with lavender. As we ride side by side on the empty country roads, catching up, I realize that Charlotte is as anxious as I am to get back in touch with something deep, true, and unafraid about herself. This is Charlotte’s first trip since her daughter, who is three, was born. She both revels in the freedom to be in adult company—which I take for granted—and aches for her little girl. Since childhood, Charlotte, a petite strawberry blonde, has always been a dynamo—a gymnastics champ, ballerina, concert pianist, artist, caterer, competitive runner. She’s entirely focused, and it seems there’s nothing she can’t do well. But the birth of her daughter brought her low, bluer than she’s ever been, and ever since she’s had bouts of feeling guilty about being depressed when she has such a darling baby, out of touch with her athletic body, her identity lost, feeling trapped in the house, uncertain of her future. Cycling in the Provençal countryside seems to restore us both to our stronger selves, at least out there in the lavender fields.
And so does the food. At a picnic lunch with the world’s best baguettes, olives, tapenade, fresh fromage de chèvre, and charcuterie meats, we regretfully refuse the local rosé wine since we want to finish the ride. “This is going to be the most difficult decision of the trip,” Charlotte says, eyeing the bottle, “whether to drink the wine at lunch.”
Charlotte and I make a great team: we both love bicycling between villages and coming back to our posh medieval-era hotels exhausted and hungry. We finish a long day of bicycling and climbing hills with a six-course French meal and a view of the sun setting fiery red over the hills. We lose everything but the moment as we eat lobster in a tomato shell; pan-roasted fois gras with peppered toast and wine sauce; roasted pigeon with ginger, white beans, and tomato; local cheese; roasted figs with cinnamon crème brûlée, everything finished off with a warm and crunchy