Provence - All About Food

The trains do not run on time in France. The TGV from the Charles de Gaulle airport to Aix-en-Provence was an hour late due to a "technical issue." However, that was the only glitch in our travels, and a minor one at that.

It did make for a long travel time from door-to-door and we were dog tired when we arrived in Arles. All the research paid off and our hotel, Hôtel du Cloître is fabulous. Housed in a 12th century former cloister, it is fully renovated in a funky 1970's vibe.

Our room has windows to an inner courtyard on one side and small street on the other. Importantly, unlike our apartment in Madrid, there are no nightclubs on the street.  (Madrid set a new level for our "sleeping noise" scale.) The hotel appears to have retained the original window openings and we have this cool small window, perfect for ventilation.

Note: There is no elevator and no air conditioning. That is fine for early April, but I can imagine it would be quite hot in the summer.

We were starving upon arrival, having had only airport/airplane/train food for 36 hours.  It's not that we were hungry-cranky, but things needed to change quickly. The hotel recommended Chardon.  A quaint restaurant, it serves small plates dishes using local foods. Everything looked great and we almost ordered one of everything. The waitress made some recommendations and we restrained ourselves. The food was amazing with perfect portions.  Their chocolate mousse has ruined chocolate mousse forever.  Seriously, the best ever.  (Check out their Instagram photos.  They scratch the surface of their loveliness)

We have been indulging ourselves with dessert at most every meal.  John even had a cookie and an almond cake slice at the hotel breakfast and I ordered dessert at lunch. We are justifying it with "we're walking a lot and we're sharing the dessert."  I know restaurants in Austin serve French press, but it simply tastes better when drunk when at a sidewalk cafe in France, served in little ceramic cups.

Once again, we asked the hotel for a dinner recommendation.  They sent us to Le Fee Gourmand, describing it as "French Home Cooking."  The place looked like a 1960's American grandmother's house.  The food was amazing.  John had a lamb shoulder braised for seven hours.  I went with the fish, deluding myself that it made up for the eclair with lemon curd we had for dessert.  For our appetizer, we had a crab dish with a cracked egg on top.  It was unlike anything we've ever had.

Before dinner, we decided to have wine on the rooftop terrace of our hotel.  A lovely woman in a nearby Cave de Vin helped us select a local bottle.

Dumbest question to ask a Frenchman: "Do you have a corkscrew?"