Once again Jayné was too sick to get out of bed.  She coughed all night long and didn’t get any sleep.  Apparently she had coughed so hard during the night that she threw up.  I had slept like a baby in my wonderfully comfortable Queen bed all to myself with earplugs in my ears.  I think my body clock was finally getting adjusted to the time change because I slept the entire night through without waking.  So I got ready and left Jayné to sleep longer while I went out and explored the streets of Orange.

            The pace of life and lifestyle are very different here.  And it’s warm!  I only wear a sweater over my t-shirt today.  The day begins like this: 

9:00 am – The streets are quiet when I leave the hotel with only a few people to be seen.  A woman is planting a pot of herbs in front of her shop in the appropriately named Place aux Herbes.  Someone is walking their little dog.  Their footsteps echo across the otherwise empty stone sidewalks and streets. 

9:30 – I purchase postcards at a nearby shop and then go next door to a café for a pot of tea and sit at an outdoor table in the Place des Frères Mounet directly across from the ancient Roman theater.  I am the lone person sitting here, drinking my tea and filling out postcards with the ancient theater wall (one of only three in the world) looming over me.  Louis XIV called it “The most splendid wall in my kingdom.”  And I am also awed by its grandeur.

9:55 am – People begin to sit down around me drinking tiny cups of espresso and talking.  One other woman is drinking tea. 

10:00 am – I am suddenly surrounded by many people.  All of them are drinking coffee or another hot beverage but there is no food to be seen.  I enter the café to use the bathroom.  The girl at the counter points to a door at the back of the tiny café.  When I first enter I think there must be some mistake.  It appears to be just a shower stall and a sink.  Upon closer investigation I realize this is a squat toilet.  With much difficulty I place my feet on the slightly elevated foot platforms and squat, making sure I hold my pants legs out of the way.  It was surprisingly well designed and I was able to go without any “spattering”.  Yet I was still in a mild state of shock and left the bathroom as quickly as I could.  Only after I left the café did I realize I was so distraught that I had forgotten to take a photo of this unusual toilet!  The streets have now suddenly come alive.  Shops are open with their wares displayed on racks out in the streets.  People are milling around.  The boulangerie is especially lively.  I get in line and purchase pain aux pistou for breakfast.  It is a baguette twisted with garlic and pesto.  Yum.  I am very hungry and I eat it as I wander the streets – a faux pas I know but I do it nonetheless.  I find a bookstore and wander in.  No matter that everything is in French.  I can’t resist books of any sort.  I discover a great little egg cookbook le petit traité gourmand de l’oeuf.  Along with the egg recipes it is filled with quaint old drawings and artwork of chickens and eggs.  I purchase it. 

11:30 am – I head back to the hotel room to see how Jayné is doing. 

12:00 noon – Jayné is finally ready to go and we head out on the streets but now all the shops have closed for lunch and the streets are eerily empty.  Wares had been pulled back inside and doors locked, lights out.  I guess the only thing to do was what everyone else was doing – eat lunch. 

12:30 pm - We sat down at an outdoor café on the Cours Aristide Briand and ordered Salad Niçoise and a lemonade.  We lingered long over lunch, still amazed that we were able to sit in the sunshine with our sunglasses and only light sweaters. 

2:30 pm – We finish our lunch and are ready to look around the town.  By now the shops were all opened again.  We went back to the tissus Provencaux fabric shop where we had met the proprietress yesterday and I showed Jayné some of the shops I had discovered that morning.  Jayné was also determined to buy some lingerie while in France so we spent some time at the lingerie shop where Jayné was kept on alert by the efficient sales lady who would come clacking in her heels towards the dressing room and whisk the curtain open to see how you were doing (which by the way was also visible to anyone standing in the back part of the shop).  In Orange there are fountains on practically every street corner and in the center of many squares.  We admired the beauty and diversity of each one.  As the afternoon wore on the town kept getting busier and busier.  People flocked the streets to see and be seen.  Young people in modern fashions, people walking little dogs, people riding bikes, and everywhere people with baguettes in hand walking briskly as if they were heading somewhere very important with those baguettes.  Some were housewives who were obviously getting their family’s bread for dinner.  But many of them were young men in business suits.  I imagined they were heading to some sort of intimate dinner party and had been assigned to bring the bread.  “Now don’t forget, Jacques, you must bring the bread.  We’re all counting on you.” They had no doubt been told considering the manner in which they confidently strode down the street with their precious loaf of bread.

4:00 pm – I decided there are only two kinds of people in the south of France – those who do the watching and those who are being watched.  Yet the roles of each keep changing.  As long as you are sitting you are a watcher and as soon as you get up and go down the street you are being watched!   We sit down at an outdoor table at a salon de thé that Miriam had recommended to us and order thick hot chocolates and a cookie so that we too can be watchers.  The French take their chocolate seriously and there is an entire menu of hot chocolates to choose from.  I ordered the Rum hot chocolate and enjoyed it immensely (although it was still nothing compared to Angelina’s!)  The tables are filled with others who are also enjoying a beverage and watching the spectacle around us. 

6:00 pm – The crowds begin to thin.  We quickly look into shops we had missed at lunchtime.  The cute florist in his hat and apron is leaning on the wall across from his shop, smoking and talking to the woman from the hair salon.  He looks typically French and I want his photo but he is very shy about it.  After some persuasion from us and his friend from across the street he finally poses for us in front of his shop.

7:00 pm – The shops have closed and the streets are now almost deserted once again.  People have gone home to eat dinner or to a restaurant which have just opened for the evening.

8:00 pm – By this time the restaurants have started to fill up and people will be enjoying their meals until 11:00 pm or so.  On the other hand we didn’t have much of an appetite after our 5 o’clock sweets so we went back to our room and admired the purchases we had made today, read guidebooks and made plans for the rest of our time in France.