All-Nighter, Part II

After we were done admiring the fortress, they took us to a ‘wine tasting’. I put that in quotes because it was really lame. The other wine tastings we’ve had (I’ve been to four now) we’ve always gotten real glasses and a selection of more than one wine. Here, no. They gave us a half inch in a plastic dentist’s cup. Classy. Not only that, but the wine, which had a pleasant light red color and I was expecting to be light and fruity, was anything but. It was this heavy, cloying Muscat dessert wine that I didn’t realize until I had taken a sizable swallow and went “blahhhhhh”. It was a challenge to finish even the paltry amount in the plastic cup.

But they did have olives out in a little bowl to sample. We ended up having about a half hour just to look around this store of ‘regional specialties’.

Honk!

I wonder if it’s real. I bet it is.

Sadly, it was being used to peddle goose fat.

They had every type of oil known to man.

Including what looked like motor oil.

It was a struggle to not buy the different spices and flavorings. I was craving pasta.

This was weird. It was right next to the wine vats and seemed to be a Jerry Garcia-styled compressor of sorts.

I hope they don’t sell flamingo fat.

This seemed to be the market for any kind of southern France merchandise. I really wanted this plate. 19 euros? I don’t think so.

There’s some sort of cicadian fascination around these parts. I see pictures of them everywhere, but no one’s ever mentioned them nor have I seen any buzzing around.

More cicada.

Neat pottery, probably cicada-themed.

They sold some sort of absinthe wannabe product but I read the label and I think that it said something like ‘extract using the same process used in the creation of absinthe’ or some such nonsense. The name “Absente” is probably short for “absent of any absinthe”.

Ah, pretty gel candles.

This is the not-as-pretty Camargues stream next to the gift shop.

Wildlife fun.

Oh, god, the tour guides. When we started out on the tour bus this guy grabbed the bus mike and started yammering on about the history of Aigues Mortes, which I guess is his job, but then he ran out of stuff to say but desperately wanted to keep talking so he started making lame jokes and unhelpfully adding in English words when I suppose he thought we’d be confused, with words like ‘lakes’ and ‘castle’ (because lacs and château can be tricky). Then it all went downhill and he attempted to have a conversation with one of the other guides but we could only hear half of it, not like anyone was interested at this point anyway.

I let my thoughts wander for a good five minutes, then I snapped out of my blissful reverie and said to Sam, “good lord, is he still talking?”

Note how it looks like he is mid-song. You know why that is? Because he is. Yeesh, it was awful – on the way back, he was like ‘why don’t we sing some songs? I just happened to bring my guitar!’, like hah, funny. Not intentionally! He really did bring along this acoustic guitar conveniently in the storage compartment. Along with a packet of songbooks so that everyone could sing with him. It had a rather planned air to it. This was never mentioned in the ‘come with us to Aigues Mortes’ email.

It was poorly planned at that, since he ran out of songbooks by the middle of the bus, not that I was really crying in bewildered anger. When all the songs had been sung, Tour Guide couldn’t handle just sitting down and enjoying the ride, so he handed the mike over (finally!) to the girls in front and implored them to sing some American songs, like the national anthem. This quickly degenerated into someone singing the Oscar Meyer Weiner song. It was a good thing to get off that bus.