Canoeing and Estival

Friday, September 10, 2010 Day 72

Roger and I grew up on the plains of West Texas, moved to the coastal plains of south Texas, then on to LaPlace, just outside of New Orleans. What do all these three have in common? They are flat. Even Paris was relatively flat. Montpellier is comfortably hilly. Those of you who live in the mountains would probably think of this area as pretty flat as well, but for flatlanders such as we, this area is hilly. This makes our walks wonderfully strenuous in a manner in which we are not accustomed. We are trying to increase the strenuousness by walking up and down lots of steps; indeed, I generally welcome steps and inclines, as I know they are helping me to build strength and stamina.

After our cardio stepping, we spent some time looking for crocs or similar shoes. Roger wanted some for our canoe outing this afternoon rather than wear shoes he has to dry out or which might get ruined. No such luck. Last week I did see a bin of plastic shoes in the market on the Place de la Comedie, but there were none there today. We knew we had to get out of the city center to shop, as there are virtually no stores in this area which carry cheap stuff like that. So we roamed streets on the periphery for a while. We did find a Carrefour, which is the grocery store we shopped at in Paris, but no plastic shoes. We finally had to give up and go home, as it was lunchtime and we had to leave for canoeing around 2:00.

The canoe trip was interesting. We canoed on the Lez, a river about a mile from the city center. There were about 15 in our group. Three of us had 2-person canoes, the other 8 or 9 had single-person boats or kayaks. Six or so of us speak English as our native language, and our guide translated for us. It took a good half an hour for us to get our life vests on, get the boats into the water and rescue the one kayaker who got swept downriver toward a low dam. Then we gathered our boats around the guides’ canoe to hear a bit of history about the river, including that it flooded in the past a great deal, which is why the center of Montpellier is a mile away, on much higher ground. The guide’s pronunciation was amusing. If F-O-O-D is pronounced fūd, shouldn’t F-L-O-O-D be pronounced flūd? That is the way he pronounced it the whole trip. He had trouble remembering the term “flour.” This came up a lot because there used to be mills on the river. The trip up the river was about a mile or so, until we came to another small dam, then we turned around and came back. It was designed as a history trip for all levels of canoers, so there were no rapids, no white water. It was fun and interesting nevertheless. We saw a swan in the river, and fish. On the way back, we picked a few apples (not ripe, I think), some figs and some blackberries – only a few of each. Except for the apple, we ate everything we picked. When we returned to the Maison du Lez where the canoes are stored, we were somewhat wet, as our canoes were molded canoes with very little interior space, and even a little water in the canoe tended to flow onto us at times. We did not sit up on seats above the canoe, but rather down in it. We have no pictures because we were afraid to take the camera along – we didn’t want to lose it to the water. We were not as wet as one of the guys, whose kayak cover was not securely fastened and he had lots of water sloshing around in his kayak. Several of us left looking like we had peed in our pants! It was about a half-hour walk home, and by the time we got back, we were mostly dried out. Roger’s shoes survived the event without much damage.

It was after 6:00 when we got home, and we were exhausted. We chilled for an hour or so, then walked across to the last night of the Estiavl de Montpellier. This time we bought a glass each for wine. Each glass comes with three tickets in it, and each ticket entitled the holder to a “taste” of wine. The glass had a 10 cl. mark on it, and I think that was the suggested serving size, but we probably got 12-15 cl. each time! There were probably 100 or so wines to taste. If we had been here longer, we could have had a real sampling of the wines of the region, but we passed on the wine last week and this is the final night of the Estival. We started with some food, and we took the opportunity to try a plate of six different cheeses, accompanied by a fig and a couple of pieces of bread. Then we sampled some falafel and our first glass of wine. We shared a bruschetta-type thing and had a second glass of wine. We ended with a nectarine tart and a chocolate cannele and a third glass of wine. OKAY!! We had a bit of a buzz on by this time. Next Roger left to get some candy and I went to the same booth I visited last week and bought some more fruit-infused vinegar. I had been using the ones I bought last Friday in my salads all week, and I used the poivre rouge on our fish one night, which turned out really delicious. Instead of the assortment of five small bottles I got last week, I chose two larger bottles, one of the framboise (raspberry) and one of the poivre rouge (red pepper). As a lagniappe, she threw in a small bottle of passion fruit. Delightful! We met back at the fountain and staggered home to bed. We were slightly tipsy and really tired, but it was a nice way to end the day.