wil’s posterous

Tonight Tim, Eric, Frank, and I went to see the new show American Idiot based on music from Green Day.

 We started with dinner at Corso and then went to the show. It was fabulous. I will definitely see it again. I love music from Green Day. Tonight was also Night|Out so we all gathered afterward and schmoozed with the cast and had free beer/wine and finger desserts.

   

Click here to download:

American_Idiot_Berkeley_Rep.zip (313 KB)

These were the dessert choices at Apple today. I couldn't decide which one to get (even after staring at them for an entire minute), so I got them all.

 Hazelnut Mouse, Mouse Pyramid, banana Walnut Upsidedown Cake.

     

Click here to download:

Dessert_choices_Apple_today.zip (296 KB)

So, the bathroom had no shower. It had a bathtub with a handheld shower head, but no shower curtain. Had to squat in the tub so the water wouldn't get out.
 
They had a 120 plug in the bathroom but razor doesn't sound good in it. Sounds like a freight train. I had lent my 240-to-120 converter to someone but couldn't remember who. Beard getting a bit long for my taste.
 
We ate breakfast dowstairs at the cafe, then Tim drove us to Uzès for one of the local farmer's market. We tasted some nougat, salamis, olives, cheeses, honeys and some fruit paste spreads.
 
The nougat vender told us that nougat was originally from that part of France.
 
The cheese vender was really fun. She spotted both our gay-ness and American-ness pretty quicky. When we told her that we were from California she got real excited. She started talking about how sad it was about Michael Jackson. She explained that she loved the music, not the man. One of the cheeses we tried was from the mountains so she called it Brokeback Mountain cheese. She was hilarious. She even brought us a couple glasses of wine to drink while tasting the cheese. She was awesome.
 
The fruit paste spready stuff was being sold by a nun. Tim at first thought it was a costume but then noticed the drawing of the church on the packaging. She did seem like she would fit right in at a school holding onto a ruler.
 
At the honey stand I didn't have enough money so Tim went to an ATM nearby.
 
We got some black and green olives provençal, regular and lavender nougat, tyme and Rosemary honeys, regular herb provençal and fumé (smoked) salamis, Tomme du Montagne and Tomme du Brebis (sheep) cheese, orange paste, radishes, a red pepper, nectarines, bread, and a folding knife.
 
As we were leaving we ran across an herb vender and found the red peppercorns that were on our dinner the night before (Baies Roses).
 
Then off we went to habe a picnic under Pont du Gard. We found some big rocks next to the stairway up to the top of the bridge so we sat on one and had our picnic. Then we went up to the top of the bridge for some photos, then walked around nearer the water to take more photos. There were some kids jumping off the banks into the water having a great time. The water must have been refreshing in the heat.
 
Came back to hotel to take showers for dinner then Pride Parade came by right in front of our hotel!!! Took tons of pictures. Shower. Dinner @ Le Lutrin.
 
 
That's the end folks. I don't have any more notes for the rest of the night or the rest of the trip. They were on my iPhone when I had to wipe it. So sad, so sad.

Woke up around 9 am to the birds. I had lots of dreams about birds being stuck in places like the corner stairwells of large hotels, or even someone's car. One lady closed the door on a bird pushing it into her car while she held her toddler by the hand walking away. I ran up to her and told her the bird would die in her car but she didn't care and kept walking away. Analyze now.
 
We finally woke up around 8:30 (?) and Marc took a shower. I offered him water but didn't think to offer him coffee that Tim had made (I don't drink coffee so didn't think of it, d'oh!). Marc left then I took a shower and then Tim took a shower, we packed and made sure we didn't leave anything (I lost my English->French dictionary somewhere) and we headed out looking for a Taxi to the (TGV) train station.
 
We ran across a taxi stand nearby before, so we went there planning on finding a taxi. We found a taxi alright, but it was deserted. We waited and waited and a taxi finally drove by and stopped, but when Tim told him where we wanted to go he just shook his head and mumbled something and drove off.
 
A nice English speaking gentleman walked up and suggested that we try the next block. He said this "taxi stand" was used by taxis drivers on their break. Very clever. We did walk down the block and found a taxi and went to the train station.
 
Bullet train! This was my first experience with a bullet train (TGV in this case). We figured out how to validate our tickets (Tim's wouldn't work at the machine I used so he went to another) and found our way onto the train. Found our seats and waited for the train to leave the station.
 
I was supposed to read the travel guide about the Avignon/Provence region but it only took about a minute and a half for me to fall asleep. :-/ Tim did pretty much all of the planning for the trip. I was supposed to figure out what to do in the Langedoc-Roussillon region, but I just couldn't focus enough on it. I slept through most of the train trip.
 
We arrived at the Avignon train station, just outside of the city, and walked out of the station to find the Europcar rental company and gave them our reservation info. At this point the weather turned from hot and clear into a thunderstorm. It happened pretty quickly.
 
We finished with all the paperwork and the man offered to have another employee drive us to the car since it was storming and the car was at another lot across from the train station. We waited for a while with another couple also needing a ride to their rental. We finally got to the car and Tim started us off towards the center of Avignon with me trying to navigate with the PlanetOut map.
 
So, straight off we took a wrong turn and found ourselves driving over the river away from the city. Needless to say it took a bit to find our way to the hotel, but we made it and Tim dropped me off with the luggage and he went to park the car. He finally came back and we unpacked.
 
Once we checked in and went up the elevator with our luggage, there was one short flight up, another down, another up, and in the room another short flight down. Much fun with heavy and oversized luggage.
 
After a bit we headed out to the Palais des Papes where kids were breakdancing to Michael Jackson's Thriller. We had just found out the night before that Michael Jackson had died. Seems odd that he's not around any more. We took pictures of the Palace exterior and had ice cream cones.
 
Very beautiful inside. This was the head of the Roman Catholic Church for something like seven Popes as Rome was too dangerous during this time. The narrator went on and on and on (kind of like these blogs).
 
We walked back to the courtyard outside the hotel to figure out what to eat. We found out that Avignon was having their first Gay Pride Parade that weekend. Superb!
 
Tim picked La Forchette so we went and I ate a salad and a steak "Daube Avignonaisse." the salads and plates had these delicious red peppercorns that were so flavorful. They had no real bite, but had a very exotic flavor.
 
Tim and I were discussing something or other and I said "merde!". I immediately realized that we were in a nice restaurant and there was an older couple sitting right next to us. I got beet red and covered my face and said something like "je m'excuse.". The couple were staring at each other and the woman was trying very hard not to smile. It was all very embarrassing.
 
After dinner we went for a short walk outside then went to the apartment and crashed.

The WiFi service is so flakey in our room that it will be up for a minute or so then not accessible for many minutes. Very frustrating.
 
-wil