Last night I had my first dinner party, entertaining in Uzès, ‘une belle soirée avec de nouveaux amis y de la Suède, qui j’ai rencontré dans ma classe de français!’ (a lovely evening with my new friends from Sweden, whom I met in French class!)

Maybe this evening would have been a better night for entertaining in Uzès, following all the shopping opportunities at the Uzès Saturday market.

This morning Uzès definitely came alive. Many of the smaller specialty shops & restaurants, which had seemed firmly closed, flung back their shutters, braved the still chilly weather and spilled their goods onto the bustling cobbles. Tables and chairs, complete with blankets and offerings of ‘vin chaud’ appeared and a few hearty locals were seduced! Not me, I was ensconced inside with a frothing cappuccino, surrounded by exotic olive oils, an impressive array of salts, confitures and mustards, most of which I would dearly have loved to sample!!

The Uzès market, such a greta place to shop for entertaining in Uzès is not just confined to the infamous Place aux Herbes. It twines itself under archways and around corners, sprawling like a tumbling ball of yarn so as you turn a new corner you find the last few strands, a store selling table cloths, a man with sausages, an unexpected additional baker. How any boulanger competes with the existing permanent competition in the town is hard to tell. I haven’t counted yet, but there must be at least 12 boulangeries, a wonderful one just 10 paces from our front door…all those carbs and hardly a chubby person in sight!

Could it be that wine, bread and cheese makes you thin?  Ummm a diet I need to experiment with! More likely the only way to try to cope with all the gourmet temptation I am surrounded by is to exercise. Steps from ‘la maison’ are charming, if not uneven footpaths, flanked with crumbling stone walls and olive trees.
A mysterious doorway

romantically luring me towards an enchanting ‘Mas’,

tempting me hurry to a local immobilier and inquire ‘combien?’!