Wednesday 17th August

Wednesday and Saturday are the market days in Uzes with the Wednesday one being all about food. People are everywhere and a lot of the people have the wheelie baskets that our mother’s had when we were young. They fill them up and no plastic bags. There are musicians on all of the corners and the ones near our apartment played nonstop all morning selling their cds and accepting coins from the crowds that either gathered round or like us were sitting at a café drinking coffee.

We bought fish from the La Poissonneir for our dinner but getting breadcrumbs to coat the fish with proved too hard so we bought La Biscotte and are going to crunch it up. Trouble is we are not sure if it is sweet or savoury – we’ll see tonight! We also bought cheese and a few veges. There are hundreds of people about and it’s hard to tell who the locals are. Then we went to La Poste to post a letter and get an envelope to post something small home for Tahlia. That was fun and in the first instance the lovely girl that served us wanted to charge us €56.00 but after a few laughs we got a bag for €8.50 – we didn’t need a three day delivery. It was already hot and we wandered around the shady streets and bought bread for lunch.

We had lunch and our beer and just lazed about reading for a bit. Jannie packed up the parcel and around 2.30pm we headed back to the post office to hand over the parcel, we were not sure if they would be open as there is no set time for the businesses to close for their lunch break. Some close for one and a half hours some close for two hours. The opening and closing times are staggered so that you get shops open whilst their neighbour is still closed! They were open and the same lovely girl attended to us and we were soon out of there. The neon at the Pharmacie said 33 deg. It was hair cut time for me and remembering Paul’s effort in La Charite we headed off. Half an hour later and a bit of mousse in the very presentable haircut we headed for the nearest Tabac for a beer. Some of the cafés and bars have this fine mist spraying into the air under their awnings. The seats are all full in these places so we settled for the place next door and adjacent to the fountain in the square in the hope that it would at least feel cool. It was obviously cool for the lady that had her feet in it and later the dog on its lead that went for a swim in the same water. The heat out in the sun is oppressive and everyone is sticking to the shady patches.

Back home again and Jan realised there wasn’t enough lettuce or tomatoes for our salad so back to the Casino for more. We are now getting ready to make dinner. Its 6.30pm and the heat has not abated any. We have closed the shutters to block out the sun and have all the windows open wide to allow as much air as possible. We also have two fans going flat out. Our washing this morning was dry in no time flat!

In case you wondered we found the car! We went to look for it today and Kevin finally recognised the building we had to go into to find it. Not easy! Anyway we were able to retrieve our large hats so we could use them tomorrow when we go to Nimes.