Jul 28, 2009 | Written by Patricia Murphy

Day 11 La Barben – Sete

I’m taking wagers as to how much weight I have gained on the trip. What’s your guess? Day 11 of lots of eating and no access to my home gym or running coach Dean or swimming coach Julyann! We have run every day except for 3 (once because I forgot to set the alarm, once when the roads were way too steep, and once due to the tour), but we have been eating so differently than we do at home. Not poorly or massively. We always share dishes. But let’s say my shorts are a little tight in the seat. I’m guessing 5 pounds so far?

So I insisted that we start the morning with a 3 mile run. Not a ton of miles, since we don’t want to be totally wasted for the rest of the day. But the Chateau Barben happened to be 1.5 miles out, so we ran to it and back, then we skipped breakfast.

We headed towards Les Baux, which was touted as one of the most beautiful Medieval rampart cities.  It was a lovely drive through the foothills of the Alpinnes mountains. We went through several cute small towns. At Les Baux, we paid the requisite however much it cost to park. At this point we are hemorrhaging Euros, so who keeps track? Every little thing costs about 5 Euros—crossing a bridge, parking the car, going through a tunnel. I’ll add it up when I get home.

Les Baux

We walked up to the town, and it did have gorgeous views, but John said, “I’m a little toured out” and I had to agree. We looked at some of the sights, then hit the road for St Remy de Provence, where Van Gogh fell in love with a whore and went mad. That should cheer anyone up!

In St Remy we walked around a bit and ate our first meal of the day at 1 pm—John had a lovely Steak Tartare and I had a Tagliotelli Carbonara. When John ordered his meal, the server looked at me and said, in French, “Does he know that’s raw meat?” “Oui.” I said. They must have had some people turn it away. The meal was so delicious that we were immediately ready for a nap! But we had an hour drive to Sete to our hotel. John is a real trooper with the driving. He’s doing such a good job. We hopped down to the fishing village of Sete, to our hotel in the middle of town. Our room overlooked the harbor where we watched the boats go back and forth for a moment, then we fell fast asleep. When we woke up we were ready for a tour. We walked along the Quai, where there was a boat-jousting fight that was fun to see. Soon we chose a restaurant and had a light dinner of shellfish and calamari. Then it was back to bed again.

Sete Harbor




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