Thursday’s exploration of Perpignan

As Jennifer’s work week spun up, I did some exploration on my own. (I’m skipping a few days of slower time; I hope to fill them in later. Thumbnail summary: Monday cooked lunch for Jennifer, Rachelle and her family, then created characters with the kids; Tuesday low key exploration and did laundry; Wednesday played D&D with the kids.)

Thursday morning I headed inside the cathedral of Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

On my way to join her for lunch, I saw the local officials dedicating the new bus line. The last three days the road had been getting repaved, but they got it ready in time for the big event. I was surprised by one of the additions shown in the second photo: about as far from accessible as I can imagine.

Jennifer’s French class ended at six; we scarfed a quick bite of pastry that I’d brought during a pair of evening lectures. The first was an interesting discussion of “terrior”, a french concept for “land and climate”, particularly applicable to wine growing. That was an interesting 1.5 hour explanation by a member of the local producer/export board. His knowledge of wine was extensive, and he loved talking about the various rock types and their influence on the wine’s character. (Many of the students loved hearing him say “schist”.)

After his talk he had a quick wine tasting, where he briefly explained the proper tasting process (similar to the sommlier’s explanation in Urbino) and had us sample four wines. The first two were dry reds, the first grown on gray schist, the second on black. I didn’t like either much, but did taste the difference– the black’s accent flavors were much more intense. The third I really liked; it was a sweet but still tasted more of oak. They use an interesting process to stop the fermentation, developed by a science advisor to the king of Majorca in the 13th century. The last was less impressive– less sweet and fortified noticeably. Still, I liked it much more than either of the drys.

After his lecture and tasting, another speaker droned on about Dali. It was difficult to keep focused, mostly because Dali sounded like a dick– someone I’d have no patience for. He told long and rambling stories about Dali’s days in the area, which began as interesting tales and remembrances. Unfortunately, as Florenze got tired she began summarizing instead of translating more and more, and left out more and more. At some point he shifted from talking about Dali to talking about himself– and there was no clear signpost that made it through translation. Anyway, we all survived it, but it was after 9:30 before we wound up for the night. [That made for a long day, since Jennifer’s classes began at 9 am.] At least this was the beginning of the long weekend!

So Jennifer and I wandered by the room, dropped off the backpack, and hit the old city for a while. She was pleasantly surprised to see how close it was– both of us wound up with the impression that it was further away after our first day, but walking it again revealed that it’s only 5 minutes away.

After wandering for a while, we got a seat at a nice restaurant with some seafood on the menu. We each found something interesting to order… soon, I was stuffed on the huge bowl of mussels. After our tasty meal, we wandered back to our room in Citea.