The Multicoloured Sunglasses: Les Ollières-sur-Eyrieux, Ardeche, France

As part of my trip to France, I spent a week in Ardèche with my cousin, her aunt and her grandparents, who have a house in the small town of Les Ollières-sur-Eyrieux. The town itself is ancient, with it's history dating back to the 12th century. Not surprisingly, Les Ollières is full of old houses and buildings, in various conditions. I was staying is a house that dated back to the 18th century - a large contrast to my house in Singapore! It was really interesting. The house still had three rooms that used to be used for cattle, that had been converted into storage space. Several houses also had pigeon holes - supposedly, pigeon droppings are good fertilizer for plants (and pigeon makes a good meal in itself).

Lanterns from the Bastille Day (July 14th) celebrations

Bastille Day fireworks

Canoeing into the left bank!

Anyways, Les Ollières-sur-Eyrieux, as it says in it's name, is situated in the river valley of the Eyrieux. Throughout the week, we did various things on the river: swimming off of the beach, canoeing/kayaking through the rapids, and doing some pretty scary high ropes over it. With all the mountains in the area, there was plenty of walking, and for me, running. Our high intensity activities were separated by relaxing days of rest lying and swimming by the beach. A few things I learnt from my experience were that, 1) steering a single canoe is a whole lot easier than a double. During the canoeing, I had a spectacular view of the hilarious antics of my cousin and her aunt, as the went from one side of the river to another, and in one particular case, beaching their canoe on a beach of pebbles. 2) running hills actually isn't that bad - I've always detested hills, but after a week of running up them, they have moved to second place on the list of what I dread running, coming in second behind intervals. 3) Traditional French cuisine is almost as if you're eating lunch and dinner at a restaurant. You have your appetizer, entree, fromage and/or fruit, at each meal. I have to say, the cheese was absolutely delicious :D . 4) My visit seriously reinforced the idea that in smaller villages, there is a much larger sense of community. My cousin's aunt and grandparents knew literarily everyone in the village. It was also quite nice to see how neighbors exchanged the produce from their gardens. As almost everyone in the village has a fruit or vegetable garden (or both), they exchange their produce: beans here for plums there.

The "tissage" - now out of use

We also took a few trips out of the village to visit a roman church built in the medieval times, and the caves of Soyons. The symbolism in the church was quite impressive, but the caves failed to impress after those in Vietnam.