Pronounced, as far as I can tell as ENN-ay-SEE.

Planning for this current trip started around two destinations – the Piedmont wine region and this town – supposedly one of France’s prettiest. And today was our lucky day – by chance, it was market day. We walked around for a couple of hours watching the clouds lift and the sun come out, pretty much in time with the crowds coming out. And even Mick said he’d never seen such a village – despite spending a year in France a few years ago; Annecy’s old village is indeed very pretty.

We love French markets and today’s did not disappoint. The most popular stall was one of the butchers – people were lined up to be served and after taking a ticket, patiently waited their turn.

While there was no lapin here – he did spot a man selling rabbit a few stall further on, and as we walked past, the butcher was cutting up a whole rabbit for a customer. I encouraged Mick to wait until we are at our destination in Tain ‘Hermitage in a few days time, as we will be there for 5 nights – which will be plenty of time to make and enjoy a rabbit casserole.

The pride in this historic village is obvious. It was very clean and flowers had been planted to enhance the ambience. There were so many restaurants, cafes and bars sharing the space along the canals with some patisseries and tourist shops. So many temptations.

Mick and I decided to buy something we each wanted for morning tea and to have that with a coffee from this stall holder.

Mick was so excited to see a stall selling oysters (huîtres). He bought a dozen of the smallest, Size 4 today, for €8. Bargain. I was very pleased I had brought one of his oyster shuckers with me in my luggage; so many times he has bought oysters and then needed to buy the shucker as well!

The other job we had today was to try to post the small swipe card back to our accommodation owner in Barbaresco. This was harder than we thought it would be. Both of us struggled with changing from Italian to French, and fumbled a few words to a worker in the La Poste about wanting to send something to Italy – it may as well have been to Australia. She told us that we would need to buy a small box for almost €13 to send ‘internationally’. Mind you – we are less than 2 hours from the border. Eventually she told us that we could by a stamp for €1,96, which we did, but we did not have an envelope. We had to choose to buy either a pack of 25 envelopes for around €6 or a small card with its own envelope for €3. So, we chose the latter and were able to post the little piece of plastic back to Italy. I’ll be interested to know if it makes it.

Around lunch time we decided to look for somewhere to eat and we found a little restaurant where we each had a local speciality – a mix of seafood in a saffron-coloured bechamel sauce. It was very tasty and we enjoyed it with a glass of viognier.

Just as we were about to leave, the local council workers came past and gave the street where the markets had just been held behind us a thorough cleaning.

I ventured out later in the day to take a look at the castle and a few other side streets we had missed. While our stay here was short – we are both glad we made the effort.

We have a very small bus trip tomorrow to Chambéry. Only a one night stay before heading to Lyon on Sunday where we will pick up an electric hire car. I figured that Sunday might be quieter than other days of the week to try my hand at driving in a large French city.