Constance Leisure's Blog - Posts Tagged "mediterranean"

One of my favorite places to go for a day trip in Provence is down to the region of the Camargue where the great salt marshes of France are located. It's the place where they raise black bulls (the special Minoan bulls who take part in the Ferias and bull fights in Nimes and Arles) and where you see cowboys on white horses herding them or galloping along the beaches. Fuchsia flamingos graze in the marshes and an abundance of coquillage, all manner of shellfish, can be found there. This is one of the most protected areas in France because of the fragility of an ecosystem where fresh water meets the waters of the Mediterranean. It's an area of rice growing--red, black, brown and white--and delicious crisp white wines. We drive down to Sainte Maries de la Mer, known for its gypsy festivals, to buy Gardiane de Taureau, the regional specialty of long-cooked beef stew. Fresh fish is sold at stands right on the beach, and we eat clams and mussels near the small bullring in front of a dramatic bronze statue of a bull breaking boldly through a barricade. And then there are the drives through the marshes, the great "etangs" whose watery edges extend to the horizon, and the bird sanctuary where storks and egrets abound.
If you love Provence, I recommend Two Towns In Provence by MFK Fisher, and American woman who lived in the south of France during the war, one of our great writers (she translated Brilliat Savarin who famously said "Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are"), she writes with sensitivity and sensuality about her life in France where she was on her own with two young daughters.