Sunday we ventured out to the market place one last time. We got separated and spent about 45 minutes trying to find each other. We did a little bit of souvenir shopping and then got rained on again.
I went out for a little while to watch the ending parade The last parade participant had just walked past me when it started to rain again. It is hard to tell but it is raining and hailing the second photo.
We decided to walk up to the church on the rock we can see in the distance. There were active volcanos in this region at one time and there are rocky lava projections remaining. In the 900's, during a fever induced hallucination, a local Le Puy resident climbed the rock and had a "vision" that a church should be built on this spot. It took a lot of time an effort but one was built and has been there over 1050 years now.
It was an easy walk through town and up to the church. We treated ourselves to ice cream on the walk back to the apartment.
It was pretty tasty. Liam didn't like his quiche so I ate his and he ate Lydia's carrots and I ate Elena's couscous and we thought okay, now we will probably have some cheese and dessert and be on our way.
Was I surprised when the waitress returned with heaping platters of meat in gravy, lentils and rice and more bread. We tucking into all that and it was quite good. Next came a cheese board and more bread. Lastly the waitress brought us chilled custard type dessert and coffee. Yum! It was all good and we were stuffed.
All went well until it was time to pay and I discovered they didn't take credit cards. uh, oh. I didn't have enough cash so had to explain I would run to an atm to get more. I left the kids at the table and went off to find an atm. The first one rejected my card. Oh no! I went into the bank and the guy inside told me my card likely has a weekly atm withdrawal limit and I probably need to call my bank. I told him it worked the day before so he said I should go back the machine where the card worked. I went as fast as I could back across town to the machine I used the day before. No luck. What to do, what to do? I went to the apartment and gathered up all the change the kids and I had used when we played blackjack the other night. I went as quickly as I could back to the restaurant because I knew the kids and the waitress were probably wondering where I was.
I explained my card wasn't working and I had to call my bank. The waitress was really nice. I showed the lady my handful of change and she picked out the coins I needed to finish paying the bill. I had figured if the change wasn't enough I would have to return the next after I had straightened things out with the bank. I gave her nearly all the coins that were left (there weren't many) as a tip for her troubles. The kids and I returned to the apartment having had another interesting adventure.
Internet access will be limited while we are in Switzerland so there likely won't be a new post until we reach Luxembourg on Oct 10.