what a weekend

We were invited to a small town in the south of France to stay at the country home of some french friends, Marie and Pierre. The purpose of the trip was, of course, to attend the Country Music Festival in a nearby village. We set out to drive on Saturday morning on the one day of the year that all of France is headed down to the coast to spend the month of August. Houston traffic was nothing compared to this! So we got off the main road and took the small back roads all the way to the south central part of France. It was a nicer drive anyway. We arrived around noon at their home, and it was so huge that were were sure that we were in the wrong place. Pierre and his friends were jamming downstairs on guitars, a fiddle and a bass. We visited a bit and then just sat back and enjoyed the "concert". The guests this weekend were : us, an American who lives in Lyon, a couple who live in the suburbs around Lyon, another couple who live in Lyon, Marie's daughter and her husband and their 2 kids from Paris. Around mid-afternoon we started the meal with kir as we sat around the living room table. We visited and sipped our apertifs until it was time to move to the huge table in the other part of the room. We had a wonderful simple meal then after that was over (several hours later) we headed into the small town where the festival was to be held.

The town was decorated with American flags all down the streets and people were pretending to be American. It was quite an interesting sight. We saw lots of harleys, an old muscle car ( like Steve McQueen drove in bullet) and people dressed in cowboy hats and boots. We also saw lots of the "stars and bars" as on this motorcycle.