La Vie en Rose in Eauze

Every year, for the last six years, we go to the same restaurant, La Vie en Rose in Eauze, for my other half’s birthday lunch. As we visit Eauze during both our Connect with Horses Personal Empowerment Workshops and our Walking and Wine Tasting Holidays and as Eauze is the starting point of our Walking and Wine Tasting Camino de Santiago de Compostella weekends, I thought I would share a few photos of this bustling little market town to whet your appetite.

Eauze is a cathedral ‘city’ on the St Jacques de Compostelle (Camino de Santiago) pilgrims route and the capital of Bas-Armagnac. Its origins date back to the Roman occupation, when the town was called Elusa. Eauze’s archeology museum houses Le Trésor d’Eauze, a large collection of over 28 000 coins dating from the 3rd century. It currently has about 5000 inhabitants. On Thursdays the little town just about bursts out of its seams with one of the largest and most popular weekly markets in the region.

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Our lunch did not disappoint! We know the owner of La Vie en Rose fairly well, she always makes sure my OH enjoys his meal. We started the meal with some red and white Floc. We had the 29 euro menu with a bottle of Tariquet Chardonnay. It was a bit too woody for my Magret 3 ways first course, but perfectly matched to our Confit de Canard main course. We both fancied the Croustade for dessert. It was feather-light and tasted of orange blossoms (fleur d’orangier) and of Armagnac. We had our coffee at a bistro on the ring road – another tradition – where we took the time to do some serious people watching.

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While we were eating our lunch, we could hear singing coming from the cathedral…I quickly got up to have a look and saw people laughing and chatting, streaming out of the main doors. Everyone was in their Sunday best, waiting for the bride and groom to come out. Soon the happy couple appeared and then got into a battered 2CV Citroen, for a tour d’honneur through the streets of Eauze. Everyone cheered and wished them well. Later they arrived in a horse-drawn carriage at the Mairie for the civil ceremony, as church weddings are not legally binding in France.

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Jerome and Karine certainly chose the right day to get married.  Eauze was hosting a vide-grenier (a flea-market) which meant there were lots of people around to share their happy day. After we had a good look around, we had our coffee at our favourite bistro in Eauze and spent a happy half-an-hour watching people go by. We heard lots of different languages: Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and English. It definitely is summer in the south of France.

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I’ll leave you with this picture of the Mairie in Eauze, remembering the victims of the terrorist attack in Nice, in the south of France, on our national day the 14th of July, when we celebrate: Liberté, Egalité and (ironically) Fraternité.