Montélimar interlude
We spent Monday and Tuesday nights in Montélimar in south-eastern France. This marked the halfway point of our ten-day road trip through France; we had turned northwards again after our visit to Carcassonne. Montélimar was another random place we hadn't heard of before planning this trip, but it is known as the capital of nougat!
In Montélimar we had a different accommodation arrangement to what we've mostly been enjoying (i.e. self-contained apartments with contactless check-in and check-out). We were in an "open loft", mezzanine-type ensuite bedroom, with the host, Jean-René, whom AirBnb described as a 39-year-old author, living and working downstairs.
Jean-René offered an optional half-board, pay-what-you-want service in which he would cook a three-course dinner for his guests. We went with this option on both nights of our visit since it seemed tricky to organise to cook for ourselves in his kitchen. This led to some interesting meals and a very interesting conversation the first night!
Jean-René's English was fairly basic (though considerably better than our French, and probably our German too), so for more complicated topics he would use a translation app to talk to us... i.e. he would record his sentence in French, then press a button and a female voice would speak the English translation aloud.
Believe it or not, this was the first time we had ever communicated like this, despite having read of others doing it! I guess it wasn't a thing the last time we travelled in non-English-speaking countries.
Anyway, after dinner on Monday I asked Jean-René what kind of writing he did. He told us he's a screenwriter, so I asked what kind of stories.
Imagine our amazement when he replied that he was one of the co-writers of The Crown, worked on stage direction for Emma Watson and Maggie Smith (who apparently speak/spoke good French) in Beauty and the Beast and the final three Harry Potter movies, and co-wrote the Budgie the Helicopter TV series with Fergie!! Now he's working on an epic fantasy script of his own. The things you learn when you ask, eh!
(Also: French writers, like most Australian ones, must need to supplement their writing income too.)
Here are a few other photos from Montélimar...
Before we set off on our Tuesday adventure (see next post), we stopped in at a nougat factory, hoping to do the half-hourly factory tour they advertised. This turned out to be half-hourly from 2pm, so we couldn't do it after all. But we did get a peek at the factory from the retail area, where we bought some nougat for the friends we'll be visiting soon.
In fact, everything else we investigated doing in Montélimar that day (the art museum, the château, even the post office...) didn't open until at least 1pm (or, in the case of the post office, reopen at 1:30pm after a 1.5-hour lunch break), which was getting quite hilarious by the end!
Anyway, we soon headed off into the mountains for our cave visit, which you can read about in the next post!