You Must Be From Away

….when the cafes and streets are deserted, because all the Yanks and Brits are drifting around elsewhere on a pilgrimage to track down Peter Mayle, advertising guy who bailed out and wrote “A year in Provence” which kicked off the mass tourism surge in the 90s.

You hear them at a distance, plaintively wailing “Peter! Peter! Peter Mayle! Where are you?!”

They’re quite disappointed to learn that he sodded off elsewhere (Long Island, actually) to escape people walking into his living room with a book to be autographed. (I kid you not…)

And get rather tearful – hysterical, even – when you let slip that he fell off the perch last year…

Désolé about that.

As they say around here…

…when you can bike over le pont Julien, a 3BC Roman bridge over which passed the Via Dolomitia, connecting Italy with its Gallic provinces.

Although you don’t have to be in the Luberon to negotiate ancient structures (open to all vehicular traffic until 2005…)

But in Italy, it’d be il Ponte Julius.

Totally different….