On Wednesday we went to Stephanie’s one-time childhood hometown of Fayence to visit with her grandmother who wouldn’t be able to attend the wedding and her aunt who was staying there in order to attend the wedding.

We were also going to pick up some things for the wedding, so we loaded the car with a foosball table (baby-foot), and then stopped by for a little conversation accompanied by some cream puffs (les choux à la crème) and Clairette de Die, her grandmother’s favorite sparkling wine.

The weather patterns this time of year are such that it’s often sunny with big white clouds on the coast, while inland the blue sky disappears and the clouds grow dark gray and forbidding, unleashing the occasional afternoon thunderstorm. We encountered this phenomenon on our last trip to Fayence and this time things were the same, plus rain.

So we really didn’t have the time or the weather for a walk around the centre-ville, but I managed to get a shot of Fayence’s dense hillside layout just as the rain was passing. Though her grandmother lives in the “countryside” surrounding the center of town, it strikes me how densely these old, small villages were (and still are) built.