Éauze

It’s a little before 11 o’clock. I completed my modest little 18 km walk. I’m in a modern patisserie at the entrance to Éauze. The forecast for today is 38 C (100°F), the hottest day forecast for this edition of the French heat wave. I have to find a place to stay tonight, having sent three SMS text messages to three different gîtes with no reply yet. Just also the possibility of opera tonight so I have to make some quick decisions about priorities. It’s frequently not convenient to find a bed later in the evening in a common sleeping room (dortoir). So maybe a private room at a gîte or small hotel? Last night woke up around 2:30 AM. It was a very small shared sleeping room for three people. I just decided to sleep on the chaise lounge in the garden under the stars for some truly refreshing sleep.

Oh well. I guess I planned myself right out of opera tonight. The opera starts at 9:15 PM. My lodging tonight is at Donativo. There is no specific charge. I decide what I want to give. Usually services are fairly limited (bring your own towel). The hostess is very nice and let me in before regular hours so that I could shower, do my laundry, and have plenty of time for a cool drink at the café across from the church where I’m going to Mass tonight. But the Donna tend to have limited services, including requiring guests to the end of house Long before the upper will end.

Regarding the church,. I stopped in at the church earlier during a liturgy of the hours (a cycle of prayer and readings observed throughout the day). They had a really nice group of singers. If they show up for Mass tonight, it’ll be very nice.

A word about French cafés. We don’t really have this style of service in the United States. I think the idea is that you are renting some time to relax in the commercial version of a front parlor. The service assumes that you’re not in a hurry and that spending time is the object of your visit. You could order one beer and probably spend the entire afternoon and no one would blink.

Note to self:
38 C =100.4 °F
35 C =95 °F
32 C =89.6 °F
30 C =86 °F
25 C . . . AS IF ! ! !Leer más