country strollin'

If you walk for ten minutes in any direction in Limoux, you'll quickly find yourself in impossibly idyllic rolling farmland. Grapes are the most common crop, as the region is famous for a type of sparkling wine called Blanquette ("Wine historians believe that the world's first sparkling wine was produced in this region in 1531, by the monks at the abbey in Saint-Hilaire.")

Yesterday's walk took us 4 km east of town and back, from two-lane roads to one-lane roads to gravel. Of course, we took photos of all the animals we passed. I fed some grass to a goat (not the one pictured below — he was less trusting but more photogenic than the other).

In the evening, we went to a pizza restaurant. Every single one of their pizzas had olives, and they all had emmenthal instead of mozzarella. France is too much sometimes.

[Click the panoramas to see them bigger]