Slowing Down for a Serendipitous Run-In with Taste
artwork by author
When I pulled into Eygalières, there was still an early morning mist and chill in the air. For a market day, it was almost too easy to get a parking spot in the quickly filling lot just as it had been almost too easy to navigate my own on-the-fly detour around an unexpected road closure.
I was still shaking my head at how lucky I’d been to get here as smoothly as I had. When I was but a few minutes away, I discovered Storm Adam’s torrential rainfall had shut down the most direct route. My new, do-it-on-the-cheap cell service had been shoddy at best in this more rural part of France, so Taste really had been my only compass.
I suppose with that being the case, I shouldn’t have been surprised that I arrived early to this Provençal gem, pulling up to the little village’s market just as vendors were putting the finishing touches on their booths.
One of the textile market vendors in Saint-Rémy had told me Eygalières was, in his opinion, the most beautiful market in Provence. I was anxious to see it for myself. The plan was to make a quick stop here before moving on to my second Airbnb in Lourmarin.
It was a Friday, and I still had Lourmarin’s own iconic market to hit up, so the hyperactive, annoying little voice in the back of my head was already coaching me to be extra efficient and judicious with time here. For my day’s ambitious plan to work out, this market would need to be a get-in and get-out kind of affair.
But whatever the control freak in me thought was going to happen when we arrived was soon, quite hilariously, thrown out the window.
In Saint-Rémy, I had been continually caught off guard by the different tendrils of its epic, winding market. I’d turn a corner thinking I’d reached the end only to see a new tentacle snake down yet another side street and then another. It was a shopper’s dream.
While Eygalières’ market covered much less ground than Saint-Rémy’s, the same surprise and delight played out marvelously here, too. I will forever remember walking down the first artery thinking I’d seen the entirety of it only to veer around a slight bend and see the market open up onto the town center and splinter into another three fabulous directions.
It was perfect, beyond picturesque and truly gasp-worthy.
It suddenly became very clear that there was only one thing in this great big world that could silence and summarily dismiss my obnoxious obsession with over-planning: a too-good-to-pass-up serendipitous run-in with Taste.
This is going to be my kind of fun, and it will take as long as it takes, I rebelliously mused.
As I took every inch of Eygalières in, I felt my pulse quicken just the tiniest bit at the sheer novelty of it all. There was the market itself, yes, but there was also the charm of the town around it. I had only just gotten there, and I knew I’d be back again one day.
The first thing I did was break my own rhythm and find a spot to enjoy a hot breakfast. I chose the quaint Chez Emily, where, between the miming of cracked eggs and the chef’s finger vigorously shaking back and forth, I was able to discern that breakfast would, in fact, not be hot, but rather an Americano with a side of toast, and much to my sheer delight, lots of butter and even more marmalade.
I sat alone at Chez Emily’s counter, sipping, nibbling and taking long, slow, deep breaths. An older local man came in at one point and chatted with the owner, ordered an espresso and left as hurriedly as he had rushed in. Shoppers browsed the stalls just outside as the tiny street started to buzz with the energy of good old-fashioned commerce. I put extra butter on my toast and made sure not to waste a drop of marmalade.
Before I knew it, I was playing back a hyperlapse reel of life as a traveling writer, rewinding all the way back to the Hotel Maria Cristina in San Sebastián, where I had decided over that pot of peppermint tea to finally embrace the purpose that had been calling me.
I slingshotted myself through the last two years, sweeping through Poland, the Baltics, Slovenia, Seoul, Kyoto and Mexico City. I pingponged across oceans from New Zealand to Cape Town before coming back down to earth again and occupying my spot at that café’s counter in Eygalières.
I know I was beaming.
I wouldn’t have known any of it back then. I could never have imagined the collisions, the beauty, the discoveries, the flavors. It wasn’t just remarkable that Taste had led me here this morning; it was miraculous all the places it had taken me around the world.
But more than that still, it was the places travel, Taste and this new way of living had opened up inside of me. I was meeting for the first time and living as what I have no doubt is the fullest, most content version of this mind, body, gut and soul.
Just before I stepped back out into it all, I thought about how my new life felt a whole lot like one of these fabulous markets – its unpredictable offshoots appearing just when I hoped they would, one after the other.
Follow the unplanned moments that make travel matter.
Read Collisions, a weekly Encounter Series by The Untethered Traveler.
