A Local Bar for Local People ~ Roussillon

This was the beautiful image that greeted us as we went out to dinner. The street was lightly illuminated and the sky was a deep blue.
This is how the street looked after dinner, and several drinks later...

It was still fairly early after dinner, and J wanted to go explore the night life of Roussillon. We went out the front door, to the left, towards a nightclub. They were playing very loud techno music - not a type I would consider cool - Eurotrash would be a more accurate description. Now I know that the drinking age is way younger in France, but the first few people we spotted looked around 14. Or am I just getting older? When the ambulance pulled up to this "Restaurant by Day - Nightclub by Night" establishment to tend to a girl who looked more like she should be working on book reports, we decided to have a quiet drink at the bar next door to the house, to the right...

When we walked in, it looked like a safer bet. There were still people dining in the back, and the people at the bar looked our age. Now I should tell you that by day, Roussillon is completely overrun by tourists. By night it dwindles down to a few, but is mainly inhabited by the locals, which explains the reaction when we entered the bar: Everyone looked at us like it didn't occur to them that someone out of the clique at the bar might possibly enter. This was far too amusing to walk away from, so we stepped up to the bar and ordered our drinks. Service from then on was pretty much non existent. We were given our drinks and there was a minor to-do about shutting the door so no one else would wonder in. We took our time drinking in the atmosphere and the fact that we were having a drink in a small bar in France, as opposed to our local watering hole. It was very dimly lit, there was a wide screen television which was playing the National Geographic channel - something about a ferry that had sank in the '80s, listening to various jazz and blues legends like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and the likes. And even though we were not accepted as part of the bar group, their laughter and warmth towards each other really seemed to emit throughout the place. When we were finished with our drinks we had to call attention for the bill. The reaction from the man behind the bar was almost Oscar worthy - like he had totally forgotten that we were even there - despite the fact that we were only 5 feet away. Now did I really need another drink that night? No, but it left me with a memorable evening.

... and this was a more accurate vision of the street that night as we were leaving.