May 8th is a holiday in Europe, called Victory in Europe Day/ VE Day commemorating the end of WW11 on May 8th, 1945.
It is a day of celebration and remembrance with church services, ceremonies and parades. We were in time to watch the parade as they marched to the monument with music playing on a loudspeaker.
Wreaths are laid during the ceremonies at the monuments honouring those lost in the war in each village, town and city.
We planned to visit the village of Villeneuve-Minervois where a vide-Grenier was being held plus we had made reservations for a special lunch at a restaurant Monsieur Honey & I discovered five years ago and luckily it was still in operation.
It was a foggy, misty morning ...
And at times rainy ... and the GPS took us thru the Alaric Mountain region to reach our destination.
We first visited this village in 2005 where we almost became French landowners.
The property was almost everything we wanted. I say “almost”. It was missing the most important thing for our life in France an outside area either a courtyard or terrace. This was the deal breaker. Imagine what our life would have been like!
The property is now a pharmacy located on this plane-tree lined street.
We wandered thru the village and headed to the “vide-grenier” which literally means “empty attic” ... like a flea market, garage sale. It was being held inside at the “Salle de Fête.
There were many tables set up with a variety of items ... we acquired a trivet depicting the French tradition of “faire chabrot”
and a juicy melon!
We had hoped to visit the truffle museum however it was closed today due to the holiday. We checked out the Church and several monuments as we headed to the restaurant. 
La Grande Fontaine ...
A beautiful streetscape ...
We arrived at the restaurant “la Table de Pareur” where we celebrated Jenn’s recent birthday.
It was a good thing I had made a reservation as they were full and not taking walk ins.
Father and daughter ...
We had an amazing meal from the amuse bouche to dessert with great service.
We ventured further in the Minervois area after out lunch ... I will be writing a separate post.
