One Year Week en Provence
By now you know I have a deep love for France. The language, the food, the culture, and yes, even the people. It was instilled in me at a young age and I get so excited each time I explore a new area in this beautiful country.
Luckily for me, I have a best friend who is also a Francophile. Emily and I have been friends since we were 10. I can write a whole blog post just on our friendship alone, but I’ll save that for another day! Anyway, our original plans for this week were going to take us to Norway. We’ve had our eyes set on Oslo ever since seeing J.T. Roger's play by the same name a few years back in NYC. (Side note: amazing show!). For several different reasons our plans changed. And so, to France we happily went!
Em flew in from Los Angeles and we met in Avignon on Saturday. After what I can only imagine the French around us would describe as an ‘obnoxious American exchange’ upon finding each other in the train station, our adventure began!
First stop: exploring the Côtes-du-Rhône wine scene. We had a ½ day tour booked with plans to visit three Chateaus. We started at Domaine de Beaurenard, which is one of the 300+ wineries within the famous Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Arnoux & Fils in Vacqueyras was next. The art on display in the tasting room was more impressive than the wine, but that’s ok. We both enjoy a good art gallery!
Finally we were on to Mourchon. They (ironically) export mostly to the United States. We enjoyed the wine here more than the previous chateau, but the exciting part was meeting and speaking with the owner of the vineyard, a jolly ~85 year old Scottish businessman who now spends most of his time on the vineyard. And who would blame him? Acres of vineyards with beautiful scenery in the culinary capital of France? #RetirementGoals
To end the evening, we planned to attend the Véraison Festival, an annual medieval wine festival in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. And boy are we glad we did! This festival happens once a year and runs for a weekend. We were so lucky to catch it on our trip because it was equal parts ridiculous as it was entertaining. Picture entering a town whose entrance is marked by partially standing walls from an original medieval castle, being greeted by a band of musicians decked out in medieval garbs, kids running around with shields and swords, and every other person attending the festival looking like they were just cast as an extra at Medieval Times. That’s exactly what we experienced.
As we meandered around the cobble stone streets, we stopped at the adorable boutiques, purchased local truffle salts (like, the real deal truffle), and filled up our glasses with tastings from the wine stores which all set up shop on the street. For €5 you could purchase a wine glass and then enjoy the free tastings at each of the little shops throughout the evening. We also had the French dinner of champions, carefully curated after scoping out all of the food stall options scattered around the village: a fresh multi-grain, seeded baguette accompanied by the most delightful sundried tomatoes and fresh olive tapenade. Did I mention Provence is known for their olives? And what a selection they had. The olives played a recurring role in our daily routine.
After a few hours of wine and carbs in the extreme heat (temperatures fluctuated between 86-98 degrees will full humidity, even deep into the evening), we decided to make our way back to Avignon. Note to anyone who plans to visit the festival: pre-arrange a taxi to pick you up from the festival BEFORE you go. Turns out there’s 0 public transportation, 1 Uber driver in the region (seriously) and one local cab company that’s about a 10 minute drive from the centre of town. And they do not mind hanging up on you mid-conversation if your French pronunciation of one word is a bit off. After a few hang-up/redial situations, we (think) we booked a taxi and plopped ourselves down in front of the medieval cirque-du-soleil that was going on to close out the night. Because honestly, what would this crazy festival be without acrobats in full-on Medieval Times costumes?
About 15 minutes later, with no taxi in site, I pulled out my phone again to see if, by chance, the one Uber driver came up on the map. I do not know who was watching over us (well, I do, actually), but he appeared on the map, 20 minutes away. We locked it in and went back to marvelling at the acrobats. And the taxi we ordered? They called us eventually, likely to say they had arrived. We like to believe some other stranded, foreign souls happily jumped in. And if not, well, that’s what you get for hanging up on us 5 times. 2 points for the Americans.
Our next day should be called a marathon through Provence, because it was. Minus the physical act of the run, although by the end of the day the extreme heat left us looking like the run was actually included. Anyway, while we do not regret anything we did that day, we do regret the way we went about it, which was to book a small group tour. The challenge with these regions is if you don’t want to drive, you have very limited options: book an extremely expensive private tour, book a semi-expensive small group tour, or join the senior citizens on an over-sized coach that can’t even fit through the streets of the city you are visiting but is damn well going to try anyway. We went with option 2: semi-expensive small group tour.
Our group of 8 departed Avignon early in the morning and went straight to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue to enjoy the weekly Sunday market. Here we loaded up on some delicacies for our picnic lunch later in the day, saw some cool water wheels around town, and picked up some other knickknacks before heading off to next location: Gordes.
If you didn’t know anything about Gordes, from the outside it looks like it belongs on a postcard. The quintessential medieval town which leaves you wondering HOW it is still standing. Unfortunately, Gordes is completely manufactured. It didn’t fare well during WWII, was completely destroyed and then, get this, REBUILT to replicate what is was back in the day in the 50s. Our fantastic guide (enter sarcasm here, she was terrible), failed to tell us this until after we were driving away. What a waste of 30 minutes.
Our next stop was to the historic Abbey of Senaque. It’s still a functioning abbey that is surrounded by massive lavender fields. For those who do not know, lavender is Provence and Provence is lavender. Unfortunate for us, we were visiting at the very, very end of lavender season. So here was this beautiful abbey with fields and fields of essentially dead lavender. C’est la vie.
Onward to Roussillon – an adorable town that looks like you stepped into a Van Gogh painting. We thoroughly enjoyed plopping down in the shade overlooking the Ocre nature trails of the village and eating our picnic lunch: a fresh, flaky baguette with French tuna salad (I don’t know WHAT they put in the tuna in France, but it is always sublime), an array of colourful tomatoes, and the juiciest watermelon all from the market. After our feast it was time to explore the town. We popped into art galleries, discovered a decades (possibly centuries)-old olive oil making factory, and found a store that specialized in delicacies from the region, such as fresh jellies and jams, truffled products, olive oils, tapenades and more. There were many items purchased in said store.
The tour de Van Gogh continued in our next stop, which was a visit to St. Remy, made famous by the artists’ stay at the local mental institution. And yes, it is still in operation today. Aside from the hospital, St. Remy houses the famous church which is feature on Van Gogh’s Starry, Starry night. There are also photomarkers around town that point out the vantage points from which Van Gogh painted some of his most famous works. After getting to know the region more, it was easy to see why the natural landscape made for perfect subjects: olive trees, flowing waterways, lavender fields, brightly coloured houses with equally colourful shutters all surrounded by the beauty of the alps.
You might be wondering, wait…isn’t Van Gogh Dutch? Why yes, you are correct. But the artist spent a lot of time in Provence, painting most of his well-known masterpieces in and around the region.
Our last city stop of the day was to a cute village called Les Baux. We wandered around admiring the beauty of the petit churches, the small museums that line the streets (like the printing press museum we stumbled into), and the views of the alps in the distance. Pro tip: if you visit Les Baux, don’t miss Carrières de Lumières. It’s a really cool light show that runs year-long, but features different artists every few months. Right now Picasso is featured. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to be able to enjoy it, and we were not pleased we had to skip it. Negative point for the group tour option.
We ended the day at Pont-au-Gard. A famous aqueduct that was a local hotspot on this blistering hot day. Families and friends alike were jumping in to cool off and find some relief from the heat. We dipped our feet in and relaxed for a bit before the ride back to Avignon.
After a full day it would be normal to call it a night, but when you only have one night left in town and the annual jazz festival is going on in a 13th century cloister, you go. And so we did. There’s no better way to end a day than with a jazz concert under the stars. With a glass or two of the local vin in hand, of course.
Our stay in Avignon wrapped up with a tour of...Avignon. And declicious crepes. An adorable city in the heart of Provence, Avignon has the charm of the smaller villages mixed with the bustling nature of a true city. Don’t expect to find the cute, one-of-a-kind boutiques that line th are streets of the surrounding villages, but do expect to find enough name brand stores to outfit yourself in the latest fashions from Paris. The highlight of Avignon, though, is by far the Palais des Popes. A must-see when visiting the city. We learned a lot about the popes that called Avignon and this palace home (fun fact in itself that popes had castles and lived outside of the Vatican, right??).
I would definitely recommend a stop in Avignon to anyone traveling through Provence. Don’t expect to find the Pont d’Avignon though...that disappeared decades ago. You can imagine my disappointment to find that out. After all, I’ve been waiting since I learned how to play ‘The Bridge at Avignon’ on the piano at the ripe age of 10 to see it. You win some, you lose some.
To be continued...
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