Enjoying Provencial Life in the Alpilles: Five Days in St Remy de Provence

 "Praying is important when you wake up

at two o'clock in the morning

feeling sick from eating something dumb the day before"

- Charlie Brown in C M Schulz' cartoon Peanuts 

Just over a week into our adventure and already a pattern is forming. If we thought we should have stayed extra days in Nice we feel we should definitely have stayed at least a month somewhere in the countryside of Provence.

Why should we have stayed longer? The list is endless, there is so much to do, it is so lovely to do nothing here and we would love to do nothing for days on end and then we wouldn't have to pack our bags and on boy do we have some stuff to cart around when we move on.

Residence Les Sources, St Remy de Provence, a wonderful place to do nothing

When I was looking to find a place to stay we considered everywhere from Uzes to Bonnieux but when we looked at the list of places we would like to visit St Remy de Provence just seemed to us, like many others before us, to be the logical choice for our five night stay. Also it gave us the option of a very limited bus service if we were too chicken to use our hire car much. 

It turns out that picking up and dropping back a car to Avignon TGV was super easy, and while it was Rob's first driving foray in Europe it turns out driving on the other side of the road isn't that difficult. In fact we really enjoyed putting a few extra kilometre  on the clock.

And now I must add a cautionary tale for would be travellers  in the hope that we prevent others having the same mishaps that we have experienced. They are course completely obvious pieces of advice but in planning the complex I overlooked the obvious to our peril:

 

1. Never buy a chicken sandwich on a train station. After three of us lost a couple of days of our holiday to food poisoning we learnt this the hard way; and 2. Always take a good look over your hire car for scratches. When we collected the car we were more concerned as to whether the luggage would fit, and what to do when the steering wheel is on the other side of the car, and failed to notice significant dents and scratches all over the car. Luckily the lovely lady at the hire place had been wooed and won by the kids so when I rang her within an hour to let her know our dilemma she was perfectly happy to have our lovely landlord describe the damage to her in French and it was luckily added to our contract.

The moral, look on the bright side and think positively it will all work out in the end. And now enough of that, lets get on and take a look at Saint Remy de Provence. AS we lost a day, spent by the kids in the pool and in no way considered a lost day by them, we didn't really have time to do the town justice.

On the evening we arrived we enjoyed a delicious meal at Le Bistrot Decouverte, and I must point out that I was feeling a little off before the meal began (it was definitely the chicken sandwich) . I wouldn't consider us foodies, we just love food, cooking it, sharing it and eating it. But only fresh lovely healthy food and perhaps we haven't been eating as well as we should lately.

Our slow cooked lamb was melt in the mouth and full of flavour and the vegetables were so delicious these alone would have well satisfied us. At home we seldom have dessert with a meal, but the pannacotta, chocolate fondant and   raspberry sorbet were divine. 

Restaurants in France have been happy to let us order  one main course served on two plate between the children which is a real bonus. Many restaurants have a menu enfant (chicken nuggets or a meat patty and chips) but these can easily be ignored. Still we have found ordering vegetables for the children can be tricky as Julian in particular is less than keen on a plate of lettuce. The kids enjoyed sharing fresh pasta with prawns and vegetables from our plates  and Emma ate all my mushrooms so I was satisfied.

We didn't make it back into St Remy until our last morning when we came for the Wednesday market. After a stormy night and persistent rain all morning we didn't expect the market to be happening, but luckily it appears to go ahead rain hail or shine. The clouds started to move on before ten, leaving a perfect sunny day,  and people started arriving in droves so it was nice to have to completely to ourselves early on.

 

Just outside of town we very briefly visited the Antiquities, ancient Roman monuments by the side of the road. Time did not permit us to visit the ruins of the ancient town of Glanum but it was amazing to see such well preserved monuments simply sitting by the side of the road.  I am sure this was the intention of the Romans in the first place, to ensure the passerby is well impressed by the might of Rome.

And now I think I'll leave it there and feed you this delightful part of the world in small courses, otherwise you may be too full to stick with me until dessert. Coming soon - The Camargue.