It's Not Just Sunshine and Lavender: A Brilliant Day Trip in the Luberon

“Once you have travelled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

The day we visited the Luberon the weather was perfect, as was the company. In the days that have passed since our Luberon day trip my mind has returned again and again to the memories of delightful day. Lovely Michelle picked us up and gave us the run down of what we would be seeing, which was brilliant as it covered all of our wish list plus plenty more that we would not have known to look for.



The only change in plans that we requested was to skip the tour of the Lavender Museum. I have always reacted badly to lavender and thought it best to avoid a room packed with lavender bags and essential oils.

Getting our of Avignon was a driving effort that we were glad to have avoided as we sat back and enjoyed the ride. The first stop was Fontaine de Vaucluse, a lovely village where the river Sorgue emerges from a spring to flow idyllically through the town. It was very quite at 11am as everyone else was visiting the market at Roussillon, being a Thursday morning, and we have seen a few markets and expect to see a few more over our weeks in France. 

After we left Fontaine de Vaucluse we visited a vantage point near Gault to take in the million dollar views. We called it that as every celebrity and their friends apparently lives in Gault. Michelle told us the view of Gault far outstrips Gault itself and as we drove through we quite agreed with her.

We also were able to see a number of Bories, little dry stone cottages that people have lived in the area going back to prehistoric times that have been rebuilt and reused by successive generations. Emma has been studying early housing at school this year, her class even built a thatched, wattle and daub hut this term, so it was great to be able to show Emma how people built their dwellings from what was easily available to them. There were stones everywhere in the Luberon, used in housing and dry stone walls along many roads so they certainly have been put to good use.

Our next stop was Gordes and if you have seen the movie A Good Year, starring Russell Crowe the main square of the town will be familiar to you. In fact if you are unfamiliar with the Luberon this is the movie to see, but take care the travel bug will certainly bite hard if you become acquainted with the area, as I hope our photos do justice to.

We particularly enjoyed our visit to the church, which was painted throughout and had a number of saints statues that the children really enjoyed looking at and of course there was the usual request to light a candle, a good way of making church visits more interesting.

Michelle recommended that we have lunch at a café called Marianna, and it was a delight. We enjoyed trying each other’s delicious salads, pastas and desserts. You can certainly eat some beautiful food in France. We have really taken to having our main meal at lunch time and something light in the evening.

Our next stop was the Abbaye de Senanque to see the lavender. We were aware that visiting during the last week of June we would have to cross our fingers in hope of seeing the lavender in all its glory. The first place we saw lavender fields was here at the Abbaye, but the fields were not at their best. We didn't visit the Abbaye, just stopping for a quick photo opportunity.

We were much luckier no long after when we found glorious fields of lavender on the route from Senanque to Roussillon. Here the kids ran around and played up for the camera. Rob stepped on one of the multitudes of bees and was stung and I had to jump back in the car when the itching from the lavender got to be too much.

While saying that, it was just glorious, all things considered, to be standing in a field of perfect blue purple lavender, exactly as you imagine it would be.

Roussillon was a town completely different from the others we have seen. While still perched atop a hill, this time the hills are ochre and the ochre has been used to wonderful effect in the village.

Roussillon was not crowded as the market was long finished and so we could wander the streets and the kids could enjoy glacés in peace. We found it to be a town where everywhere  you look you find a stunning view, set off perfectly by the colour of the town itself.

While I’m not someone who enjoys shopping, especially as shopping means more to carry and we have way too much stuff to carry as it I, at Michelle’s suggestion I had a look at a shop selling ceramics. This was not your usual bowls and plates but instead beautiful pieces, such as two discs I bought to hang in my kitchen, that are little works of art, and I could decide between the two. The elderly artist, Edith Fidler and her husband Eugene, now deceased, were friends of Picasso many years ago.

After Roussillon Michelle suggested to Julian that we go and visit a bridge older than the Pont du Gard which bears his name. And so we drove across to the Pont Julien, which allowed us to take in more of the lovely Luberon scenery.

This bridge, dating to 3BC, was part of an important Roman road leading to Rome, as all important roads do so they say. We discovered it was named after the local Roman town of Apta Julien, now simply called Apt, but we didn't tell Julian this and so he considered it his bridge.

And so we piled ourselves back into the car for the trip back to Avignon. Michelle was very complimentary regarding the beautifully behaved kids in the back. They love riding in the very back row of seats in this type of car, while Rob and I had the middle row. We really didn't hear much out of them all day but they claim to have had a great time.

It was sad to say goodbye to Michelle, another of the special people we have been privileged to meet on this journey.

We decided to get a quick bite to eat and an early night once we arrived back in Avignon. We were spoiled to hear a lady with the voice of an angel singing opera in the place directly in front of the Papal Palace and so we decided to eat in the café right that would allow us to continue to listen as we watched.

Sadly her performance soon ended and the meal was the worst that I can remember in all of our travels. However in light of the perfect day we had enjoyed and the delightful music we were treated to, the sun went down on a day well worth remembering for the good things alone. Of course we left feeling that we had simply dipped our toe in a very small part of this special corner of the world and agree that we must return one day for a much longer period to truly explore and get a proper taste of the Luberon.

 

 

Our Sojourn in Avignon - l'on y danse, l'on y danse

 Sur le Pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse, l'on y danse
Sur le Pont d’Avignon
L'on y danse tous en rond

- Extract 15th Century French Folk Song

After leaving St-Remy de Provence we had two nights booked in a lovely B&B overlooking the Papal Palace in Avignon. Sabine, our lovely land lady at A l'ombre du Palais, recommended a terrific café for lunch and gave us a map marked with the sights we should visit and also suggested we ride the little tourist train and have a light dinner at the park overlooking the river.

 Setting out with our plan in hand for our afternoon I can't say that we saw a lot of Avignon as we were very tired, I had little sleep the night before due to a really big thunder storm. We took Sabine's advice for lunch, L'Epicerie in Place Saint Pierre, and we were really glad we did.

Our view from lunch

We enjoyed sharing each of our dishes, including a delicious tasting plate, fresh pasta with scallops and saffron and salad as well as a divine cheesecake and pannacotta.

 After this all we were capable of was a trip on the little train which afforded us many lovely views, saved our tired feet and lessened our guilt at having seen so little of Avignon.

 

While we did not dance on the Pont Avignon we had lovely views of it from the cities beautifully preserved ramparts and the park above the Papal Palace.

 We chose to have this short stop in Avignon for two reasons; i) it is easy to catch a train from here when it's time to go and ii) we didn't realise how easy it would be to drive in France and we did not want to miss the Luberon so decided to see it as a day tour with a driver and the B&B advertised that they had a driver we could use.

 

 We did not regret for one minute our choice as we enjoyed such a lovely day with Michelle and Rob got to sit back, take in the view and enjoy the day. It was one of those very special days that we just keep having. To come to Provence and miss the Luberon would be to miss the jewel in its crown and I will tell you about it just as soon as I can.

A Lazy Day in Les Alpilles: Les Baux de Provence

“Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran 

We had one full day remaining before we had to move on again and we wanted to take it easy. I proposed we have an early breakfast in nearby Les Baux before coming home for a day of swimming and packing. But as per usual we threw our plans out the window and spent hours at Les Baux.

The drive from St Remy was typical les Alpilles twists and turns until we arrived at the car parks approaching the town perched on an rocky outcrop. It was nine o'clock and we got a great car park, in front of the guards cabin, but noticed that many people were arriving on our tail.

The town started out deserted but as we ate our crepes we noticed that the numbers where increasing but it was by no means crowded. We walk to the top of the town and found the castle, while we hadn't planned to visit we couldn't resist and coming completely unprepared we toasted ourselves in the hot sunshine while we wandered around the ruins with our audio guides. The kids loved the working recreations of the machines of war such as battering rams and catapults.

We had purchased tickets which also included entry to the Carriers et Lumineries, an amazing spectacle, in an old stone quarry at the bottom of town. The corridors of the quarry, where stone blocks were cut to build the town and its walls, provided the perfect backdrop for the Lumineries. Artworks by one of my favourite artists, Klimt, were beamed on the walls, and then constructed and deconstructed using computer animation. 

We are pretty strict with the kids when it comes to audio visual entertainment, but I am so glad we took both kids to see the Lumineries. It was wonderful to watch them running around while the images were projected on the the walls and floors and they attempted open doors of buildings or dance in red poppies painted by Klimt.

It was wonderful to get a dose of art without looking for strategies to entertain the kids in a gallery. Another perfect day..the packing on the other hand was less than perfect and after little sleep the next day was challenging to say the least.

At this point I would moan about why oh why didn't we stay in one spot for a month but as I am writing this five days later, sitting in a cute gite in a camping ground in the Dordogne I am glad we moved on or we would have missed out on this fabulous place. And as we have moved on yet again, before I was able to get this post up, this time to the Loire Valley (sorry I had a week of VERY slow internet making uploading photos a nightmare) I won't moan about travel days because at the end of a travel day we arrive in an amazing place. About enough of that, I have yet to tell you about Avignon and our amazing day tour to the Luberon and so many other wonderful adventures. Good things come to those who wait.

A Day at the Pont du Gard - A Perfect Birthday Adventure

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark

The day we visited the Pont du Gard was my birthday and our day trip was utterly perfect.  We head off reasonably early, arriving at around ten thirty to a virtually empty car park. We planned to stay two hours or so before having lunch somewhere in a town nearby with the afternoon plan of just staying at home by the pool. Just in case the kids loved it here we confirmed with the lady in the information booth that we could leave and come back after lunch. We need not have bothered, we stayed eight hours and could have stayed longer.

The Pont du Gard can not be adequately described it must be experienced, the wonder of the ability of the Roman's to create such a wonder nearly 2000 years ago.

We arrived prepared, bringing a light picnic brunch, our bathers and towels, yoga mat, paints and other art supplies. We were able to get a little sun shelter right by the river and here we set ourselves up.

First we wadded in the water, dancing on the pebbles (ooch..ouch), feeling the tiny fish nibble our toes, listening to the croak of the frogs as the clouds of the morning began to move along, leaving a beautiful day in their place.

I love our home school class rooms, but this one will take some beating. Emma and I have been talking about the Romans since our visit to Bath back in January. We set up our paints and Emma and Julian both enjoyed some wet on wet painting time. Julian filled our water jars in the river and collected some tadpoles in the process. 

Before we had time to finish our paintings Rob pointed out that it was nearly two o'clock. We couldn't believe time had passed so quickly. Luckily there was a lovely restaurant on a terrace overlooking the Pont and so birthday lunch was the next order of the day. Food in France is generally fabulous and this place did not disappoint.

We decided we would finish our paintings another day and began our long walk across the bridge and over to the visitors centre. Julian caught a ride on Rob's shoulders making me very nervous whenever they got close to the edge. That's one heck of a long drop.

We enjoyed seeing the masons marks and medieval graffiti carved into the walls, tributes from masons from one era to those of another whose knowledge had advanced building technology so dramatically.

 On the other side we found some ancient olive trees, reputed to have been planted in Spain 1108 years ago, and later transplanted here. I felt compelled to hug one of these beautiful trees, embarrassing my nine year old in the process, but it was so very special.

The museum was very good and helped to reinforce a lot of the home schooling had done this week. There is additional hands on area for kids which was brilliant. The kids could use a scale to weigh different foods and then work it how much Roman money was required to pay for their shopping and other fun activities.

It was about this point that we realised that it was six o'clock and we had spent the entire day here and we still had to trek back the other side to get back to the car, which took a good twenty minutes or so. With a forty minute drive to get back to St Remy before us we realised that our plans to eat at home were out the window and we decided that it we were going to have the kids up late we may as well do it in style. So we head off in the opposite direction and made our way to Uźes for dinner. 

At one point I had decided to stay in Uzés but found accommodation really difficult to find. It turns out that there was a be a dance festival on there this week and as much as we love dance we thought it could have been a bit overcrowded. As it turns out the festival  was cancelled on opening night and Uzés was very quite when we arrived for dinner at seven o'clock, but we really fell for the place.

We had a delicious dinner at l'Oustel in Place aux Herbes, where all the diners were watching the World Cup Soccer on big screen TV's and the atmosphere was terrific.

The kids were asleep by the time we made it home at ten o'clock but I couldn't sleep for hours, it had been such a wonderful birthday.



A Lazy Sunday in the Carmague

“Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.” – Seneca

Having found driving to be a piece of cake and feeling well enough by Sunday for a day out, we took a peek at the list of markets which showed us that Aigues Mortes was the town to visit. The drive took under and hour and a half and took us through some lovely countryside, which changed dramatically as we left the Alpilles and entered the Carmague.

Today we began reciting our new mantra of "doesn't it remind you of home". Provence and our part of Australia have some definite similarities, except of course we don't have medieval villages and castles all over the place, or anywhere at all for that matter. But the countryside and the weather certainly remind us of home.

We were all so excited when we saw our first field of sunflowers, Julian told me to take a photo quickly and was distressed that I was too slow but he needn't have worried there were field after field of them.

The market at Aigues Mortes was winding up as we had made a very slow start but we had time to collect the makings of a lovely lunch, with a roast chicken, rillette, jambon, crusty bread, strawberries, cherries, apricots, tomatoes that taste like they are full of sunshine and lovely tapenade. Such a shame I was still off colour but even just a taste was so good. We enjoyed our picnic in the shade by a carousel the kids just had to ride.

With more time we would have wandered the streets of this lovely town and walked the walls.  We drove around to the back of the city to take in a view unchanged for hundreds of years, but no one else wanted to get out to look so I had this all to my self.

Due to a combination of a fierce sun, a two hour car park that was about to run out and a sick stomach we opted to go in search of flamingos.None of us have seen these pretty birds in the flesh before and at it was very special. At le Parc Ornithologique de Pont de Gau we were given a map and told we could take a short loop, around 2.6km or a much longer one.

We first saw this beautiful bird sitting on its huge next on top of an aviary and then within minutes we were seeing our first flamingoes and they were magic. Actually mostly they were asleep, generally standing on one leg with the heads tucked in, but if you sat still and watched they seems to take it in turns to wake up and go fishing for their afternoon tea.  We felt it very kind of them to do us tourists this kindness.

Not far in we came across a bird hide, where we hid from the hot sun, and watched the flamingoes from much closer up. We even were lucky enough to see one stretch it wings and fly across from one lake to another, it was so beautiful I did want to miss it in the attempt to take a photo.

Having walked about a third of our way around we noticed we could take a short cut, which we quickly agreed to, but before we had even taken the short cut we saw a way out and decided to call it a day. While we had  only seen a fraction of this place we were well satisfied that we had seen the flamingoes we were questing after.

Being only four kilometres from Sts. Maries de le mer we decided that dipping our toes in the sea would be a perfect end to a lovely day. In hindsight we missed some wonderful things however as my plan had been to stay in bed we did really well all things considered. As so we joined every man and their dog on the road home from the beach, the traffic adding an extra hour to our return journey.

This gave us loads of time to get a really good look at this interesting corner of France.  formed by the two arms of the Rhone River delta the Carmargue is largely marshland. We saw a number of white Camargue horses, mostly all saddled up and waiting for riders at stables by the side of the road thought we did not see any of the famous bulls. The marshy fields are bordered by reeds and we saw what we believe was rice growing in the fields.

What to do in a traffic jam..home school of course :-)

We picnicked in the car on the remains of lunch and eventually made it home to fall into bed to get an early night before my birthday trip the next day to the Pont du Gard, a trip I had been looking forward to since early in the planning.