PROVENCE, FRANCE

Teresa and Rick Williams
May 15-31, 2006
By: terwms@swbell.net

Beautiful weather.  Lots of sunshine.  Delightful hilltop towns with stone buildings, narrow cobbled streets, and chateaus.  Friendly, helpful people.  Wonderful, inexpensive wines.  Fabulous Mediterranean food.  Driving through steep, rocky gorges, vineyards, and orchards.  Fresh local produce.  Crystal clear rivers.  A fresh-baked crusty  baguette every day.  A variety of wonderful cheeses.  Spending an hour or two (or three) enjoying a multi-course meal in a cafe full of local people.  Sleeping with the windows open and hearing the sound of birds, peacocks, and ducks.  Waking up with the sun in your face on a cool morning and looking our your stone farmhouse windows through blue shutters  across a valley and seeing Mount Ventoux  filling the horizon.  We experienced all these things for two weeks.   If this doesn't appeal to you, do NOT go to Provence in the spring.

What a wonderful place!  Our first trip to France was in the beautiful countryside and hills of the southeast.  We booked this vacation with Untours, a company that specializes is two-week vacations in Europe.  The price includes airfare from the U.S., rental car, and an apartment  in a centrally-located, non-tourist neighborhood where the local people live.  You are met at the airport by the local representative who is always available for guidance or emergencies if needed.  Before the trip, they provided us with the Michelin Provence travel guide, a Michelin regional map, and their own on-site guide.  Other than that, you are on your own.

We had a nine-hour overnight flight from Houston to Paris with a one-hour connection to Marseille.  We arrived with about 36 other "untourists" and were met by Regine Tomlinson, our French Untours hostess.  We were bussed to Avignon, an hour north of Marseille, where we picked up our rental car - a fun-to-drive, 5-speed Opel Mireva.  We were all staying in various locations within 10 miles of each other, but Rick and I and one other couple were told that, even with a detailed map, we probably couldn't find out apartment.  So we drove to Regine's house in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, where we met her husband Max, and our respective landlords.


Our four-car caravan took a 20-minute drive to the small village of St. Didier.  Our apartment was two miles outside of town.   We turned onto a small one-lane road and drove up the hill to a converted farmhouse.  Because of its remoteness, we received a discount off the normal price of the trip.   The farmhouse is on the border of the Venasque woods, a popular hiking region through the hills.

Having done one previous Untour in Portugal with minimal conveniences, we were pleasantly surprised by all the appliances, utensils and dishes we had - especially the washing machine.  There was no telephone but we never needed one.  The landlords  stock the apartment so that you don't have to worry about finding someplace to eat your first night when you are so tired.  We had a fresh baguette, a bottle of local wine, ham, pork, sausage, eggs, a large chunk of brie, butter, water, milk, orange juice, and about five pounds of local cherries.




Our apartment was on the back corner of the farmhouse.  The stone walls were 1.5- to 2-feet thick.  All the openings had shutters on the outside walls and glass windows or doors on the inside.  The bathroom window was the only one with a screen.  I don't know why they bothered.  We normally opened all the windows and shutters while we were there except on chilly or windy days.   Max told us that the landlords always complained about the Untours guests leaving their shutters open.   The French are very energy conscious and consider this wasteful since the closed windows and shutters keep the cool in during hot weather and the heat in during cold.   In extreme heat or cold this makes sense but if we didn't have the shutters opened then we would have to turn on lights in order to be able to see. We justified our actions because of the gorgeous weather and the fact that we paid for the views and intended to enjoy them. 

The sun came up about 5 a.m. and didn't set until 10 p.m.  By 7 a.m., it was shining right in our faces.



The kitchen had a no-longer-used wood-burning fireplace.  On the dining room table was a typical Provencal blue and yellow oilcloth tablecloth.  They are designed for indoor and outdoor use as they can be wiped with a sponge and aren't stainable.



The well-worn stone staircase goes to the bathroom on the right and the two bedrooms further up on the left.  Negotiating the worn stairs was a challenge and always required being very careful because of the depressions in the steps.  It was also a bit tricky coming down from the bedroom to go to the bathroom since you had to step across a void to reach the bathroom steps.  Luckily neither of us fell.   The bedrooms had limited furnishings - a one-mattress double bed, wardrobe, chair and small table.



View from the bathroom door down into the living room.  The bathroom was painted typical Provencal blue and yellow.

The living room was much bigger than we expected with a full-size leather couch and matching chair.  However, neither was very comfortable to sit on because of the sagging cushions.




View from the kitchen window to our lone cherry tree.  The area around us was only minimally maintained.  There was also a fig, almond, and olive tree on the property.  Rosemary and thyme grew in the planters but neither looked like what I've seen in the U.S.  In fact, the thyme was so different I'm not sure it really was thyme.  However, it sure smelled like it.  Good thing it wasn't poisonous since I cooked with it.

Speaking of poisonous, we saw quite a few scorpions on the walls and ceilings of the apartment, mostly in the kitchen and one in the bedroom.  They ranged in size from .5 inch long to 1 inch.  As long as we ignored them, they ignored us.  We just had to keep our eyes open.




Down the hill there was a cherry orchard.  Little did we know we would see them every day, everywhere.  The only thing growing that we saw more of were vineyards.



The smallest vineyard in the world was across the "street" from us.  There were only five vines.



View from the patio and most of the windows.



And speaking of the patio....

We hung around the area as much as possible after our day trips when the weather was nice.  Before arriving, I read all the books I could find about the area - the Peter Mayle series (A Year in Provence, Provence Encore, Toujours Provence), two books by Carol Drinkwater, an English actress who married a French man (The Olive Farm, The Olive Season), and The Magic of Provence by Yvonne Lenard.  

All mentioned the fierce mistral winds.  I just assumed these winds were only in winter but they blow 100 days of the year.  The normal sustained speed is 40 mph but gusts can be up to 115.  In 1999 there were 12 continuous days of 42 mph winds.  They start above the Alps, head south, and gain momentum over the Rhone Valley which acts like a funnel.  They are strongest in the area where we were staying and then die out as they hit the Mediterranean.  We had several hours of mistral on various days and had problems keeping the furniture upright on the patio.  We also had to close the shutters and windows to keep things from blowing into the apartment.  We saw many large stones sitting on tile roofs of homes to keep the tiles from blowing off.   Supposedly the mistral drove Vincent Van Gogh crazy but I suspect he was already headed in that direction.  To quote Peter Mayle - "The mistral can blow the ears off a donkey."