Weekend in Provence

Well, we just got back from an excellent weekend in Provence. Provence is about a 4 hour drive away from Geneva in the South of France. It is an area known for wine and food, two things Bets and I are very fond of!

We left Wednesday night after work and of course hit traffic and weather the whole way down so our 4 hour trip turned into a 5.5 hour drive. Finally, at 10pm, we pulled into Avignon where we had booked a room at the Holiday Inn Express.

Thursday morning after breakfast we headed into the old part of Avignon to do some touring. The "Old City" is completely walled. Avignon was a Roman trading post in ancient times and more famously was the home of the Pope for a couple of hundred years (~1100-1300AD).
The big attraction in Avignon is the Papal Palace. Most of the rooms are fairly empty and there isn't a lot to see but the views from the Palace and surrounding gardens are pretty spectacular.

After the Papal Palace we headed off to Arles our home for the next two nights. On the way we took a detour to St. Remy de Provence. I am not sure why St. Remy is so popular? It is a cute little town but there are no real attractions there. We had a great little lunch at this outdoor cafe (me pizza, Bets Lasagna) and a carafe of wine. We wandered around the streets looking in shop windows but neither one of us felt much like shopping. Betsy did buy a lavender ice cream which was to say the least rather interesting.

From St. Remy we headed to Les Baux which is a small medieval village set on top of a rocky bluff. Les Baux was a very neat place but it was also tourist bus hell! There were so many people milling about the little cobblestone streets that you could barely move in places. It was also ridiculously windy at the top of the bluff. Provence gets a wind from the NE frequently that has been dubbed the "Mistral". I have no idea what it means but it had us sneezing like crazy that first day. The weather was nice (~20C) but the wind made it such that shorts weren't an option.

After escaping the package tourist hordes in Les Baux we whipped along the winding country roads to Arles only 25KM or so away, passing through sleepy little villages all along the way.

Arles was the major Roman outpost in the area 2000 years ago and has some great roman ruins including a colosseum and an outdoor theatre. When we arrived in Arles we managed to navigate through the narrow one-way streets to our hotel and got settled in. Our hotel was great (Hotel de l'Amphitheatre) only a block from the Roman Colosseum and right in the centre of town.

After freshening up a bit we went for a walk around town before stopping at the Place du Forum for a drink. The Place du Forum is a central gathering spot with a bunch of cafes and outdoor patios in the middle.

For dinner that night we had spotted a Tapas bar only a few blocks from the hotel and decided to go check it out. The interior was very cool, stone walls and wooden beams all recently refurbished gave the place great atmosphere and they had a non-fumeur (non-smoking) section!

The food was excellent. We split a bunch of tapas plates including marinated peppers, roasted lamb kebabs, chicken w/saffron rice, salad w/goat cheese, tomato/mozzarella salad and two wonderful prawn dishes in garlic and oil and in a tomato salsa.

For dessert I had an excellent little chocolate mousse and Betsy had a superb cinnamon creme brulee.

Fully stuffed, we wandered back to the Place du Forum for a nightcap but found Arles absolutely dead. The wind had picked up so the few people around were drinking (and smoking) inside the bars and the outdoor tables were empty. Not wanting to deal with the smoke we decided to call it a night and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we headed out to find some breakfast. The hotel provided breakfast for an extra 7Euro ($9USD) per person but I always find the hotel breakfast is a bit of a rip-off for a coffee and croissant.

After wandering for what seemed forever we finally stopped for coffee and picked up a couple of Pain au Chocolat's (Chocolate Croissants) at the Boulangerie (Bakery). Fully satisfied with our European breakfast we headed off to the Colosseum.

The colosseum was almost empty at 930am so we had the place to ourselves. First thing we did was head up to the very top. I don't think Bets was happy with this idea as it was as windy on Friday as it had been on Thursday and with no railing and 2000 year old stairs or rickety metal bleachers to climb up it was a challenge. After reaching the top Betsy was ready to crawl back down to avoid being blown off but I convinced her to walk along the top row of seats to where there was a railing and we headed down a level.

We spent about 30mins wandering around the old colosseum exploring all the different passage ways and rooms. The colosseum is still in use for bull fights and holds about 10000 people. I read somewhere that it was at its peak the biggest colosseum outside of rome. They are doing a major refurbishing project and rebuilding and reinforcing it in sections.

From the colosseum we headed over to the Theatre Antique which was only a block away. On our way we checked out a pottery fair that was going on in the park. All sorts of great locally made bowls, plates etc were for sale. The theatre antique would be a great place to watch a concert though there wasn't much to see touring it so we ended up just taking a few pictures over the fence.

From there it was off to lunch at Cafe Van Gogh at the Place du Forum. Van Gogh lived in Arles for a good portion of his life and Arles was the place he went nuts and cut off his ear. He ended up checking himself into an asylum for a year near St. Remy. The cafe where we ate lunch is famously depicted in his "Cafe la Nuit" painting.

We ate a completely uninspiring Croque Monsieur (Fancy grilled ham and cheese with Bechamel sauce) and an equally disappointing half-litre of Cote du Rhone.

I was still hungry after lunch and having spied a sandwich shop next to the Place du Forum decided to grab a quick sandwich to go. The women who owned/worked at the shop turned out to be from Vancouver! We chatted with her for a little while then took off to see one of the more famous churchs in Arles. The church wasn’t that special and I couldn’t even tell you the name of it. My sandwich however was excellent, tomate, mozzarella, jambon cru, basil, and locally pressed olive oil!

After another happy hour spent at the Place du Forum we went to Chez Gigi for dinner. I had been there several years earlier and remember it being quite good especially the margaritas and nachos! This time the nachos weren’t on the menu but the Margaritas were good and I scored a free one for rolling a double 4 with a set of dice. When you first arrive you get to roll two dice if you hit a double you get a free drink. Betsy being the gambling queen was all over this but didn’t hit a double but I did hit the double and got a free margarita.

The meal was pretty good though too much food. I had chicken enchiladas and Bets had zuchini, squash and courgette stuffed with meat with a tomato sauce over the top. Both decent meals but we were too stuffed even for dessert! The other interesting thing was that right at the end of our meal the power went out. At first we thought it was just our restaurant but it turned out to be the whole town (and from the sounds of it the whole nearby area).

With no power we headed back to the hotel fairly early as we didn’t want to try and find our hotel in the pitch dark. The power ended up being off for an hour and a half and we never did find out the cause.

Saturday is market day in Arles and before checking out of our hotel we decided to check it out. It was a beautiful day and the wind seemed to have died down a bit so wandering through the market was much more pleasant than it might have been.

We’ve spent a lot of time in the Ferney-Voltaire Saturday market and the Divonne-Les-Bains Sunday market near our home in Nyon but the Arles market seemed quite a bit larger. A lot of the same things, fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, bread etc but there was also a lot of olives, tapenades and Provencale patterned table clothes, napkins and pottery. We ended up buying an olive dish and some tapenade (along with the requisite Pain au Chocolats). Betsy also bought a small carton of locally grown strawberries which have just come into season and they were excellent.

From the market we went back and checked out of the hotel. Our plan that day was to head north of Avignon and into the wine country where we would tour through some of the famous Cotes Du Rhone wine villages, (Vacequeras, Gigondas, Sablet, Vaison la Romaine etc)

It took about an hour to get to the start of our tour by which time it was lunch. We stopped at one little village but didn’t like either of the little restaurants we saw. We did do a couple of tastings and ended up buying some wine at one of the tastings.

The tastings are a little overwhelming. There are dozens of different bottles in each tasting room and honestly they all taste good. Yes they taste different but none of them are bad. It is hard not knowing any of the different vineyards which one we should stop at and which wines we should taste.

We decided to do a picnic so headed off to the Intermarche (Grocery superstore) in Vaison-la-Romaine and picked up some fromage (cheese), a gouda w/cumin seeds and a soft cheese that I don’t remember the name but was similar to brie though nuttier tasting, some charcuterie (salami), and pain (bread).

We then found a little picnic area in a town called Seguret and had a great little lunch and a glass of wine.

The rest of the afternoon was spent winding around through the little wine villages on our way down south to our eventual destination Roussillon.

The country is absolutely beautiful with rolling hills and vineyards everywhere. As we headed further south towards Roussillon the terrain became much more mountainous though more rolling mountains than Alps mountains.

We reached Roussillon about 4pm Saturday afternoon and went off in search of the one hotel in the village. Roussillon is a huge tourist destination with the tourist buses. It is a beautiful village situated at the top of a rocky bluff but what makes it so spectacular is the red, soil everywhere. Think of Santa Fe or Sedona and this is what Roussillon is like. All the buildings are made out of the red clay and the bluffs are all red, red, red.

The hotel I had hoped to stay at was full but the tourist office set us up with a great little B&B right in the village. We did find a dead scorpion in the room which had Bets a little on edge and we pulled back the bed covers all the way before climbing in but the place turned out to be great.

We spent the next couple of hours touring around the village, stopping in shops, taking pictures, admiring views and drinking on the patio at the outdoor cafes.

By 6pm the place had quieted down as all the package tour hordes at vacated to other destinations. We had dinner at a great little “mediterranean” restaurant. The food was wonderful, hummous, baba ghanoush (eggplant dip), lamb & chicken tagines, and couscous. The service however was horrible. It would be difficult to recommend because of this which is too bad because the dinner was arguably the best we had on our trip.

The next morning (Sunday) we headed out to get our daily coffee and pain au chocolats, took a few last pictures of Roussillon and headed home.

The drive home was much quicker and it only took us 4 hours to get home vs the 5.5 hours it took coming down.

All in all it was a great trip. Our little car performed admirably on our first road trip and we both had an excellent time.

Our next scheduled trips are home (Vancouver/Seattle) for two weeks in June and a weekend in Rome in early July.

Stay Tuned!