My Provencal Summer

 

Every Summer, I ache to be in Europe. I long to roam around the lavender fields in Provence, walks the streets of Italy eating gelato, and swim in sparkling seas in Greece. It's been a regret of mine that I didn't go interrailing when I was younger. Whilst I could still do it now, it's just harder when you're older as you have work commitments, rent/bills to pay and my little Rosie to consider! I can't just bugger off to Europe for three months, no matter how much I dream of doing so.

Last Summer, I was dreaming of Provence and floating around the beautiful villages in linen dresses and capturing beautiful photo's from each place we visited, so Mr Poachie and I started looking into it.

We decided it would be fun to get the train to Paris and stay there for a few nights, before getting the train down to Aix en Provence. This train was so easy and quick and cheap I would highly recommend it, it took around three hours and cost around 50 euro for two tickets with excess luggage.

We booked a hotel for one night in Aix en Provence so we could explore. I was anticipating it to be very hot at this time of year (we travelled in July) and whilst some days were unbearably hot, around 37 degrees, most of the time it was fine.

That being said, if you are travelling to Provence I would suggest booking accommodation that has a swimming pool, there is nothing better than after a stroll around the morning market, returning and getting straight in the pool! 

Once we left Provence, we hired a car and made our way to the beautiful village of Gordes. We had to check out of our hotel in Aix by 11am but we couldn't check into our hotel in Lourmarin until 4pm so we decided to head to a village to explore and to have lunch.

Gordes is a hillside village which was used as the filming location for the film 'A good year'. There was plenty of parking and a variety of places to choose to stop and eat.

After lunch, we drove back to Lourmarin to check in to The Galinier hotel. We booked this through Mr and Mrs Smith and it was a beautiful place to stay.

Lourmarin is voted one of France's most beautiful villages but one of the reasons we liked it so much was that it had so much to offer. We were based here for four nights and were spoilt for choice in terms of places to eat.

They also had a morning market, shops, galleries and an ice cream shop. The hotel was just a stones throw from the village which was great not having to drive to dinner.

Before we travelled, I had spent a lot of time researching places to visit, planning an itinerary and saving places like mad on Pinterest. I had many, many things I wanted to see and do, but I know how important it is to understand that you simply can't do it all and we didn't want to return exhausted. 

I pinned on Google maps all of the villages I had researched, selected my top 6/7 and then we looked at how far each of them were from our accommodation and each other so we could work out which ones to see on certain days.

The villages we chose to visit were; Roussillon, Gordes, Saignon, Abbaye Notre-Dame de Senanque, Lacoste and Lourmarin (where we stayed for the first four nights).

If we had had more time, I also wanted to visit St Remy, Isle Sur La Sorgue, Valensole, Gorges, La Fontaine, Eze and Oppede. Perhaps for another trip...

As I said, there were some days it was simply too hot to walk around, it became unbearable in  the heat and its just not fun! However, visiting in July means the lavender is in bloom and we also saw fields of sunflowers too.

My intention is to write smaller blog posts so I can provide more details on the places we visited, If you are still reading at this point, thanks for staying with me!

One of the things I loved about France, was the people. I speak basic French and I was worried that in Paris the waiters would be rude and in Provence they wouldn't speak English but this wasn't an issue.

After a blissful stay in Lourmarin, we packed up again and headed towards Saint Victor La Coste for the final leg of our stay.

Mr Poachie did all of the driving for our stay, he said the roads were great, no pot holes and after getting used to driving on the right hand side of the road, it wasn't an issue. The roads were really quiet most of the time and the motorways were easy to navigate with the toll stations.

We stopped off at Saignon and Roussillon to break up the journey and to tick off more places to visit but on this particular day it was 37 degrees and I was in no mood to be wandering around.

Both places were very pretty and worth visiting, especially Roussillon with its ochre coloured walls and buildings, but it was just too hot for me so after lunch we left and made our way to our final place to stay.

If you have social media, you have probably seen this swimming pool. It was included in Airbnb's 'most instagrammable pools' and its also been featured in Conde Nast. 

It is absolutely stunning, I felt like I had stepped into an Italian dream.

We were given the warmest welcome by Allison and Costas and after opening a bottle of rose from the honesty bar, I knew I had chosen the most amazing place to stay.

The stone cottages are located within the grounds of a castle and the chateau is home to Allison and Costas. They were kind enough to invite us over for drinks and to show us around their stunning home.

I will have to explain this in a separate post as it was just so spectacular, it needs it own moment!

Whilst we were there, we rested by the pool, read books, drank wine, ate delicious food and just relaxed. The village where the chateau is located is small with only one restaurant, a pharmacy, a shop and a tabac.

Car hire is essential here and there are plenty of things to see and do in the area.

We hadn't planned to do much exploring of the area but as the local restaurant was shut on Mondays and Tuesdays, we drove thirty minutes to the village of Uzes and ending up returning there for the market.

We also visited Pont du Gard which is a Roman built aqueduct where you can wild swim and kayak.

I would recommend visiting as it was so refreshing wild swimming and there is a nice bar for a post swim drink. It costs 9 euro to park and enter.

Out of all of the places that we visited, there wasn't one place that I thought wasn't great.

In truth, I wasn't keen on Paris as I don't like busy cities and Paris was BUSY! Like London busy, non moving traffic jams and sitting in restaurants like sardines. 

Really, its not for me, I appreciate the beautiful architecture but how anyone thinks it's romantic is beyond me.

We stayed at the Hotel Panache which was a good location, we could walk to the Louvre in twenty minutes and we were surrounded by restaurants and bars.

The room itself, like I imagine most of Paris hotel rooms, was small. But it was clean, we had a small balcony, a great shower, great hairdrier and lovely diptyque bath products.

Paris is a big city so whilst you can easily walk to lots of the main tourist attractions, you  will need a few days here to see it all. 

On our second day, the weather wasn't so great and our feet were tired so we got on the tour bus to see the city but by the time we reached the Champs Elyses and the Eifel tower, it was raining hard so we just stayed on the bus which is why I have no photo's of these Parisian icons!

We always struggle with city breaks as to whether to book restaurants or not. If you don't book, then its unlikely that you will be able to walk in and get a table, but if you do, then you are stuck with a time constraint.

We ate at one of the Big Mamma group restaurants Libertino's which was a fun place to go. I couldn't get a reservation at Pink Mamma, this seems to be the most popular one to eat at.

I had made a reservation at Carboni's but we ended up cancelling as we weren't going to be in that area when we wanted lunch.

There were so many places I wanted to eat and drink at! I think I saved around 15 places for our two day trip. 

I'm not sure I would go back to Paris, I like the idea of it but it was just so vast so you can't walk everywhere and the traffic jams were so bad.

Asides from that, we had the most incredible time in France and it felt like we were away for such a long time.

The weather on our return to England has been wet and grey making me very seasonally confused but in secret, I don't mind it, probably because I had a fortnight of proper Summer!

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Please let me know if you have anything specific that you want me to cover but I will write separate posts to break down each village etc.

Au revoir!