The Trail's Our Thing

Enjoying my wonderful interlude in Bandol (on the isle of Bendor)

I was up early and watched the sun rise over the sea before I tested that wonderful shower. I walked down with Ian to the fish market to buy oysters for lunch. Everything in Bandol is so convenient, and all the little shops were open this morning. They have found a great little fish shop selling all kinds of fresh fish and shellfish. We decided that the fish shop lady definitely has a difficult job. Ian picked out three kinds of oysters, and we also got a bag of ice and some shellfish.

At the fish shop with Ian

We carried everything the five minutes back up to the apartment and then Cynthia and I went back down to one of the many waterfront cafes on the broad main street to satisfy my craving for croissants. Since I have been croissant-deprived, I had two.

It’s the third and final week of my language program, and now I’m a returning student. Pas de probleme! I know what to expect, and I even have friends. I’ve settled into a comfortable routine that I like.

New students have arrived—many of them, since it’s now July and the beginning of “les vacances” in Europe. In addition to French, there are many many languages spoken around the school and out front where students congregate at the mid-morning break.

Students outside the IS school

Every other Monday when a new two-week term begins, the returning students like me come at 11:00 am. This week there are “debutantes”-- people who don’t know any French at all. Our teachers told us that they were expecting 70 people in the main program this week, compared to perhaps 30 the two-week term before.

On Monday morning, after breakfast at Isabelle’s, I headed to the Carrefour Bar to check e-mail and have a coffee before going to school. I ran into Sally, the American woman I met last week. We both like the free WIFI. Although Aix is a good-sized city, I have the feeling of also being in much smaller community, as I’ve often encountered people I know around town. (The next day I ran into Sally again—in a totally different part of Aix.) I love the rhythm of life in France, and I feel very much at home now in Aix. If only Charley and Kelly were here too… but perhaps that can happen another year.

Susanne and Urs were at the school when I arrived on Monday. Urs is taking private lessons this week and next, now focusing on learning the French language of banking. Like me, Susanne is here just one more week. On Monday morning there was a list posted on the board, organizing the fifteen or so returning students into a few small groups… to do what, we didn’t know. Susanne and I returned to our old classroom where we were joined by an older American named Paul and a very young and shy British girl. The session was sort of a test, I think. The teacher was Claire, a very enthusiastic young woman who had just returned from her “voyage des noces” (honeymoon). We spent the hour and a half talking about ourselves, listening to Claire, and making conversation. I could definitely see the progress that Susanne has made since we started our classes two weeks ago, and I felt much more confident too. Our French skills were much more advanced than Paul and the British girl… surely we wouldn’t be placed in the same class with them. Claire told us to come back at 2 and check the board again. There were going to be nine classes, and the four of us would be in class 1, 2 or 3.

I’m sitting here at the Carrefour Bar, and Isabelle just walked by on the Rue d’Italie. She didn’t see me. Perhaps she’s going out to do some marketing for dinner. On the way here I stopped at a store down the street and bought a bottle of rose wine that I’ll contribute for tonight’s dinner. This morning Isabelle told me that her friend Catherine who I like so much is coming to dinner tonight. I’m looking forward to seeing Catherine again, and I sense this will be a much more comfortable evening than the couscous dinner.

In addition to enjoying the routine at school, this week I also find I’m much more comfortable at Isabelle’s. Now that her daughter Christine has left, I feel much better about my living situation. And since I know I can have Henri Tomas’ croissants in Bonnieux every day for the next five weeks beginning on Sunday, I’ve even accepted having yoghurt and toast for breakfast in the morning. I plan to continue my daily yoghurt diet, but I’ll be substituting croissants for the toast next week!

There’s another student at Isabelle’s this week, a young Italian man named Fillippo. He is 19 years old, from near Bologna, very tall and very handsome. The first night I didn’t think he understood or spoke French well at all, but he has turned out to be in class 6, so maybe he's just shy. Fillippo doesn’t eat any vegetables or fruit, which Isabelle finds shocking, since fresh farm produce is so plentiful and important in the Provençal diet. This has given her a new challenge in her dinner preparations. Isabelle seems to have bonded with Fillippo though, perhaps a motherly thing. I’ve been away the last two nights for dinner, and when I came home last night late, she and Fillippo were sitting in the dark in the living room, watching television together.

Isabelle and le grand Fillippo

Each week the IS school offers a variety of other activities and excursions, which provide a different kind of opportunity to interact in the French language and to learn more about the culture and history of this area.

This week I signed up for the “Cours de Cuisine”—a cooking class—at the home of Madame Catherine Plan. The class cost 25 euro, a good investment since the evening also included an excellent meal. My friends Urs and Susanne also went to the class, and we walked there together from the school at the end of the afternoon. Urs had attended a class with Madame Plan the week before and highly recommended it to us. Madame Plan and her husband live about 20 minutes from the school, at the other end of the Cours Mirabeau and just past the train station. There were three other people at the class. Rupert is a tall older man from Norway, very friendly, who owns a house in Forcalquier, a town about 45 minutes east of Apt. He is commuting to the school each day in an effort to improve his French. He is in class 4 at the school. I didn’t learn the names of the other two people: a woman also from Norway and a man from Sweden. I don’t think either of them spoke or understood much French.

We began our evening at 5:30 pm, grouped around the counter of Madame Plan’s kitchen. She gave us each a little booklet with the evening’s menu and recipes and started immediately into the preparation. The first thing she made was an apricot tart. The preparation of the pastry (pate) really impressed me. She had a piece of baking paper that she had already used several times. Instead of using a bowl, she made her pastry right on the paper, measuring the flour, margarine, sugar, salt and water right onto the paper and then mixing them together with her hands. Then she rolled the pastry out with a rolling pin. Since the paper had already been used, she could tell exactly the shape for her pastry. Finally she just slid the crust into her tart pan, paper and all. The whole process of making the crust took about five minutes. She sprinkled some almond powder (poudre d'amande) in the bottom of the pan.

Madame Plan mixing her tarte crust on paper

… and I’m happy to report that it was a very special evening!

Tonight was a very different experience from the couscous dinner. Isabelle invited Catherine (her friend that I like so much) and another friend Claud for dinner tonight, so with Isabelle, Fillippo and me, there were five at the table. Claud is a retired professor from the University of Aix, and he was very friendly and easy to talk to. Isabelle had told me he was a “copain,” (which can mean a romantic companion), but when I asked her more about this, she confirmed that he was just a friend whose wife was out of town.

A great dinner party (photo taken by Claude) - note the paintings in the back

The meal was very good: apertifis and little snacks to begin; long chicken legs cooked in a cream sauce with pasta (in honor of Fillippo), a salad after the main course, a cheese course with an especially good Cambembert, and another peach in raspberry coulis with some little wafer cookies. She served good wine (including the bottle of wine I brought) and had some fabulous cherries in liquor as a digestif. (The cherries are called griottines and they’re preserved in kirsch…. I’ll definitely be looking for some of these!)

I finished my French program today and was even awarded a certificate that documents my level of language skill. Susanne and I were both rated as an A2, though Christine said we were very close to being an B1.

Receiving my certificate from Christine

I definitely want to come back to the IS school in Aix for more French study-- maybe next year after our Luberon Experience trip-- and I also plan to be much more diligent about continuing some French studies during the next year. I've made progress, but I'm a long long way from where I want to be.

I was sorry to say goodbye to my classmates from this week. The five women had an especially good relationship, and I really enjoyed our lunches together. I'll be seeing Susanne in Bonnieux next Friday, and I'm planning to connect with Sarah in Paris when Kelly and I are there in August. I really met some great people from all over the world during my stay in Aix.

My wonderful family: Charley and Kelly in Sault

I didn't sleep well last night... much too excited about seeing my precious family again and thinking about them on their overnight flight. This is the longest I've been separated from my husband and daughter, and finally today we'd be together again!

I was up at the regular time this morning, my last morning at Isabelle's. The bathroom routine now seems normal, but I was happy this is the last day for the quirky shower procedure. I had a last breakfast with Fillippo and Isabelle, and then he was off to meet the school's excursion for the day to the Gorge du Verdon. I would have enjoyed staying here longer with him.

I finished my packing and just barely managed to cram everything into my rolling bag, my carry on shoulder bag and my little backpack, but the suitcase was now much heavier. I like to collect booklets and free literature when I travel, and this adds a lot of weight. I also had three English language books to drop off at Paradox, an international bookstore in Aix. (Another English bookshop in Aix is Book in Bar, just a block away.)

I had booked the TGV from Aix-en-Provence to Avignon at 3:44, so I had several hours to spend enjoying Aix. It was market day and I headed out to walk the streets and hopefully check out the "soldes" (sales). The French government regulates sales, and they are just held two times a year-- in summer and winter. The dates vary by departément. Here in the Bouches-du-Rhône, the soldes started on July 4 and will run six weeks until August 14. I had three hours to browse the markets and the stores. I didn't come away with much, but I had a really good time. There were lots of people out shopping. I bought a pair of cute sandals for myself and a small birthday gift for Kelly. She will be 14 years old on July 22.

Below Bonnieux... looking toward the Petit Luberon and Lacoste

We're housesitting for our friends who have a beautiful home just outside Bonnieux, a family we met when we lived here for six months in 2004-2005. This is the second year that we've had this opportunity, and we're thrilled to be back. We planned our visit so we had a couple of days of overlap... a chance to visit a little and also get up to speed on anything we need to know about the house. While our friends are still here, our family is staying in a rustic guest annex. We're trying to be very sensitive that they're getting ready to go on a six week trip and we don't want to be in the way. So just as we did last year on the day after we arrived, we headed out today on a lavender drive. We just had a general plan to drive up to Lagarde d'Apt and then over to Sault and then we'd see where we went from there.

It was hot today, and just a little overcast. We ended up driving about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles) and making a big circle of Mont Ventoux, the largest mountain in this area at 6,263 feet. Mont Ventoux is very distinctive-- first, because it stands alone... not really part of a group of mountains. And second because the top is barren, without vegetation, and is covered with a white limestone. Mont Ventoux actually seems to be covered with snow year-round.

I'll let the photos tell the story of our day in the lavender around Mont Ventoux...

Near Lagarde d'Apt, the highest village in the Vaucluse (3609 feet)

Kelly in Montbrun-les-Bains

I have more to show and tell about our Sunday drive around Mont Ventoux, this time about the villages… not the lavender. We stopped in three different villages, each very different: Sault (which we’ve visited several times before), Montbrun-les-Bains and Brantes. Some of the photos in this post were taken by Kelly with her new digital camera.

Sault is a famous village in the Vaucluse, southeast of Mont Ventoux, especially popular when the lavender is in bloom. The village (at 2546 feet) sits at the edge of the Plateau d’Albion and overlooks a broad agricultural plain where lavender and a type of wheat called “épeautre” are grown, forming a very colorful patchwork quilt at this time of year. “Épeautre” is similar to a grain known as “spelt” in English. Although Mont Ventoux is nearby, you can’t actually see if from the main part of the village. Sault has 1100 residents, so it’s a bit smaller than Bonnieux, when the lavender is blooming there are many, many tourists. The village is flat, so it’s easy to get around. It also seems to have everything needed for daily life: boulangeries, a small grocery, butcher, pharmacie, quincaillerie (hardware store), and a market on Wednesday. There’s a big community terrace overlooking the beautiful plain, with benches for a do-it-yourself picnic as well as several outdoor cafes. Nearby, in the older part of the village, we were very attracted to a beautiful square with outdoor dining for several restaurants. I would have loved to eat on this square on Sunday, but we arrived late, and all the restaurants seemed to be “complet.” We ended up having pizza and salads out on the other square, along with mostly other tourists. Charley and Kelly’s pizza wasn’t the greatest, but my hot goat cheese salad with honey was very good.

Sault has an excellent tourist office with lots of free information, a variety of booklets and guides for sale, and some beautiful posters. The poster I bought last year is on the home page of the tourist office website; it now hangs in my office at the university, so I can dream of Provence always! You can see all the posters and books on their website, and it looks like you may even be able to order them online. The woman on duty Sunday was originally from England, now married to a Frenchman and living in the area. She was extremely helpful.

This afternoon we finally took a little trip to visit Salagon, a beautiful 12th century priory that is now an historic monument, educational garden and museum. Salagon is located just outside the village of Mane, about four kilometers west of Forcalquier, in a very peaceful setting. We like the drive on the N100 to this part of Provence very much, and we really enjoyed our three hours at Salagon. I think it's well worth a visit, especially for people with an interest in gardens.

The history of Salagon dates back almost 2000 years. Archaelogists have discovered the remains of a farm and a Gallo-Roman villa underneath the current structure, as well as a 5th century basilica and cemetery. Some parts of these earlier structures can be seen from inside the church, looking down through grates. During the French Revolution, the priory shifted to private ownershiph, though it later returned to the Church. In 1910 Salagon was sold to a farmer and then was occupied by the Italian army in World War II. Finally, in 1981, the property was bought by the commune of Mane who began the extensive resoration. Today Salagon is owned by the département of the Alpes de Haut-Provence. There is a small admission charge, and Charley turned over his driver’s license so we could check out three audioguides in English.

It was overcast when we arrived, so we decided to explore the gardens first in case we were forced inside later by rain. There are six different theme gardens at Salagon, including about 2000 different plants. I love plants and flowers, and I especially enjoyed the gardens.

The priory at Salagon

We had dinner with our friends on Monday night, just a simple meal here at home, since they’re leaving on their six-week trip to California in the morning. We stayed in the rustic guest wing of the house for the first three nights after we arrived on Saturday, moving into the main house and our friends’ bedrooms on Tuesday morning after Charley took them to the airport. We’ve known this family now for three years, and we’re good friends with a history together. Their daughter—who’s Kelly’s age—visited us for a week in Tennessee this past spring.

On Monday night the four adults sat outside, sheltered from the growing wind by the protection of the old stone mas. The terrace has a view across the vineyards and orchards, looking up toward Bonnieux. Suddenly Bonnieux seemed to shine with light.

“It’s the magic hour,” our friend said.

It was that hour before sunset, when the light changes and softens, sharpening the outlines of villages, mountains, old stone houses, grapevines and cherry trees. What a wonderful place to be… that night, those friends, this place.

Tonight-- now on our own-- our family ventured out during the Magic Hour, an after-dinner stroll on the quiet farm lanes near the house. We walked down through the orchards on the old track that our friend says was once a Roman road, scooted down to a small paved road near a stream, circled back on a newly-marked trail through the woods, and wandered up through another orchard. We know this little part of Provence so well. All these photos from that Magic Hour walk are taken within ten minutes of our house, most of them by Kelly.

Bonnieux from the house, in that crisp light just before sunset (photo by Kelly)

Time takes a different shape when your travels take you often to the same place and you have the luxury of staying for several weeks. There’s no sense of urgency to get out every day, to follow a guidebook, to check sights and activities off a list, to make sure you don’t leave some wonderful place undiscovered. You can have a special time just having a quiet day at home. We’ve already had several of these.

We do actually have a list of places to go and things to do, but considering we’re here for five weeks, our list this summer isn’t terribly long, and we’re happy to pursue just two or three items on that list each week. It helps to be staying in such a pretty and comfortable house where we can spend relaxing and very enjoyable days, and it also helps that we all love to read. Our friends have a large and interesting library and DVD collection. Last week we went to the Bonnieux biblioteque and signed up for a temporary family card; there’s a surprisingly extensive collection of books in English. (And Kelly and I both checked our books in French.)

The back terrace where we spend much of our time

After that last soaring love song, I need to present the other side of paradise. Life is not all a fairy tale here in Provence, and in addition to the simple pleasures, living here has its complexities and interesting moments. No beautiful photos to illustrate this post, I'm afraid!

Some examples:

• One afternoon while you’re happily working away, the wireless goes out for some unknown reason. You try everything you know to do… unplug and replug the power cable several times, push the reset button, run the repair functions on the laptop… finally e-mail your friend. Strangely, you have an excellent wireless signal but no data. Life without the internet for the next month will be very difficult! You can use the phone line, but it’s slow and expensive… and this forces you inside instead the house of being able to work outside on the terrace. Your new challenge: trying to get hold of a man in Lacoste who can hopefully help fix the problem.

• The tractor is broken, and your husband must mow the lawn every week and the two big fields every other week with a push mower and empty the basket each time it fills. When he goes to the village to buy more gas from the little service station that was supposed to open at 8, he waits until after 8:30 and it still doesn’t open. In the afternoon, fortunately, the man is there, but the sun is hot. Maybe a man will come to fix the tractor. Or maybe not.

Tonight was a very special evening: a reunion of three of the five members of my first class at the IS language school in Aix. Susanne and her boyfriend Rico have still been in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue this past week, and they drove over to join us for dinner. And Lydia and her boyfriend Earl came all the way from Basel, Switzerland to spend a long weekend with us. At one point it seemed like a fourth classmate, Urs, would also be able to join us. Today was the last day of his four-week program in Aix, and he had planned to stay on a few days and drive over this evening. But his two little boys wanted their papa back in Switzerland as quickly as possible, and of course the rest of us undertstood.

Our class reunion in the Luberon: Susanne, Kathy and Lydia

Everyone arrived about 5 pm. Lydia and Earl had a long drive due to heavy traffic. The weather was perfect, and of course they all loved the house.

“It’s something out of a magazine,” Susanne said.

“Now I need to go home and work hard, so I can one day have a house like this,” said Rico. He and Susanne are both accountants with KPMG in Freiburg, Germany.

Lydia was my classmate at the IS school for two weeks, a beautiful and very sweet young woman originally from Athens, Greece.

From our discussions in class, my four classmates and my two teachers knew that I had a special connection with the Luberon. The Sunday between our two weeks of class, Lydia went on an excursion to the Luberon through the school. The group visited the market at L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Gordes, the Abbey de Senanque, and Roussillon. She came into class the next morning very excited.

“Kathy, I just loved the Luberon,” she told me in French. “I really liked it so very much. It was so beautiful. I told my boyfriend I want to visit again.” Her pleasure was so genuine and real. I didn’t think about this very long. Our friends, the owners of this house, have encouraged us to have guests. At the break I invited her to come and stay with us during our time in the Luberon, along with her boyfriend. Lydia and I talked about possibilities during our final week together, and after she returned to Switzerland, she e-mailed me to confirm a visit for the weekend of July 13.

Lydia and Earl were with us for three nights, sleeping in the little guest wing that our friends call the “gîte,” where our family slept when we first arrived. They were absolutely wonderful houseguests, and we really enjoyed our weekend together.

Our wonderful houseguests, Earl and Lydia

The ruined castle at the top of the nearby village of Lacoste is one of our favorite spots in the Luberon, and we took our friends Lydia and Earl there on our way to dinner Sunday night. The castle dates back to the 11th century and is best known as the home of the notorious Marquis de Sade in the late 1700's. In 2001 the castle was bought by fashion designer Pierre Cardin, and we've watched its restoration over the four years we've been coming to this area.

Although the castle is private property, it's possible to climb up from the village and walk around in the moat or to drive up and observe the castle close-up from outside. The views from the castle grounds are wonderful.

Here's how the castle looked on Sunday evening:

We love the view across to Bonnieux, with the Grand Luberon rising above:

And here's the view out across the countryside toward Apt. I love the pattern of the farms and orchards in this plain. If you look closely, you'll even see some splashes of lavender.

But we didn't expect to find "Eros Thanatos" at the castle tonight. Read on!

A new view of Bonnieux

In October 2004, a few weeks after we arrived in Bonnieux to live here for 6-1/2 months, we went hiking with our new friend Kevin, who owns Le Mas Perreal, a beautiful B&B in St. Saturnin. Kevin suggested we drive up toward the Fôret de Cèdres, where he knew a place we could see lots of bories. We were intrigued by the bories and liked this plan.

In the year since, we’ve come across many bories in the Luberon (perhaps 100), especially on our hikes in the woods and on the mountains. (The photo at the top of our blog is of a borie we discovered in a field on the Plateau de Claparèdes near Saignon.) Bories are old stone huts, made by stacking dry stone slabs in just a certain way, not using any mortar. Bories are found in abundance here in the Luberon, some 3,000 of them. Stone is the primary building material in this area, and the bories were made using stones gathered from the immediate area. The bories were normally used by farmers… perhaps a place to live with their sheep or goats high in the hills or to store tools or to provide protection for a well. They’re built in a variety of styles. Some bories are may be more than 1,000 years old, but others date to just the 18th or 19th century. Some bories are perfectly intact (some have been restored), while others have crumpled into a mass of stone. They have been catalogued and are protected here in the Parc Naturel Régional du Luberon.

One of the many bories at L'Enclos des Bories

Anyway, back to that October day a few years ago… we drove up above Bonnieux to the Fôret de Cèdres road and then turned down a small dirt road. We had just started on our way when we encountered another vehicle. Kevin got out to talk to the man and came back to the car disappointed.

Finally—nine days after our arrival in the Luberon—we’ve managed to go on our first hike of the summer.

We think the Luberon is one of the best hiking areas in Europe, with a substantial network of marked trails. Every route seems to be different with a new vantage point on the spectacular scenery, much of which is often hidden from the road. We came here as a family this past spring for two weeks, primarily to hike.

But hiking here in the summer is different… quite difficult, actually. It’s so hot, hot, hot! In July and August the government even restricts hiking in some areas. You’re not allowed to be in the forest of the Luberon mountains or on the Vaucluse Plateau after 11 am, due to risk of fire. But you wouldn’t want to be there after 11 anyway, because it’s just so hot. So hiking at this time of year involves getting up very early and planning a walk that isn’t too far away and isn’t too long.

This morning we hiked in one of our favorite areas, on the Falaise de la Madeleine, west of St. Saturnin-lès-Apt. “Falaise” means “cliff,” and this is an incredible cliff… a solid rock wall stretching above the village of Lioux, almost half a mile long and rising 320 feet from the ground. What’s so unique about the falaise is that it’s totally invisible from the southern side, where a sloping hillside covered with low trees and scrub rises up from the valley. You have absolutely no sense that there's a cliff on the other side! But from the northern perspective (especially on the road coming down from Murs), the cliff is massive, a long expanse of grey limestone… truly magnificent.

The magnificent Falaise de la Madeleine

I need to say that the photos from our day at the tour aren't very good. In the excitement of getting ready to go, I didn't remember to charge my camera battery, and as luck would have it, my battery died just before the actual Tour passed by. Kelly took video with her new camera, but we need a little more time to figure out how to post these in the blog... and we need the high-speed wireless back. We promise we'll post her video on the blog, as it's really quite good!

Charley has been quite interested in the Tour de France for several years. In 2003—after our two week trip to France—I think he watched almost every minute of the race on cable television. Later he read several books about the Tour, including French Revolutions by Tim Moore, which he especially enjoyed.

Last summer we were in Normandy when the Tour passed through. We weren’t sure of the logistics, and we hated to take a day away from the rest of Normandy when we were just there for a week…. especially since we would have watched them whiz by on a totally flat stretch of road. And a week or so later just after we arrived in Provence, the Tour passed within two hours of us… again, we talked about going, but it just didn’t work out.

This summer we looked at the Tour map again and saw that the route would take the Tour within two hours of Bonnieux on Stage 10 (Tallard to Marseille) and Stage 11 (Marseille to Montpellier). We wrote it on our list of things to do. And then I saw this post on Slow Travel from our friend Kevin Widrow, suggesting that a group get together to see the Tour on Stage 10. I responded quickly—the Wood family was was definitely interested. Finally-- we were going to Le Tour de France!

Kelly back home after our Tour de France adventure

Wednesday was a big day for us. In addition to the Tour de France, we also went to a special wine dinner at Domaine Faverot.

Domaine Faverot is a small wine estate owned by Francois and Sally Faverot de Kerbrech. Despite François’ name (and an ancestry that is both French and German), he is extremely British… as is Sally. They have long had a dream to move to France, buy a vineyard, and make wine, and that dream became a reality a few years ago when they bought and restored this small wine estate at the foot of the Petit Luberon. The U-shaped building includes the winery, their own home, and four attractive rental apartments.

We spent several hours at Domaine Faverot with our Luberon Experience groups this May for a tour, tasting, and wonderful lunch in the courtyard. It was a highlight of our week, in large part because François and Sally are such welcoming hosts. Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to get an inside look at a small, family-owned winery. François is a great storyteller and very funny. Before they moved to France, they owned a restaurant in England for many years, and Sally prepares a beautiful meal.

The vineyards at Domaine Faverot (photo taken May 2007)

I loved today… just the right balance of activity and relaxation… and best of all, we shared it with friends.

We planned to do an interesting morning hike with our friends the McConnells today-- something with some excitement that teenagers would enjoy. But after our recent experience on the Falaise at Lioux, we decided it was too hot for a major hike and we would have to start way too early to make it a fun experience for the kids. Instead we suggested that our families meet in Bonnieux at 9:00, drive down to Oppède-le-Vieux and explore the village and the castle ruins, and then come back here for lunch and swimming. We invited our new friends the Hamids (Farris, Kit and Olivia from our Tour de France excursion) to join us after lunch for swimming.

The McConnells are from Pennsylvania, and we met Christine and two of her sons during our stay in Bonnieux last summer. We joke and say that Charley “picked her up at the boulangerie,” since Charley and Christine were introduced by our baker-friend Henri Tomas, and Charley invited the family over to swim the next afternoon. Christine and her husband Jeff bought a sweet little village house near the top of Bonnieux last spring… the place our family rented when we were here this past March. Now Christine is in Bonnieux for most of July. Her stay has involved various combinations of family members: first her mom and a friend, then just her mom, then the three boys, then the arrival of husband Jeff, and when Jeff leaves on Sunday, just the three boys again for the last few days. The boys—Cameron, Curt, and Collin—are 16, 14 and 12, which is a nice combination with Kelly. We’ve gotten together several times these last few weeks to share meals and to swim and play at this big country house. We really enjoy having friends in Provence!

The McConnell family outside the Oppède church (Jeff, Curt, Cameron, Christine and Collin)

Today we were excited to share Oppède-le-Vieux with the McConnells. It’s one of my favorite places in the Luberon… a ruined village that dates back to the Middle Ages, seemingly hanging almost half-way up the side of the Petit Luberon. Sometimes—depending on the light—it’s almost camouflaged on the mountainside. The village was once a very important place with about 900 residents inside the old walls during its peak in the 14th century. But beginning in the 16th century, people began moving down to the plain to be closer to their farming activities. Life was much easier on the level ground, and by the early 20th century the old village was deserted. After World War II a small group of artists returned to the old village, and little-by-little it is returning to life… but in a way that really preserves the magic of this old and very special place.

Collin, Curt and Kelly pause for a photo

Our little girl is now 14 years old! And she has just celebrated her fourth consecutive birthday in Europe:

11 - Yorkshire, England.
12 - Salzkammergut, Austria.
13 - Provence, France.
14 - Provence, France.

What a life she has had already! And I feel sure that next year on July 22nd we’ll be back in Europe somewhere…

Kelly’s big birthday celebration was Saturday night: a group dinner at our little café in Bonnieux, Le Terrail. We really like the environment and the staff: our waiter-friend Michel and the waitress Nathalie. This summer we brought Michel, Nathalie and the owner Patrick ball caps from the University of Tennessee. (Though I noticed no one was wearing theirs tonight!)

Our beautiful daughter-- now 14 years old

Some 150,000 people live in the Luberon, a number that swells dramatically in the summertime. Maybe we know 100 people? One of our best friends here is Kevin Widrow, who lives outside the village of St. Saturnin-lès-Apt, about 20 minutes from Bonnieux. We met Kevin through the Slow Travel website, and we always enjoy spending time with him when we are are in the Luberon.

With Kevin in the Colorado Rustrel (photo taken November 2004)

Last Wednesday we went with Kevin to see Le Tour de France.

The next day Kelly and I went to the Leclerc supermarché in Apt to do some grocery shopping. And there we ran into Kevin, buying various things in bulk for the bountiful breakfast he and Elisabeth serve at Le Mas Perreal.

Late Sunday morning at the Coustellet market, Kelly and I ran into Kevin again. He was buying produce in bulk from the farmers there. This was only the second time we’ve ever been to the Coustellet market...

And THEN—on Monday—Kelly and I were back at Leclerc getting groceries for the next couple of days. And THERE was Kevin again!

How strange is this?????

At Cynthia and Ian's apartment in Bandol (photo by Cynthia Gillespie-Smith

I visited the town of Bandol on the Mediterranean Sea a few weeks ago when I was going to French school in Aix-en-Provence. Our friends Cynthia and Ian (the former owners of La Bastide Vieille, the house we rented when we lived in Provence) now have an apartment there and were so great to take me in for a weekend. I loved Bandol so much that I wanted Charley and Kelly to see it too. Even though we're housesitting, it isn't a problem to have a night away once or twice, and we decided we'd like to make the trip down to the sea. Cynthia found a little hotel for us right on the ocean.

And so off we went on Wednesday morning-- a vacation from our vacation! Bandol was about two hours from our house... I think it might have been less if we had taken a slightly different route, as traffic was slow through Pertuis. But Bandol is very easy to get to... just a couple of miles off the autoroute. We arrived at the Splendid Hotel right at 11 am. This is a little two star hotel on the Anse de Rènecros, a pretty circular cove off the Baie de Bandol lined with beach.

The beach at Rènecros. The Hotel Splendid is the tall white building on the left.

Looking down toward Cassis (photo by Kelly)

We were in no hurry to get home from Bandol, so we decided to take a little detour and take a scenic drive up along the cliffs between La Ciotat to Cassis. We had tried to do this drive last summer when we visited Cassis, but the road was closed due to high winds.

This year we did the drive in the other direction, beginning at the big beach town of La Ciotat. La Ciotat was an interesting place with several busy beaches, an attractive old port, and a big shipbuilding yard on the west end of the town. We struggled a bit to find the beginning of the Route des Crêtes, but there were several signs and then suddenly we were out of the town, making our way up a steep and narrow road.

The road is only about 12 miles long, but it takes you up to some of the tallest seaside cliffs in France (1188 feet at Cap Canaille and 1310 feet at Le Grand Tête. The scenery was spectacular, and there are several places to stop and look. Our first stop looked out over Le Ciotat, which got smaller and smaller as we climbed. We passed some very unusual rock formations. We must have stopped about six times, including a detour out to the Coastguard Station. At Cap Canaille I climbed out on a rocky point to look at the sea almost straight below. And at another stopping point, we looked out to the west to several small inlets, vineyards, and Cassis far below. We could see the boats heading out to the calanques.

A hiking trail wound along the cliffs. I'm sure this would be a breathtaking hike.

La Route des Crêtes is an absolutely fabulous drive, though not for the fainthearted, as the road is narrow and there were quite a few cars. We took our time and enjoyed the stops, finally winding our way back down toward Cassis and then on home to Bonnieux.

Enjoy the view!

At the end of April I received an unexpected e-mail from a woman named Carol, from Winnipeg, Canada.

"I hope this is okay to email you. I have been lurking on the Slow Travel Forum for sometime. I have made a few posts, but not as many as I should have. My husband and I will be in France this summer from July 22 to August 16.... We will have two weeks in Christine's house in Bonniuex, actually thanks to you and your recommendation. I had been following the "best beach in Provence" thread and noticed that you will be in Provence around the same time as us, and if it is not too bold of me could we perhaps meet for a GTG."

We always enjoy getting together with people from Slow Travel, in the USA and in Europe. Over the last three years, I've actually met over sixty message board members! I like meeting people in person that I've "talked" to on the message board, and some of my/our closest friends are people I've met through Slow Travel.

But this GTG would be a little different... Carol knew me from the website, but since she had only posted a few times, I didn't know her! This would be sort of a blind date.

We talked by phone a few days ago, and I invited Carol and her husband Doug to meet us for our regular Saturday dinner at Le Terrail. Although they just arrived in Bonnieux late that afternoon after a long drive from Alsace, they walked down the steep streets of the village to meet us on the terrace at 8:00 pm. We had aperitifs and toasted to new friends.

New friends Doug and Carol from Winnipeg

The beautiful, unique village of Roussillon

We think Roussillon is the most unique village in the Luberon. It's colors are distinctive-- various shades and combinations of reds, browns and yellows, resulting from the building materials that came from the earth. The village is built on a high hill between the Luberon mountains and the Vaucluse Plateau along the world's biggest vein of ochre, a mineral that was once mined extensively in this area for its colors. Other ochre villages in the Luberon are Gargas, Villars, Rustrel, and Gignac. Roussillon is by far the best known, and because of it's exceptional and very colorful environment, today it's an appealing location for artists and photographers. The buildings all draw on the various colors and shades of ochre, accented by other colors for doors and shutters. The places is magical-- and as a result, it's a major attraction for tourists. We prefer to go early in the day, in the evening or on the off-season.

Although ochre is no longer an active industrial pursuit in this area, the old quarries have resulted in some distinctly unusual landscape-- part natural and part the result of man's work. We've enjoyed walking and hiking in the Colorado Rustrel, a large ochre area northeast of Apt. And we've come to Roussillon many times before to wander up the streets to the lookout point up above the church and have a good meal. But somehow we had never managed to visit Le Sentier des Ocres, a walking trail through the old ochre quarres of Roussillon. That was our destination today.

Entering Le Sentier des Ocres

I normally love shopping at the E. Leclerc supermarché in Apt. It's a big store and just a couple of years old... perhaps not quite a hypermarché (superstore), though there are some clothes, housewares, office supplies, and hardware. I like looking at all the food and the way it's displayed... the differences in what is sold here vs. what we'd find at our Kroger's at home. I even have a customer card at Leclerc, that earns me a bit of cash back every time I shop.

After our little trip to the Sentier des Ocres in Roussillon, Charley remembered that he had to go to Bricomarché, a do-it-yourself home improvement store. (He's building a new pantry for our friends to thank them for letting us stay at their house this summer.) And then I decided that since we were in Apt, we could go ahead and make a quick trip to Leclerc, avoiding another trip tomorrow. It was going on 12 noon, and we've often found lunchtime a good time to go... while everyone else is eating.

BUT NOT TODAY! Leclerc was a madhouse!! The aisles were jammed, people were lined up at the fish and cheese counters, and there was a mob of people at the cash registers. The cash register lines extended back into the aisles. Many people had children, and we heard lots of people speaking languages other than French. People were filling their carts with cases of bottled water, soft drinks, beer, toilet paper, and even some food.

The mass of shoppers at Leclerc

We've visited the nearby village of St. Saturnin-lès-Apt several times, mainly in connection with our hiking. We've met our friend Kevin there for coffee before beginning a walk or had our normal after-hike beer at one of the three cafes. Once we had lunch there with Kelly. We felt like we knew the village well, and what we knew, we liked. But strangely, we'd never been up to the big château ruins above the village, and it was a "must" on our list for this trip.

St. Saturnin is one of the larger village in the Luberon with a population of almost 2400 people. More recently-constructed houses cluster around the old village, but they harmonize well with the environment, mostly stained in ochre colors. The full name of the village is St. Saturnin-lès-Apt, which differentiates it from a fairly large number of other towns named for Saint Saturninus (also known as Saint Sernin), including another village in the Vaucluse, St. Saturnin-lès-Avignon.

This morning we decided to go over early and have our breakfast at one of the cafes. I also wanted to visit a local artisan's workshop to make a purchase for a friend We crossed the N100 and took the road that connects Gordes and St. Saturnin, passing by the turn for the hamlet of Croagnes where we'd started our walk to the Falaise de Lioux. The Mistral wind we've had for the last three days had cleared, the temperatures were extremely pleasant, and the sky was again that clear, clear blue. Another gorgeous day in the Luberon!

Looking down on the village from the chateau ruins

We spotted the workshop of Martine Guimet on the west side of the village, but decided we first needed breakfast and headed toward the main square. Much to our surprise, today (Tuesday) was market day. We were interested to see what sort of market St. Saturnin had. We also wondered if we would run into Kevin again, but I'll go ahead and end the suspense... here in his very own village, we didn't see him!

The market sellers were still setting up. We stopped in the boulangerie by the little bronze horse sculpture, bought croissants and a baguette, and sat down at a table at the St. Hubert. If a cafe doesn't sell bread (and many don't), it's perfectly okay to buy your bread elsewhere and eat it there. I thought I remembered this particular boulangerie having a broader selection, but it didn't have the beignets I wanted, so I wandered down the street a few doors and found the other (better) boulangerie/patisserie, and bought tiny sugary beignets (donuts) and two chocolate sacristans. We devoured almost everything, eating much more breakfast than we had planned.