Part 2 - A Year Week In Provence

The plan for the week was to have a relaxing time with my wife. Visit some places and be tourists, eat & drink (her wine, me soft drinks & water), enjoy the warm light, scenery and good weather.

That good weather turned out to be mid 30's every day, still better than the thunderstorms which my weather app kept warning me about.

The village itself was very pretty, and very peaceful. There were only a few tourists and cyclists enjoying the mountains.

The village was about 550m up, and the nearest supermarket was 3k away at the bottom of the hill. A nice winding road that opened out as you came up it, so my trips back from the supermarket got faster every day.

One place that we didn't bother with was Rousillon, when we went there in the morning there were marshalls stopping the traffic going into the town, and late that afternoon on the way back from somewhere else we parked in the middle of the town but there were so many tourists that we left again.

Pretty much every journey involved a mountain road, easily getting up to 1000m - it didn't have to, but those roads were quieter and more fun.

Some random stuff, because I can't remember where it was

There were a couple of markets that my wife fancied going to, one of them was the antiques market in Isle sur la Sorgue

The restored castle at Lourmarin was rather nice, part mediaeval, part gothic.

Lacoste was a very nice place with surprisingly few tourists.

At the top of the hill on which the village stands are the ruins of a chateau that was built by the Marquis de Sade.

Sometime in the 90's it was bought by Pierre Cardin and part of it was restored as his second home, and part restored as a home for some of his art collection.

A little unusual, you go through the entrance, pay your money and go in and there are no ropes separating you from the works, no guards, no cameras, just signs saying do not touch (well, ne pas toucher)

It wasn't all modern stuff though, we visited the Pont Julien

Built in 3BC according to wikipedia, and carrying motorised traffic until 2005. The holes in the columns are to allow flood water to flow through without demolishing the bridge. I don’t think they’re needed anymore.

On a couple of evenings I went out for a ride in the mountains. One evening I wanted to try and capture the sunset, I couldn't find the spot that I'd noticed earlier in the day, but I found a few places

Before we left I checked the trip counter and I'd done 584 miles in the week.

The next morning, after handing the keys back to the agent we headed back through the mountains and had a nice lunch together before we rode to the airport to drop my wife off for an afternoon flight home. I was due to get home six days later, but that's for part 3.