This article originally appeared in the July 2010 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Prices will have shifted and some businesses may have closed; contact specialist Jill Jergel for updated rates and information if interested. All listings featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you book something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
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There are some places you can’t help but fall in love with at first sight and return to year after year. We’ve chosen some of the world’s most beloved (and touristed) destinations and, with the help of the best travel specialists in the business, have ferreted out their secrets, their treasures, and their unmissable experiences. The result is a series of step-by-step trips that will surprise and delight those who’ve never been to the destination before...or who have been a dozen times. Each of our highly detailed itineraries has been vetted and perfected by a Condé Nast Traveler editor, and each can be bought as is with just one phone call. Let the romance begin!
The challenge
Don’t blame Peter Mayle, of A Year in Provence notoriety: The southeasternmost corner of France has never been short of visitors. Its cobalt Luberon Mountains, seductive coastline, rippling lavender fields, and honey-stone hilltop villages have inspired everyone from Nostradamus to Van Gogh. The Romans settled in Provence in the second century B.C.; even the Vatican transplanted here from dazzling Rome in the fourteenth century. In fact, given its extraordinary history and bewitching natural beauty, you might call Provence’s popularity a self-fulfilling prophecy. (You were right, Nostradamus!) Coming here presents the visitor with two problems: how to edit 12,124 square miles, six départements, and a whole season’s worth of attractions from market towns to world-famous vineyards into just seven days, and how to see it more or less solo, leaving the tourist hordes behind.
The solution
Unless sitting Renault bumper to Renault bumper on melting highways is your idea of fun, forget Provence in high summer. The French are a wise race: More than any other European citizens, they take their summer vacations in their own backyard (why would they want to go anywhere else?), which means endless lines in July and August as well as the usual price hikes at restaurants, hotels, and museums. The French have two months to burn, so they can afford to sit in traffic, you can’t. Come October, the crowds disperse and you’ll practically have those hilltop villages and bistros to yourself. And since the mercury can soar to the mid-90s in summer, a bit of froideur, if you will, could make your explorations all the more pleasurable.
Second, be realistic and take your time. You can’t cover the entire region in a week, nor would you want to. Experiencing la vraie Provence is about lengthy foie gras-laden lunches (vegetarians, look away now) as much as it is about scoping out medieval churches and Roman ruins. For a fail-safe solution, engage the services of an expert such as Jill Jergel of Frontiers International Travel, who visits the region annually and knows which restaurants are in favor with the local gourmets, what time the Romanesque cloisters at Aix’s Cathédrale St-Sauveur are unlocked, which hotels have great looks and superlative service, and how to secure backstage tours of Châteauneuf-du-Pape cellars. Together, we designed a magnifique itinerary that took in the three A’s: Aix, Arles, and Avignon; skipped the swanky seaside Côte d’Azur in favor of low-key Cassis; dipped down to the rugged Camargue in the deep south; and included one-off experiences like a balloon ride, dinner at a chef’s table, and, turning the tables, a cooking class—it was the least one could do after all that gorging.
Day 1 (Saturday): Aix-en-Provence
It’s 8 a.m. on Saturday and you’re breakfasting like Le Roi René himself in the ornate dining room of the Villa Gallici, Aix-en-Provence’s best hotel, having arrived on the TGV from Paris the previous evening and bedded down in your wonderfully chintzy room, where the aroma of lavender virtually guarantees a good night’s sleep. The breakfast spread includes mocha coffee in a silver pot, croissants, and pain au chocolat, a row of homemade jams like bright daubs of paint, yogurt, and apple purée, all served on rosebud china. Will you ever be satisfied with a Starbucks and a muffin again? It’s an appropriate introduction to Provence—a region where eating often seems more important than breathing—and sets the scene for a gastronomic week.
After, be sure to leave the hotel no later than 9 a.m., armed with a map from reception. Make your way south into the center of Aix—it’s a 15-minute stroll. Aix-en-Provence (population 141,000) is to France what Boston is to the United States. It’s an elegant, aristocratic charmer with the quintessential plane tree-lined boulevard, the Cours Mirabeau; handsome seventeenth-century hôtels (elegant town houses); and seductive mini-squares with gurgling fountains. Founded by the Romans in 123 B.C., Aix was the capital of Provence from the twelfth century until the Revolution. It has been a university town for centuries, and luminaries of the literary and art worlds—Zola, Cézanne, Hemingway—found inspiration here.
It’s no accident that you’ve come on a Saturday in fall: This is Aix’s premier market day, and October is a monthlong harvest festival, so you’re heading for the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, with its vivid array of blooms, and then the Place Richelme, for kaleidoscopic vegetables. On your way, you pass the Cathédrale St-Sauveur (you’ll return later), on the rue Gaston de Saporta, and stop in at the Confiserie du Roy René to buy calisson candies. But don’t dawdle: The vendors pack up in the early afternoon.
At the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, you’ll see tight bunches of roses in six different hues of pink, ornamental cabbages, lilies, and blousy sunflowers, the yellow-stone Hôtel de Ville providing an elegant backdrop. At the petite Place Richelme, the vegetable market unfurls under the plane trees that characterize this town and the region—they were planted on the orders of Napoleon, to shade his troops on the way to battle. Here, you’ll find many of the sweet and savory delights that will end up on your plate this week: fromage de chèvre and saucisson, rosy-red cœur de boeuf tomatoes, streaky purple and white eggplant, jars of honey in shades of amber. There are bundles of Provence’s most famous export, lavender, which also comes in little pillows—great soporific souvenirs, an instant Proustian recollection from your trip.
Next stop, the Place des Prêcheurs for olive oil and tapenade, herbes de Provence, and the season’s must-buy: fungi. The markets have everything you could possibly need for the perfect Provençal picnic, so pick up choice morsels of cheese and salami (sampling before you buy, naturally) and a baguette and then stash your haul in your rucksack for later. Skip the brocante (flea market) part of the Place des Prêcheurs—it’s fallen victim to panpipers, polyester versions of Provençal print material, and fake café signs.
Next, head to the Cours Mirabeau, Aix’s liveliest boulevard, which features four fountains, including the grand La Rotonde at its west end. It’s around 11:30 now, so stop for a coffee at one of the many cafés on the south side of the street (don’t expect a large cup—“un café” is an espresso). In the 1960s, these cafés were differentiated by their political allegiances, with the most conservative at the east end, the most socialist at the west. Les Deux Garçons is the legendary right-wing establishment—Emile Zola, his pal Cézanne (of which more later), and Albert Camus chewed the fat here.
Note the handsome town houses opposite; with pigeon-gray shutters and ornate balconies, they were built by Aixois nobility. At number 38, the extraordinary Hôtel Maurel de Pontèves—built by one Pierre Maurel, a cloth trader who was ennobled and became provincial treasurer, is worth a closer look. Completed in 1650, it’s the oldest on the Cours and a melée of architectural styles, which you’ll be seeing frequently in Provence but rarely in the same edifice: The exterior has Doric columns on the first story, Ionic on the second, and Corinthian on the third, while the balcony is supported—begrudgingly, judging from their expressions—by two burly telamons.
Then walk the rue du Quatre Septembre, which is lined with more examples of fine seventeenth-century mansions, to the Musée Granet, on the Place de St-Jean de Malte. It features Flemish, Dutch, Italian, and French paintings and sculpture from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries (including some of François Granet’s own canvases), plus gaudy contemporary paintings on the top floor that wouldn’t look out of place hawked beside Central Park. It’s the nine Cézannes on the second floor that you’re here to see. Despite Paul Cézanne’s having lived and worked in Aix for much of his life, few of his works are here: They’ve been snapped up by international museums such as London’s National Gallery and New York’s MoMA, much to the chagrin of the Aixois.
Cézanne discovered painting at Granet’s free drawing school, which he attended from 1857 to 1862, and the museum has retained his slightly naive copy of Félix-Nicolas Frillié’s neoclassical Le Baiser de la muse; a miniature Baigneuses canvas; a portrait of a glum, wide-eyed Madame Cézanne; and my favorite, the diminutive Femme nue au miroir, a flirty nude holding a hand-mirror, in splashy blues. The Giacometti works on this floor are part of the permanent “Giacometti à Cézanne” exhibition; paintings by twentieth-century masters Picasso (look out for the vibrant, surrealist Femme au balcon), Mondrian, and Morandi are also worth perusing.
By now, your chèvre should have melted sufficiently to be ripe for the eating: It’s time for lunch. If the sun’s out, perch in the nearby Place des Quatre Dauphins—adorned with one of Aix’s loveliest fountains, four dolphins spewing water—or head back to the Cours Mirabeau and join the locals with their sandwiches on the benches.
Spend the afternoon wandering the streets north of the Cours Mirabeau, where you’ll find a diminutive square with a fountain at every turn. And make sure that, whatever your religious persuasion, you spend a contemplative half-hour in the wonderful Cathédrale St-Sauveur (north of the Cours Mirabeau). There has been a religious building on this site since Roman times, but most of what you see today, including the simple Romanesque and soaring crossed Gothic arches, dates from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The tranquil Romanesque cloisters, concealed behind a heavy wooden door to the right of the main nave (and open to the public from 7:30 a.m. until noon and from 2 to 6 p.m., except during services) are the highlight: The pale stone pillars look like twisted licorice, and at each corner are carved symbols of the evangelists—a lion for Saint Mark, an ox for Saint Luke.
If you’re planning to stock up on Gallic fashion this week, Aix is the place (“C’est un mini Paris,” said the concierge at the Villa Gallici). Hit Comptoir de Cotonniers for wide-legged pants, sharp white shirts, and peacoats; Princesse Tam Tam for beautiful bright-hued lingerie; and Sonia Rykiel for striped sweaters and studded handbags.
On your way back to the Villa Gallici, stop at the Atelier Paul Cézanne for a fascinating insight into the artist’s life. The Impressionist painter bought land here in 1901, near the end of his life, and had the 538-square-foot studio built to his exact specifications, with windows occupying the entire north wall. So faithfully has the space been re-created that it’s as if Cézanne has just popped out, canvas under arm, to paint his favorite motif, the towering Mont Ste-Victoire (a 15-minute walk took the artist to a perfect vantage point). Cézanne completed many significant works here, including three of his Grandes Baigneuses, and objects from his still lifes (a floral screen, a green jug, and a rum bottle) are on display.
The knowledgeable Gabriel Maginier is your guide to the atelier—with his protruding ears, square jaw, and wide eyes, he looks like a Cézanne subject. Sadly, it was not until Picasso cited him as an influence in 1907, a year after his death, that Cézanne gained renown. To learn more, pick up a translation of L’Oeuvre, by the artist’s childhood friend Émile Zola. This “fictional” account of the decline and fall of an Impressionist ahead of his time—whom Cézanne recognized as himself—resulted in the pair’s irreconcilable falling-out.
The atelier is just five minutes from the Villa Gallici, where you’re booked for dinner at 8 p.m. (Aix’s Michelin-starred restaurants have been receiving bad reviews recently, so give them a wide berth). Spring for the hunk of seared foie gras appetizer and the duck with eggplant puree, if they're on the menu.
Day 2 (Sunday): Cassis
Today you’re heading to the Mediterranean and Cassis, Provence’s most charming—and underrated—seaside hangout, a favorite of the Aixois. It’s a busy working harbor, so expect less fur and more fish than at its ritzy Côte d'Azur neighbors Cannes and St-Tropez. Leave the Villa Gallici by 9:30 a.m. and take the A8 south to Fréjus/St-Raphael, then the A52 toward Aubagne/Toulon, which merges into the A50. Take Exit 8, following signs for Aubagne/Roquefort-la-Bédoule on the D559, which will drop you in Cassis, where you’ll see signs pointing to various parking lots. The trip should be under an hour, leaving you plenty of time before lunch for a promenade along the harbor, where you’ll find fishermen hauling in their catch, mending their nets, and descaling dorade, while wooden boats of every color of the rainbow bob offshore.
You can explore the secret natural coves between Les Calanques—fat, rocky claws that resemble Norwegian fjords and poke out into the ocean all the way from Cassis to Marseille—on a motorboat tour with (French) commentary. Select your craft at the Visite des Calanques terminal on the harbor; choose a tour of three, five, or eight Calanques and, if it’s warm, take one that will deposit you on one of les roches blanches, so you can make like a local and dive into the improbably azure sea. But bear in mind that you need to be back in the harbor by 12:30 p.m., for lunch at Nino.
A local favorite founded in 1962, Nino is on the west side of the harbor—look for the blue awning. Peruse the menu if you like, but there’s really only one thing to order: the bouillabaisse. It’s the region’s specialty, and a delicious and entertaining ritual that can stretch long into the afternoon. You start with a bowl of fishy broth that is continually replenished and an array of fish (super-fresh spotted weaver, scorpion fish, conger eel, John Dory)—presented on a separate plate—plus croutons, boiled potatoes, Parmesan cheese, and a potent, garlicky sauce (rouille) that will leave you reeking joyfully until tomorrow. The meal’s DIY element—you create your own mélange of the ingredients—adds to the experience.
After lunch, head back to your car and follow the signs to the Route des Crêtes, a winding, death-defying road popular with bikers and motorcyclists. As you climb away from Cassis, terraced fields give way to red earth dotted with scrubby rosemary bushes—look down to the right for a sweeping vista of the town. After about ten minutes, a third of the way along the route, pull over on the right-hand side of the road and continue on foot on the fragrant path toward the cliffs for another exhilarating view of the Mediterranean. From here, the shimmering sea is indistinguishable from the sky; pools of sunlight drip through the clouds, illuminating the occasional fishing boat. Return to your car for the most terrifying stretch of the Route des Crêtes: a series of rock-hugging hairpin turns that is worth the sweaty palms for the glimpses of the prehistoric white-stone monoliths that look like fat digits amid the diminutive cypress trees.
After driving back into Aix and calming your nerves with a tisane at the Villa Gallici, stroll to Le Passage, a bistro opposite the Cézanne Cinema that has a leafy Asian fusion look and a decent three-course prix fixe for $43, including a bottle of wine to share. You have an early start tomorrow, so pack before you hit the sack, and set your alarm for 6 a.m.
Day 3 (Monday): Provence
Having checked out of the Villa Gallici, you’re behind the wheel by 6:30 a.m., heading north on the A51/E712 until the turnoff to Forcalquier, a pretty medieval town nestled between the Lure and Luberon mountains in Haute-Provence, for an elevated perspective on this bucolic region and one of the week’s highlights: a hot-air balloon ride. It’s a dramatic drive to Forcalquier, particularly at this time of day, with the sun and mist rising: You pass lofty blue forests, their leaves turning russet, that call to mind Jean Giono’s novella The Man Who Planted Trees, an allegorical eco-tale about someone who voluntarily reforested his patch of Provence in the early twentieth century.
You meet a representative from France Montgolfières in front of the Tourist Office on the Place Bourget at 8 a.m. Montgolfières has been flying balloons all over France almost daily for over a decade, so you’re in safe hands. Having parked in Forcalquier, you’re driven to a field just outside town, where a train of blue and red silk lies unfurled on the grass. A fan is blasting fiery air into the balloon, which gradually inflates and swings upright, finally standing an impressive 98 feet high. You and the other passengers clamber into the 12-person basket, and after some brief safety instructions and a chirpy “Messieurs et Mesdames, bon vol!” from the pilot, the balloon rises gently off the ground. It lingers just above the grass and shuffles, hovercraft-like, over the patchwork fields of the Durance Valley, before lifting off, breaking through the clouds, and ascending to 2,000 feet. Birds swoop beneath the basket, and confused dogs yap up at it.
About 90 minutes after takeoff, you alight in a field near a borie, a traditional Provençal drystone hut (some date back to 600 BC), crushing wild thyme and marjoram as you land. After champagne and croissants, everyone pitches in to fold the balloon and stuff it back into its bag before the drive back to town. Monday is market day here—another opportunity to stock up on Provençal produce.
From Forcalquier, drive 1.8 miles down the N100 to Mane, where you’ve been booked for a noon spa treatment at Le Couvent des Minimes, a seventeenth-century convent that recently opened as a hotel with France’s first l’Occitane spa. L’Occitane beauty products are concocted just down the road using flowers and herbs harvested nearby—including, naturellement, lavender—and exported to 85 countries. The factory shop offers a ten percent discount on products, but don’t bother with the free tour: I was expecting an herbal version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but the reality was much more prosaic. The spa treatments back at the hotel, however, are sublime, and the “Immortelle Secret to Youth” facial ($150) is particularly recommended.
Lunch has been booked for 2 p.m. at La Manne Celeste, a small, simple Mane pizzeria that you’d walk right by if you didn’t know it was there. The tables are jammed with laborers and families enjoying excellent hearty fare: rough country pâté, andouillette (a smoked tripe sausage), and fromage blanc with rhubarb compote. The scene will remind you just how serious the French are about their food, regardless of their socio-economic background—and how their attitude toward a weekday lunch differs from ours: Sandwich at your desk or two-hour slap-up lunch? I know which I prefer.
After your meal, drive to the papal powerhouse of Avignon on the scenic N100, which leads into the D900. When you reach the outskirts of Avignon, head inside the city’s fourteenth-century ramparts to the hotel La Mirande. La Mirande, which celebrates its seven-hundredth birthday this year, couldn’t possibly have a better location: It’s directly opposite the 164-foot-high walls of the Papal Palace, Avignon’s main event. Nevertheless, it’s tricky to locate (fortunately, your travel specialist has provided detailed driving directions that lead you into the city center via the Porte de la Ligne, from where you should see signs to La Mirande). When you reach a set of short iron posts restricting traffic, ring the buzzer and the receptionist will lower them, and you will proceed down a narrow cobbled street to the hotel, which has valet parking (it costs $32 a day, and unfortunately there’s no real alternative). Inside the elegant honey-stone walls of La Mirande, the eighteenth-century-style decor is sumptuous, and a winding staircase leads to small but exquisite paneled rooms with marble bathrooms.
Tomorrow you’ll get the grand tour of Avignon’s stupefyingly rich architecture, which stretches back to the Romans, but spend an hour or so inside the Papal Palace this afternoon. The papacy installed its court in Avignon at the beginning of the fourteenth century to escape political infighting in Rome, swelling the city from 6,000 citizens to 30,000. A dynasty of popes inhabited this, the largest Gothic palace in Europe, for nearly a hundred years, each adding his personal architectural or interior-design flourish and modifying the general look from sober Romanesque to elaborate Gothic (to appreciate these modifications, check out the intricate wooden models on the first floor).
In addition to being the center of the Holy Roman Empire in exile, the palace has had many lives, including as a military barracks and a prison. There’s not a huge amount to see inside, but worth a peek are the Grand Tinel, a banqueting room of astounding proportions, with a wood-paneled barrel-vaulted ceiling (the original was destroyed by fire in 1413, so it was reconstructed in the 1970s), where the conclave was elected; the Pope’s Chamber in the Angel Tower, its blue walls decorated with vines (residents and guests of the Papal Palace drank an extraordinary 2.5 liters of wine a day per person); and Pope Clement VI’s study, with a surprisingly pagan frieze depicting the seigneurial pastoral pleasures of stag hunting, fishing, and falcon hunting.
Freshen up back at La Mirande before wandering past the floodlit palace to La Fourchette, a lively bistro where a table has been reserved for you at 8 p.m.
Day 4 (Tuesday): Avignon and nearby villages
After a decadent buffet breakfast in La Mirande’s Louis XV-style Garden Salon, meet your excellent American émigré guide Ann Menuhin at 9:30 a.m. in the hotel reception for a walking tour of the city. The papacy left Rome for Avignon in 1309, and about 40 years later, the Vatican bought the city from the Queen of Naples for 80,000 gold florins. A succession of seven popes resided here until 1377, when Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome. Avignon’s history and architecture dates back much further than the late Middle Ages, however, and Menuhin is deft at explaining its onionlike layers. She points out, for example, Notre-Dame-des-Doms, a twelfth-century Romanesque church on the main square to which flamboyant Baroque flourishes were added in the seventeenth century in an attempt to woo new worshippers (note the freshly gilded Virgin at the top as you leave).
From here, Menuhin leads you to the nineteenth-century gardens just above the Papal Palace, where you get a good view of the Rhône and what’s left of the famous Pont d’Avignon. Today, the river is a glassy green; in the twelfth century, it was a wild stretch of water, its two branches encircling the biggest river island in Europe, Barthelasse. When a local shepherd boy was instructed by God to build a bridge across it, skeptics challenged him to pick up a vast boulder to prove that he had the Lord’s support. The boy did, legend has it, and wealthy sponsors formed a committee to build the bridge. It collapsed and was rebuilt many times over the centuries, until repair efforts were abandoned in the seventeenth century. Menuhin then takes you into the city center, pointing out seventeenth-century aristocratic homes with elaborate interior courtyards with mosaics made from Calades stone, Renaissance houses characterized by exterior staircases, and Gothic churches like the fourteenth century église St-Pierre.
After the tour, pick up your car and drive 45 minutes south on the D570n and then the D17 to Le Bistrot du Paradou, or “Chez Jean-Louis” (57 ave. de la Vallée des Baux; 33-4-90-54-32-70; prix-fixe lunch, $54), between the villages of Paradou and Maussane-les-Alpilles, where lunch has been booked for 1:30 p.m. The restaurant, in a farmhouse with powder-blue shutters, is an unpretentious place with exposed-brick walls and zinc and marble tables. First opened in 1980, it serves a daily-changing four-course lunch of robust Provençal classics that comes with a bottle of red. My meal included a colossal slab of foie gras, moist guinea fowl with ratatouille, a plate of 12 cheeses so ripe they almost writhed (among them, a ludicrously creamy Roquefort), and a perfect crème brûlée.
From there, it’s a five-minute drive back along the D17 and then left onto the Route des Tours de Castillon to Mas des Barres, to get up close and personal with one of Provence’s artisanal products: olive oil. The region’s sunny, breezy weather, characterized by the storied northeast mistral wind—which rattles down the Rhône Valley and has been a motif of and inspiration for Provençal art and literature—provides ideal conditions for growing olives, and the Quenin family (who are, incidentally, the former owners of Le Bistrot du Paradou) have had a mill here since 1720. Their olive oil was awarded the International Olive Oil Council’s Gold Medal in the “Mildly Fruity” category in 2004, a veritable coup not least because the Vallée Baux is France’s smallest appellation and the country presses just 0.2 percent of the world’s olive oil, compared with Italy’s 20 percent and Spain’s 40 percent.
The tour begins at 3:30 p.m. in the gray-green olive grove, where the soft-spoken Jean-Baptiste Quenin introduces you to the five different varietals that make up his family’s oil: la salonenque, the principal component; la verdale, which adds grassy notes; the artichoke-flavored la béruguette; the peppery la picholine; and la grossane, which gives the olive oil its round, appley flavor. The harvest, when the olives are raked by hand and netted, begins in early November. Some olives are plucked green, others when they ripen to black (black and green olives are not different varieties; all olives start out green and turn black).
After Jean-Baptiste explains the multi-stage pressing process—if you’re here in late fall, you might see the machines whirring—including the vacuuming of the branches and leaves and the extraction of the oil in a contraption similar to a giant Jacuzzi, you return to the shop to sample the fruits of the Quenin family’s labors: An initial green, herby hit leads to a peppery back-of-the-throat punch, which softens to a gentle walnut note. Don’t leave without purchasing a few tins of olive oil.
Back at La Mirande, it’s time to get your glad rags on for the meal of the week—yes, you’re going to gorge again, but if you’re still sated from your four-course lunch, ne t’inquiete pas: The human stomach has an incredible ability to find room for good food. Tonight, you’ll be dining at the chef’s communal table in La Mirande’s old kitchen, where glasses, crockery, and copper pots are laid out on a dresser and the flamboyant Jean-Claude Altmayer performs before a monster-sized range inside the old hearth. Less dinner, more theater, this evening calls to mind a Molière farce.
The chef sets the tone by asking his guests—up to 12 of you—“Qu’est-ce qu’on va manger?” (“What are we going to eat?”). He then answers, “Rien!” (“Nothing!”), and proceeds to pretend to cut himself and twirl around in front of the stove, bowing and gesticulating to his delighted audience. Altmayer adds a subversive piquancy and subtle Asian flavor to traditional Provençal ingredients: After gambas with a vinegar and ginger sauce and a wedge of steamed salmon with fennel and shallots, our meal took a medieval turn: A great whopping, sizzling côte de boeuf was wrestled from the oven, hacked into tender chunks, and served with a red wine sauce, cèpes, and mashed potatoes. Dessert was an oozing, diminutive (phew!) chocolate cake. The lively meal goes on well into the night, with the chef replenishing glasses of Rhône Valley wines—fortunately you’re only a couple flights of spiral stairs away from bed.
Day 5 (Wednesday): St-Rémy and the Camargue
You’ve done far too much eating without lifting a finger this week, so today you’re going to learn how to prepare a three-course Provençal meal under the watchful eye of young supremo Pascal Volle at c, one of the region’s most vaunted cooking schools. Leave Avignon at 8:45 a.m. for the half-hour drive south to St-Rémy, birthplace of Nostradamus, on the western side of Les Alpilles. There, you meet Volle outside the église St-Martin, on the Place de la République, at 9:30 a.m. to shop at his favorite market stalls for the raw ingredients for your lesson (our booty included slender artichokes, tapenade the consistency of newly poured tar, shiny-eyed sea bass, and plump figs).
You then follow Volle in your car to the hotel and line up with the other apron-clad students in the bright kitchen. Volle is a good-humored and patient teacher, speaks fluent English (albeit with a deep southern French accent), and has a refreshingly léger spin on Provençal cooking—he uses little butter or cream. At the end of the session you’ll be given the recipes for everything you cooked, so don’t bother scribbling notes.
The first lesson is preparation—it’s as crucial, especially with these ingredients, as what you do with them. Today’s menu begins with Artichokes Barigoule: After we prepare the vegetables, we cook them in a pan with diced carrots and onion, smoked bacon, and white wine (“a glass for the pot, a glass for the chef”), then simmer for 20 minutes with stock and lemon juice; the sauce is thickened with agar-agar. Next, we learn to scale and debone the sea bass, then stuff it with tapenade and fennel, season, sauté, and bake with a dash of stock, while the figs are stewed in red wine with cinnamon leaves and honey. You scoff the results in the dining room with your fellow amateur chefs.
Leave Domaine de Valmouriane by 2 p.m. for the drive back to St-Rémy, where you’re spending the afternoon. Pay a visit to legendary chocolatier Joël Durand, just off the main square. Durand, who opened his first boutique at the age of 19, infuses his chocolates with a radical array of spices. Next, walk to the Musée Estrine, in a handsome 1748 stone house in the heart of the old town. The museum is worth a visit for its collection of 20 works by Albert Gleizes, on the second floor. Gleizes lived in St-Rémy from 1939 until 1953; he was, with Picasso, Braque, and Léger, one of the most important French Cubists, and the paintings here chart the evolution of his style from Impressionist landscapes to splashy, upbeat Cubist works. The ground floor houses an homage to St-Rémy’s most famous son, or inmate, Vincent Van Gogh, in the form of reproductions of many of his paintings—sadly, there are no original works.
In May 1889, Van Gogh admitted himself to the Monastère St-Paul-de-Mausolée, an asylum on the outskirts of town, after taking a razor to his ear in Arles. Despite, or because of, his fragile mental state, the year he spent here was one of his most productive—Van Gogh painted Starry Night and many self-portraits and landscapes at the Monastère and in the countryside (he was permitted to walk an hour from the asylum). It’s your next stop (unless you have an urge to stretch your legs, skip the Van Gogh walk from town to the clinic, with yet more reproductions of works, and drive).
As a museum, the Romanesque building is somewhat wanting—the descriptions of the artist’s time here and of the barbaric treatments patients were subjected to, tacked to the walls, are convoluted and confusing—but the building itself is stunning. It’s easy to summon the ghost of Van Gogh and imagine him gazing melancholically out at the muted Provençal landscape from the window on the second floor, or wandering dejectedly among the lavender and ancient apricot trees outside—and to marvel at how the artist and his madness transformed these soft shades into vibrant, urgent, graphic canvases.
Be sure to leave St-Rémy no later than five o’clock for the 30-minute drive to France’s Wild West. The change in scenery as you head south on the D36 is astounding: Mountain ranges give way to the bleak, flat land of the Camargue, a marshy delta between the Mediterranean and the two branches of the Rhône that feels like another continent. Your base, for one night, is the Mas de Peint. A stone farmhouse with eight rooms that are simply but tastefully furnished (unlike the full-on-crazy chintz of your previous two lodgings), it’s on a 1,300-acre estate owned by the Bon family.
Dinner is booked for 8 p.m., so when you’ve checked in, had a dip in the pool, and showered, head back along the D37 to Chez Bob, in a cozy farmhouse built in 1610. Owner and chef Jean-Guy Castello’s anchoïade (an anchovy and garlic dip that’s slathered on crudités) and his maigret de canard and bull steak grilled over the flames in the dining room’s inglenook fireplace are very good indeed, their unalloyed rustic flavors a huge contrast, like the landscape, to everything else you’ve eaten this week.
Day 6 (Thursday): The Camargue
You’re heading deep into the Camargue this morning, so after breakfast, check out of your room and meet your jeep driver in reception at 9 a.m. (If you don’t speak fluent French, be sure to ask the receptionist to book you an English-speaking driver. Mine declared that he spoke “pas d’un mot d’anglais,” and his southern accent was, to my ears, as impenetrable as Glaswegian.) The jeep tour takes you deep into this pays sauvage punctuated with briny ponds—whence derives the region’s famous fleur de sel, or sea salt. You’ll see the black bulls native to the Camargue—they look like ink blots among the wind-whipped reeds and grasses—and your driver will tell you about the ancient tradition of bullfighting, which persists today. Every village in these parts has its own arena, and bullfighters begin training at the age of 14 at an école taurine, where they learn to swipe a piece of cotton from the bull’s head using a special comb. It’s a risky but lucrative sport: The winner gets about $1,000 a pop (“C’est le business!” said our driver).
You’ll also see the Camargue’s trademark free-roaming white horses and some of its 400 bird species, including herons, and, if you’re lucky, flamingos. The younger members of the flamingo flock fly to the warmer climes of North Africa in the fall, but a few oldies remain; witnessing their ludicrously long, slight forms drift over the Étang de Vaccarès lagoon is quite an experience.
Back at the hotel, hop into your car and drive north on the D36 to Arles. You’re exploring this Roman sparkler and UNESCO World Heritage Site on your own this afternoon, so after dropping off your car at Parking du Centre, head on foot across the boulevard des Lices and through the Jardin d’été to the Théâtre Antique. Chances are the theater will be closed, but don’t worry: You get an uninterrupted view of this extraordinarily well-preserved perfect semicircle, built at the end of the first century b.c., from outside. Then walk north to Roman Arles’s pièce de résistance, the Amphithéâtre, designed by architect T. Crispus Reburrus (also responsible for Nîmes’s amphitheater), with a capacity of 20,000. Climb the tower for a magnificent view of Arles and the Rhône River beyond.
Next, stroll down the rue Raspail and turn left onto the rue du Quatre Septembre. (If you’re wondering why you keep finding yourself on streets with this name, it’s because September 4, 1870, is the date on which France’s Third Republic was established.) The rue du Quatre Septembre leads to the Baths of Constantine, which are among France’s best preserved and are one of three such complexes in Arles. Your Amphithéâtre ticket is good for the baths, too; be sure to pick up a mini guide at the entry kiosk—distinguishing the tepidarium from the caldarium is tricky without it.
The complex, a foundation of Roman social life where men and women of all walks of life would steam, splash, and socialize, was built during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great in the fourth century a.d. Much of the compound remains unexcavated, but most of the intricate redbrick lattice-patterned frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium, and laconicum (sauna) have been exposed, and you can see the brick stacks that formed the under-floor heating system. It should be about 2 p.m. by now—time to grab a quick lunch at one of the city’s cafés. One option is the attractive Jardin des Arts.
After your meal, walk to the Église St-Trophime. The most impressive parts of the church are the astoundingly detailed Romanesque West Portal, on the Place de la République, and the Cloister, a complex built for the canons (priests who attended the bishop). You’ll recognize the symbols of the Evangelists surrounding Christ on the tympanum of the portal from the cloisters you saw in Aix’s Cathédrale St-Sauveur; even more extraordinary is the army of carved saints below and the angels above. The peaceful cloister galleries provide another three-dimensional recap of the headliners of Christianity: A depiction of the patron saints of the église Arles and of the Easter Mystery is on the north side; the Passion of Christ and scenes from his life occupy the gallery’s eastern side; the story of Saint Trophime, the patron saint of Arles, makes up the older southern gallery; and other popular biblical stories are on the western side. Don’t miss the collection of seventeenth-century tapestries (some of the world’s finest examples from that period), depicting scenes from battle and the story of Saint Trophime.
Aim to leave Arles by five to drive to the hilltop village of Gordes, on the edge of the Plateau de Vaucluse, via the N113, the A7 to Cavaillon, and then the D2. The trip will take about two hours, so you should arrive in Gordes in time for sunset—and there aren’t many better vantage points in the whole region than your base for the last two nights, La Bastide de Gordes & Spa, on the edge of the village, directly above the Luberon Valley. That said, the hotel does have its cons. The rooms, apart from the pricey suites, are nothing to write home about; the staff are less than effusive; and there are numerous added costs: The weak Wi-Fi is $26 per day (yes, really).
The alternative is La Bastide de Marie, amid vines, olive groves, and lavender fields between Gordes and Bonnieux. It has bucketloads more charm: The guest rooms have wrought-iron four-poster beds, exposed-brick walls, and claw-foot tubs. The catch here is that it’s a bit out of the way and the considerable rates are demi-pensione, meaning they include breakfast and dinner; although the food is good, chances are you’ll want to explore the area’s other culinary offerings. Speaking of which, dinner tonight has been booked for 8 p.m. at L’Estaminet, a casual, inexpensive bistro a stone’s throw from La Bastide de Gordes.
Day 7 (Friday): The Luberon
Your last day in Provence will be spent exploring le paysage of the Luberon Valley. Be sure you get up early, while the mist is hanging like a shroud over Gordes, buy a breakfast croissant from the boulangerie-pâtisserie on the rue de l’Église, opposite the castle, and eat it in the shadow of the mighty ramparts while you study the map and decide which of France’s Plus Beaux Villages are most deserving of your attention. There are so many gorgeous medieval hilltop hamlets in the département of Vaucluse that you can’t go wrong whichever crop you choose—and since it’s October and most travelers have dispersed, you won’t have to use your elbows to get that photo. But since you have only this morning—the afternoon will be spent toasting your Provençal vacation plusieurs fois during an escorted wine tasting—plan which villages to hit before you set off.
One good option is a loop of three villages below the N900: Lacoste, Ménerbes, and Oppède-le-Vieux. Lacoste is crowned by a castle occupied by that notorious penner of filth, the Marquis de Sade, in the late eighteenth century. It’s now owned by fashion designer Pierre Cardin, who holds a music festival there every July. To get to the castle, walk up the narrow cobbled rue St-Trophime and onto the rue de la Frescado; then turn right and up the narrow chemin du Château to the ruins (the estate was sacked by an angry mob in 1789). The castle is surrounded by contemporary sculpture and looks down on the village and as far as the medieval ridgetop village of Ménerbes, four miles west.
Ménerbes was the setting for Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence. Needless to say, the expat invasion that followed its publication did not ingratiate Mayle with the locals. (After he moved away, a sign was installed on the outskirts of the village advising visitors not to ask after Mayle or the whereabouts of his house—so don’t drop his name.) Once you’ve parked your car on the avenue Marcellin Poncet, follow the signs to the Maison de la Truffe et du Vin, which lead through steep lanes of houses with rust-colored shutters, the air suffused with the smell of wood smoke and fresh bread, to the main square with its seventeenth-century town hall topped with a wrought-iron campanile. The Maison’s cellar is stocked with every wine produced in the Parc Naturel Régional du Luberon; tastings are offered, as well as information on truffle harvesting, which starts around November 25 and runs through the end of March. Eighty percent of French truffles come from the Vaucluse region. From here, walk to the sixteenth-century église St-Luc for spectacular views of the teal-colored Luberon Mountains.
Before you hit the feudal village of Oppède-le-Vieux proper, take a walk through the valley beneath it. You’ll find signs to the Sentier Vigneron d’Oppède at the village parking lot—it’s a 90-minute signposted walk that takes in an extraordinary variety of typical Provençal flora, with the Luberon Mountains as an omnipresent backdrop. You start at a botanic garden planted with rosemary, lavender, and wild sage; amble along a narrow path through an oak forest and onto the D178 for a short spell; then down a shady path through pine trees and onto a dirt track beside russet vines heavy with purple fruit—the stony soil produces good grenache, syrah, and cinsault grapes; and, finally, past groves of boxy olive trees. When you’re level with the parking lot, turn right and walk uphill to the village, where you’ll find a great lunch spot, Le Petit Café, in a leafy square. If it’s warm, sit at one of the tables on the terrace.
Afterward, spend half an hour exploring this unspoiled hamlet, now an artistic and farming (principally grapes and cherries) community, including the church, Notre-Dame-d’Alidon, built in the twelfth century, enlarged in the sixteenth (note its cobalt-blue ceiling decorated with fleurs-de-lis and stars). Pick up a copy of “The Old Village of Oppède Historical Outline” in the church to discover more about the colorful past of Oppède-le-Vieux up to 1791, when the area was annexed to France: its Celto-Ligurian and Roman roots, its bloody battles with the Visigoths and the Saracens, its dynastic struggles (between the tenth and thirteenth centuries), and its devastation under the scourge of Black Death.
From Oppède, drive back to your hotel, where you’re meeting your guide and chauffeur for the afternoon, Pierre Bertou, a shoe fetishist, oenophile, former record shop owner and DJ, and a dropper of fascinating Provençal facts. His unparalleled Côtes du Rhône contacts mean he can secure a cellar visit at just about any vineyard—including the 250-plus Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers. Be warned, though: The best wine-producing estates are not necessarily the most atmospheric places to visit (they’ve got more important things to do than watch you knock back their vin rouge), and vice versa, but stick with Bertou and you’ll be fine—he can get you into the back room of many vineyards where you’ll taste multiple bottles, as opposed to the single pour you’ll most likely get if you go solo.
I chose to meander off the beaten path and check out Domaine Terres de Solence in Mazan, a relatively new “cosmo biodynamic vineyard” run by the young husband-and-wife team Jean Luc and Anne Marie Isnard. They prune and pick their organic grapes according to the dictates of a homeopathic calendar, working with, rather than against, nature to achieve the best expression of the terroir. Jean Luc explains the process of fermentation and maceration and invites us to listen to the wine bubbling in the oak casks.
After a tasting, it’s off to Chateauneuf-du-Pape country, just west of the A7. Wine was the lifeblood of the papacy: Before the popes’ arrival, viticulture was not an important industry here. The popes were such bons viveurs that Petrarch declared that it was easier to find good wine than holy water in Avignon, and when the papacy returned to Rome, the cardinals complained that the quality of the wine plummeted. Among the memorable wines I tasted there were the figgy, leathery Domaine Bois de Boursan 2005. To ward off papal-style withdrawal, buy a few bottles, wrap them in a sweater, and pop them in your suitcase (malheureusement, Provençal producers won’t ship to the United States), and you’ll be able to banish post-vacation blues by raising a glass to la belle France back home. A votre santé!
How to book this trip
Contact Jill Jergel of Frontiers. You can buy this Iconic Itineraries trip as is or customize it. The cost of the seven-day tour described here is roughly $3,950 per person, based on double occupancy. This includes all hotels, Jergel’s planning fee, the balloon ride, Avignon and Luberon half-day guides, the cooking lesson, and the olive grove tour. The price does not include breakfast, the Calanques boat ride, spa treatments, tips, car rental, gas, entrance fees, traveler’s insurance, flights, or meals (except Jean-Claude Altmayer’s chef’s table).