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A Week in Provence: Day 5, Lourmarin, the Market, and Aioli

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:38:28 +0000

Today, we vowed not to get in the Citroen, no matter how tempted we might be to take off and go somewhere else. We've vowed to spend the whole day around Lourmarin. After all, Friday is market day, and the squares are filled to overflowing with everything from fish to hats. There are tempting forest mushrooms, tablecloths, tubs of olives, spices. Folks behind glass cases full of moldy cheeses thrust big, sturdy knives at everyone who passes, tipped with some little morsel of cheese or slice of saucisson.

We had gobs of foodie fun. We bought a pigeonneau, a young pigeon or what we in the US call a squab in order to convince ourselves of the gourmet goodness of it. The butcher asked me if I wanted to clean it or let him do it, and I pointed to him, politely of course. Squab in Italy or France is generally sold defeathered but with internal organs intact. He cleaned the thing impeccably while keeping the edible bits like the liver beautifully intact. I've never done it that precisely. It was a joy to watch. Not that it would make a good television show or anything, but foodie fun is oddly technical sometimes.

As we were buying the rest of our dinner, including mushrooms called something like "Mouton feet", we noticed packs of wild tourists had begun flooding the market. The big, hulking tourist buses had hit town, probably tripling its population. We hurried home to get our stuff put away because we wanted to go to Cafe Gaby for lunch and had visions of being aced out by a clot of folks in shorts headed by someone continually stabbing a colorful umbrella lewdly toward the clear blue sky.

But alas, it was not to be. We snagged a table easily and locals quickly filled the joint. Some of them started moving tables around and we found ourselves at one end of a sort of horseshoe arrangement. Sitting beside us was an older woman who was wheezing so badly we didn't know if she'd make it through the meal. She ordered the duck leg and some boiled vegetables. They didn't bring her bread, which I think was part of a cat-and-mouse strategy. Eventually she asked for some. As soon as the waiter set it down and turned away, she filled her purse with it.

By now the other end of the horseshoe was in a convivial mood. Sturdy men got ready for the aioli--a big platter of boiled vegetables, fish and snails with a pot of garlic sauce--by stuffing napkins down the necks of their shirts and smoothing them gracefully over broad chests. Wine flowed. The conviviality increased to the point that the laughter was not only loud but it ended with snorts. Lots of snorts. If there was any question whether we were in the real Provence, it went out the window with the downing of the first pichet de vin rouge. Fun.

Martha ordered the aioli you see in the picture. It's a boiled garden, complete with pesky snails, plus some fish. The one potato is kinda small, so they included another the size of a soccer ball. I had the Andouillette with frites instead because I knew I could dip my frites in the aioli and still eat some of the vegetables.

I gotta tell you, we were so stuffed that after my afternoon nap Martha made me take a two hour walk. It didn't work. I'm still stuffed and the squab awaits, clean as a whistle. Oh, the meal plus a little wine and coffee set us back �28. I'd go again. And again.

P.S. If you plaster your green beens with enough aioli they will stick to your vertically deployed napkin when you happen to miss your mouth. I know this by observation. One kind gent had two of them displayed thusly. Way cool.

A Week in Provence: Day 5, Lourmarin, the Market, and Aioli originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 14:38:28.

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A Week in Provence: Day 4, Roussillon and Lacoste

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:27:23 +0000

Today, the Provence villages of Roussillon and Lacoste were our targets. For the first time this week we heard plenty of English.

We stopped to see the 1st century Pont Julien Roman bridge near Roussillon, then went to the village itself.

Roussillon is touted as one of the most beautiful villages in Provence. It's hard to decide, trust me. What's unique about Roussillon is that it sits on what used to be a virtual gold mine of ochre. (Ochre ranges in color from yellow to violet red and is the result of some complicated processes that went on with ocean sand 110 million years or so ago. It's prized by users of natural colors, from house painters to artists and pot throwers.)

In any case, you can go down some stairs like you see in the picture and visit these abandoned open-air mines. The colors are quite impressive. The short loop takes a half hour.

We did it after lunch, which is probably a mistake. You'll want some strong light overhead to get the real effict of the colors; we had some deep shade in November. It was still impressive.

You'll find lots of ceramics in town, and we couldn't resist buying some plates which used a 17th century technique to make each plate show a unique swirl of color.

Then we headed over to Lacoste. Above Lacoste sits the 18th century chateau of the notorious Donatien Alphonse Francois Comte de Sade, otherwise known as the Marquis de Sade. There's an interesting bronze of him as you can see in the picture.

The walk to the castle, besides being steep, is quite interesting as well. The older parts of the village are particularly well preserved and evocative. English is spoken everywhere, because the Savannah College of Art and Design holds classes there.

The Chateau is owned today by Pierre Cardin, who has renovated parts of it and turned it and the quarry out back into performance space. He sponsors the Festival de Lacoste held in July and August.

Tonight, when the clouds rolled in, the old ruins of the Chateau looked somewhat sinister.

But the weather held as we headed up the hill to Bonnieux to buy some pate and a few chicken legs for dinner in the apartment tonight. When we got home to Lourmarin, we had a a pastis outside at Cafe Gaby, favored by Peter Mayle I'm told. There were just enough people out to make a nice evening; the French passing by our table as they went inside each greeted us formally, "Madame et Monsieur, buon jour!"

That was nice. November, lightly touristed, is perfect.

A Week in Provence: Day 4, Roussillon and Lacoste originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 14:27:23.

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A Week in Provence: Day 3, the Carmague

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:41:22 +0000

Today we loaded up the telephoto and took off for the Camargue. The Camargue is (French) cowboy country. There are the usual cowboy things, like cows, horses, and big steaks on restaurant menus--and there are the less manly things, like the pink flamingos begging for attention there on the right.

We stopped first at the old sheep barn that serves as the Mus�e Camarguais at Mas du Pont de Rousty. It was fun, but mostly in French. There was an interesting photo exhibition with pictures from 1910 that showed the good old days of the Camargue. It was a decent enough introduction to the culture of the place.

Then we headed to the town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. What a hoot. I can't think of another town I've ever visited that was made up almost entirely of restaurants. You can eat, stroll the beach promenade, eat some more, go up on the terrace of the church, and, well, eat again if you wish because you've done it all.

The upside of all this restaurant competition is that prices are pretty darn moderate for the type of food that's being served. Huge stands sold food to take away, which would be a good money-saving tip if you're heading over to see the birds at the Parc Ornithologique de Pont de Grau, where they have a picnic table or two near the entrance or you can sit on a bench along the well-marked trails and watch flamingos mating while downing your sandwich.

We, however, headed off to the recommended Hostellerie du Pont de Gau, which happens to sit right outside the entrance to the bird park. I gotta warn you, opening a menu there can be hazardous to your health; because the first pages are devoted to over-the-top menus. �50 for lunch was a bit much. But page through, and the prices moderate a bit--to about twice what they're charging in Saintes-Maries.

So, rather than start our restaurant search all over again, we went ahead and ordered a single dish for each of us. I ordered the Petite Bouillabaisse. Nothing particularly petite about it. I got a big bowl with six or seven fish fillets plus some mussels and prawns, a plate with rounds of toast and aioli and grated cheese, and a big bowl of broth. As you ate you buttered up the toasts with aioli and let them sink into the broth a bit.When the broth in your bowl got low, some young woman in charge of these things came over and asked you if you wanted more ladeled over the whole deal, to which I said "oui" because I didn't know what else to say, my French being sub-par and all. It actually seemed worth the price (in France), which was �27.50. Martha had a huge grilled Loup de Mer fillet sitting on a bed of creamed leeks and it was perfectly cooked, fresh and mighty tasty, too. So, despite the cost, we were happy. Maybe it was the wine, but more likely it was the old "you get what you pay for" thing.

After lunch we walked the trails of the bird park through some scenic wetlands. Flamingos were everywhere, especially near the entrance. They protest a lot. Many people don't know that, but the screeching was mighty obnoxious. Maybe they do it for the tourists.

It took us about two hours to walk all the trails because there wasn't a way to make a neat loop out of the whole deal. Besides the birds we saw the typical horses and a bit later, as we drove home, the bulls of the Camargue. It was a fine, shirtsleeve afternoon for November. The horses were itching to take tourists on rides through the wild country of the Camargue, but there were few takers. If you want to see the Camargue at its finest, go in the off season.

Find out more about The Camargue. And click the pictures to see them bigger. They like that.

A Week in Provence: Day 3, the Carmague originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 16:41:22.

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Provence Window (Un)Dressing: Wordless Wednesday

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:24:29 +0000

Provence Window (Un)Dressing: Wordless Wednesday originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 03:24:29.

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A Week in Provence: Day 2

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:28:19 +0000

We had a busy day. First up was a stop at the open air market in the village of Cucuron. I love the name Cucuron (except recently, when the laptop decided that it needed an absolutely crushing blow on the "u" key to even think about producing a "u"). In any case, as always with a French market, we bought too much. There was that fat pork sausage we got from the stout Corsican, some apples, lettuce, and Belgian endive from the green grocer, then of course some olives, of which there are always way more different plastic bins full than you can choose from. Then cheese, fresh goat with herbs, and then some ravioli stuffed with cepes, which would be porcini except for that we're in France, not Italy.

Cucuron quickly became my favorite market square in the whole wide world. Smack in the center of it is a stone lined "pond" around which are planted huge plane trees. The market forms around this in the shade of the trees (well, in summer anyway, in November the leaves were falling faster than the dollar).

Cucuron was the village seen in the movie, "A Good Year". Not a bad flick. I've seen it twice.

After putting away our culinary treasures, we hopped into the Citroen and were off to Menerbes. You know this place if you follow Peter Mayle. He choose Menerbes as the first place to rest his typewriter when he got a little tired of writing ad copy on it.

It was not easy arriving at Menerbes. This is road fixing time. Deviations were everywhere. Speaking of deviations, as we consulted our maps in desperation we looked up and bam, there was a rainbow that seemed to emanate from the Chateau of the Marqis de Sade above the village of Lacoste! Mon Dieu! (Perhaps you can see the rainbow in the picture. Not easy, but trust me, it's there.)

The Chateau is now owned by Pierre Cardin. He's fixing it up.

Anyway, Menerbe is spread out on a ridge with great views of the valley. On top is a chateau with a wine cellar and truffle education area. There's also a little restaurant that's open in the season in the courtyard of the Chateau. Sadly, it is closed in November, because we really, really wanted the truffle omelet. But, we found a single restaurant open, Cafe Veranda, and it had one of those panoramic terraces too, so we sat gawking and ate on the veranda. I had a plate filled with salmon fume, salad, and fois gras. Martha had the plat du jour, a nice slab of salmon on a ragout of vegetables. Not a bad lunch.

We shared a quarter-liter pitcher of white wine. I left impressed. It had a somewhat floral nose but dry finish, like a Sauvignon--there was a lot going on in the glass for a house wine.

Then, after a short ride, the surprise of the day came into view. Opp�de Le Vieux. Old Opp�de. The abandoned one. High on a ridge a progression of monmental buildings seem to flow down the hillside. Charmingly. Yes, a destructive 1731 earthquake made the peasants think along the lines of "why should I, with my wrecked house, spend time fixing it up when it's so darn far to my fields?" So they settled on lower land. By 1910 even the low lying parts of it were abandoned. The new town is miles away. But artists came during the war, refugees from the German occupied north including Antoine St. Exupery, and repopulated it. Now there are artists and tourists--during the season. In early November the old village reclaims its right to be the romantic ruin it is. Deserted. Quiet except for sheep bells and yapping dogs from the valleys. An amazing place, Opp�de Le Vieux. That's the old church in the picture. If you're here in the off-off season, be sure to visit. The parking lot is bigger than the ones at many football stadiums. I can't imagine the crowds. There was one other car when we parked in the afternoon.

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Notes: The pictures in this post are clickable. See them a decent size!

Peter Mayle figures in a lot of this post. He wrote "A Good Year" and evidenly lives in Lourmarin, where I'm staying (or he did in 2008). I didn't know that. I found out from The Provence Post, where Mayle tells us his favorite eateries in the area.

A Week in Provence: Day 2 originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 14:28:19.

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A Week in Provence: Day One

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:04:51 +0000

Today was our first full day in the rental apartment in Lourmarin and it was supposed to rain all day. If you're going to have a rainy day, you always hope it will come in the middle of your stay--after you've had a few days to explore. Then you don't mind staying home and catching up on email and downloading pictures. But, it's November, you take what you get.

Let me tell you, if the weather was a roller coaster, we'd have thrown up just after they sold us the ticket.

It was just sprinkling a bit at 9am when we walked to the little store in Lourmarin called Super TafII. It's one of those wonderful little stores that carries just about everything you'd put in your mouth voluntarily. We snagged some cheese (a creamy Banon, a goat cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves, and a chevre called la Gariotin), some onion, olive and anchovy fougasse, and some pate en croute--just in case we didn't want to cook. France is the place to be if you just want to nibble on deli stuff. Then we hit the road, thinking that if it rained we could still see some of the countryside.

It stopped raining by the time we hit the town of Bonnieux. Bonnieux has a bread museum and a street for penitants and tourists with stout legs that ramps steeply to the top of the hill offering great views as well as one of those handy orientation tables the French so kindly provide which labels everything you can see on the horizon so you can decide where you'd like to go next.

I wanted to go to Saignon. No, it's not a place in Viet Nam. It's one of those Provence towns you don't hear much about. In fact, the very reason I wanted to visit it was that someone left a comment on Provenceweb wondering why they didn't make mention of it. Well, he was right, it was a delightful town spread out on a ridge as if waiting to become a postcard--and it had some fine restaurants, too. You need to have a full memory card for that camera though, Saignon is eye candy deluxe.

By the time we'd walked through the ruins of the castle at Saignon we were hungry. The menu at the hotel/restaurant C�sar in Bonnieux sounded good and it advertised a panoramic terrace, so we backtracked. The �17 lunch menu was indeed fabulous; I had the skate wing in a lemon caper sauce and Martha had the lamb shank flavored with thyme.

While we were sitting in the restaurant, a wind started blowing. Howling I should say. It cleared the gunk out of the air with a vengeance. Suddenly we could see across the valley with a clarity that was actually startling. There were the vineyards in fall colors and above them the town of Lacoste and just above Lacoste was...are you ready? The Chateau of the Marquis de Sade. Pinch me! Oh, well, maybe not...

The sky was now blue. Bluer than the shutters, a deep and rich blue that was totally unexpected on this reportedly rainy day. Later it would fill with gray, wooley clouds. We would go on to take more pictures, ending up at the cemetery of Lourmarin as the sun dipped below the clouds, peering at the grave of French literary giant Albert Camus, whose daughter Catherine still lives in Lourmarin village they tell us.

Day 2 | Day 3 in Provence.

A Week in Provence: Day One originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 14:04:51.

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Greetings from the Luberon!

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:23:18 +0000

In a mere six hours, we've driven from Tuscany, the land of the green shutters, to Provence, the land of the blue shutters. We've rented an apartment for a week in the town of Lourmarin in the Luberon, and we're here for a week. The town is laid back, with a castle to visit and a whole lotta caffes, bars and restarants to fritter away your vacation in. We've just had a fine meal at Restaurant L'Oustalet, a three course meal for 26 Euros--plus a bottle of the house Cotes de Luberon for �17.

Post any questions you have about Provence in the comments, or follow me on twitter.

Greetings from the Luberon! originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 16:23:18.

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Fast Travel

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:23:32 +0000

We often lament on these pages the speed at which people think they can visit Europe. The "12 countries in two weeks" mentality still has a grip on a huge segment of the traveling public, it seems. We always urge people to slow down, to see some things in depth.

Then we go out and do a bit of flash travel ourselves. Whoosh and it's over.

A few days ago we hit the Autostrada early in the morning and managed to arrive at the Umbrian hill town of Orvieto by noon. Lunch there and a quick photo tour, since we hadn't been to Orvieto since digital photography took hold. Then we were back on the road to Otricoli, an interesting hill town which, like Orvieto, has older roots; you can explore them at the earlier manifestation of the town called Ocriculum.

Then inexpensive dinner at the fab Agriturismo Rio Coverino (spectacular homemade pasta with porchini and truffles!). Overnight near Otricoli, then a quick coffee before a visit to a fantastic artist community called the Art Monastery whose young visionaries have taken over an old monastery that offers rooms to rent and space for visiting artists, then off to Orte to catch the train to Rome to visit the Villa Torlonia, where we don hard hats and take an excursion down into the Jewish catacombs that date from 200 AD and are quite spectacular, despite the fact they've been plundered (open in a year to the public after they've ironed out the safety stuff). Then a tour of the gardens and villa itself before settling down to eating some pizza on the shaded terrace in weather that shouldn't be so nice at the end of October.

All very nice except for the trip home: Rome bus, Train to Orte, Car stuck in Orte traffic jam caused by workers blocking an intersection for no apparent reason, then the long drive home in darkness.

Whew. But we have pictures--not to mention a new appreciation for those of you who put up with long days of interesting but grueling travel because you're thirsty for experience and knowledge and don't have a lot of time for exploration.

Fast Travel originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 14:23:32.

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Lake Constance

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:22:05 +0000

After a short visit this fall, I was really impressed with the Lake Constance (Bodensee) area which borders Germany, France and Switzerland. You could spend your whole vacation here. Public transportation options, including ferries and other watercraft, are numerous. There's a monastic island, a garden and butterfly island, and plenty of castles and wineries to visit. A bicycle path circles the island, and almost every town has a web of walking trails expanding outwards from it.

Take a look at our "darned cool cuz it's interactive" Lake Constance Travel Planning Map. You might find a place you just can't stay away from on your next vacation.

Lake Constance originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 11:22:05.

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Romans in Verona - Wordless Wednesday

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:04:07 +0000

"I don't know how these moderns deal with all these communications devices. Thank the gods for these mind-altering sticks they've developed!"

Romans in Verona - Wordless Wednesday originally appeared on About.com Europe Travel on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 02:04:07.

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