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Provence 2012 |
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Some years ago I fell utterly in love with the beautiful countryside along the Cote d'Azur in Southern France and had wanted to return for some time. Now I finally got the chance to do so, opting for nearby Provence now. Luckily the trip to the sunny skies of the Mediterranean started at precisely the right time as Germany was experiencing a renewed cold snap with cold and wind.
Air France brought us to sunny Marseille on time and we took the Navette shuttle bus to Gare Saint-Charles, Marseille's airy nice central station. From there it was only two stops to the Vieux Port, the heart of Marseille, where our hotel was located perfectly in one corner of the quais. Though it was a bit of a downer to see most of the quai roped off and turned into a big construction site in preparation for Marseille being European cultural capital in 2013. Which became a recurrent theme for the trip, by the way, so NEVER travel to places that will have some big tourist thing come up in the near future!
Since it was Saturday afternoon and the shops would be closed on Sunday, we hit the shopping streets first, mostly because I had a list of things to buy at FNAC, then we wandered about the Galeries Lafayette and the main shopping streets including pretty La Canebiere, Marseille's main thoroughfare, before having a nice dinner at the Vieux Port, a few steps away from the hotel.
Sunday was dedicated to the actual sightseeing tour, first slogging uphill to Notre Dame de la Garde, the beautiful Byzantine church thatoverlooks Marseille from a rather steep hill on the left side of the Vieux Port. We went to the right side then, to Le Panier, a nice little quarter full of small streets and quaint little squares, that also hosts the other big Marseillais church, Notre Dame de la Major, another Byzantine masterpiece.
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Above the view from Notre Dame across the Vieux Port and the actual harbour area of Marseille. Below left the view towards the Frioul Islands and tiny Chateau d'If in the foreground, most famous as the place where Alexandre Dumas had his fictional Count of Monte Christo stuck for many years. On the right side Marseille's other beautiful Byzantine church, the Cathedral de la Major.
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Initially we had planned to spend the afternoon on Chateau d'If, but the ships didn't go to If that day for some reason, so we decided to do a bigger tour instead to visit the gorgeous cliffs of Les Calanques, one of Southern France's most picturesque stretches of coastline. And definitely worth the fairly steep price of 28 Euro for a three hour boat tour to all the Calanques up to Cassis and back.
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Somehow I didn't feel like French food that evening, so we ended up in some nice Indian restaurant for a good old tikka masala with an amusing bonus: At 8pm a weird cheer went up among staff and guests and I thought there was some football thing going on, but it turned out they were announcing the result of the French elections on TV and everyone was cheering for the socialist winner Francois Holland. Later in the evening we even saw an autocorso along the Vieux Port with drivers tooting their horns and waving flags. It was kinda sweet, since you'd never see that kind of cheering in Germany after an election with people just shrugging and going "Eh, so what" generally.
Next morning it was time to leave Marseille behind and return to the airport - but only to pick up the rental car from a chirpy chap called John and finally head into the lavender hills of Provence, the actual destination for this trip. First stop was beautiful Aix en Provence, where we strolled along Cours Mirabeau, once the parade ground of the rich and noble, now a leafy broad avenue full of restaurants and posh shops, visited Saint Sauveur Cathedral and plenty of cute little shops in the maze of small streets that form the heart of Aix.
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While Aix didn't have too much in the way of sightseeing, it was just a really lovely little town and one that I had been particularly keen to see because I had once almost come close to living there for a year when I had considered a special university class that had included the first and last year in Cologne and the second and third year in London and Aix en Provence respectively. Back then I had been very keen to go to London but had freaked out at the idea of spending a year "in the middle of nowhere" in Southern France. How silly I had been back then, not knowing about the beauty of Provence (or the fact that Marseille and the seaside were a quick bus ride away in the weekends). Oh well, at least I got to visit now.
After lunch it was time to continue, getting a bit lost along the way but finally making it to our lovely abode, a rural countryside hotel with pool in Mas Blanc les Alpilles, a few kilometres west of Saint Remy de Provence. Arriving in the early afternoon, it was time to flop by the poolside for some time, before heading into St.Remy for a stroll and dinner.
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Little St.Remy is the heart of touristy Provence, one of these incredibly cute little places full of shops offering "regional products" from Provence (olive oil, soap, wine and everything you can conceivably create with lavender) and lots of nice restaurants, so we ate our way across town in the evenings to try provencal specialities like lamb in thyme sauce, 'brandade' (a fishy mush made of cod) or the good old French staple of steak-frites. Honorable mention goes to the chipper flirty chap at Restaurant Mirabeau who truly made my evening with his antics (and a nice little ego booster too).
Oh and the fellow on the right is Nostradamus, the famous seer, who was born in St.Remy.
The weather didn't look promising on Tuesday morning, so we decided to head for Avignon, where a tour of the Papal Palace would be indoors anyway should it really rain. However the few drops of rain that came down were no problem whatsoever to what has become the bane of my tourist life: Tour groups. More particularly, large clumps of senior citizens trudging behind a guide like a brainless flock of sheep, clogging up exits/entrances to the next room, not to mention taking ages climbing up stairs or moving on, without ever showing any consideration for single visitors by leaving at least a path through clogged-up rooms or not standing in front of the information board in a room (while their attention is on their guide anyway). Would it really be that hard to break a group of 50 people or so up into three smaller groups or simply send them about on their own with the now ubiquitous audioguides? The 2-3 huge groups cluttering up the Papal Palace half-ruined the experience for me until we finally came out ahead of them. Having said that, the Papal Palace is an impressive building but there's virtually nothing left to see inside of how the seven Popes lived that deserted Rome in 14th century to live it up in Avignon instead with lavish parties, girls and the odd war or two.
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Above's the view from the top of the Papal Place across town and pretty Notre Dame des Doms directly beside it (but not connected). And of course here's the famous bridge Saint Benezet, immortalized in that French ditty "Sur le pont d'Avignon..." which has ended half-way across the Rhone since 16th century when they finally gave up trying to rebuild it again and again after it kept being washed away by floods.
I also hadn't been aware that the 8th of May is a public holiday in France, commemorating the 'Victory' in World War II with military celebrations everywhere, so there was some military thing going on in front of the Papal Palace which we could watch from the parapets for a bit. The drawback was that it also meant shops were mostly closed, so after a light lunch we left Avignon again and headed on to the Pont du Gard, another of the numerous Unesco world heritage sites in the area, the biggest aquaduct the Romans left behind.
Built 19 BC, it was part of a complex of aquaducts that transported water over 25 kilometres to Nemausus (Nimes) using only gravity to propel it along. More boggling than the architecture was the price though - you simply pay a 18 Euro flatrate for using the parking and everything else (museum, 3D movie thingy, etc.) even if you don't use all of that and just take a look at the actual aquaduct in the Gard valley. Rip off much?
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Wednesday was again rather cloudy and muggy in the morning as we headed for Arles, famous both for its Roman ruins and for Van Gogh having hung around the place to paint some of his most famous paintings like "Rh™ne at night" and the "Cafe at night" (which actually exists at the Place du Forum and despite being a tourist trap was rather nice to sit in). The famous arena was a bit meh, being encased in scaffolding from outside and set up with modern seating inside for the "Ferias", the bull-fighting that goes in in these parts of France much like in Spain.
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Above is an inside view of the arena and one of the nearby Roman theatre, also encased in modern seating. More interesting was the church of St.Trophime, not just for its pretty facade but mostly for its fairly unique collection of relics from across the centuries, all of them containing bits of bones and other pieces of assorted saints up to a piece of Pope John Paul II's robe from his visit to the area (not yet a saint, by the way, but apparently being fast-tracked there by his catholic cronies).
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The free map of Arles that came with the combination ticket for all the sights was rather useless too and we bumbled about quite a bit although at least we did see the hospital where van Gogh had his ear stitched back on (see right) and the spot from which he painted his famous "Starry night over the Rhone" painting. We also visited the small Reattu museum, but its Picassos were locked away in preparation for some big exhibition and what was left was the kind of bizarre modern art I pretty much detest, so we didn't linger long. By afternoon it had at least cleared up so we could return to the hotel pool to chill some and finally dinner at Saint Remy.
Thursday was the last tour stop on the Roman agenda, taking us to Nimes, the ancient Nemausus, which boasts the "best-preserved Roman arena" - which may well be true, though it was still nothing compared to Rome's Colosseum. Nonetheless, they did it better in Nimes than in Arles and once we had barrelled past another clump of tour group seniors clogging things up, could enjoy the guided walk that focused mostly on the gladiatoring traditions of the arena, with a small exhibition showing their different clothes, weapons, etc and demonstration films of the actual fighting.
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The other nice Roman bit in Nimes is the "Maison Carree", one of the few fully preserved Roman temples, whose insides have been turned into a little 3D cinema with a special movie about the various heroes of Nimes throughout the centuries. If not particularly interesting to foreigners, it was at least a chance to sit down for 20 minutes and chill before the trudge uphill to the Tour Magne, the last of the Roman-Medieval fortification towers that once surrounded Nimes and offers a great view across the town and countryside. It also meant walking through the pretty Jardin de la Fontaine, the site of a spring, sacred well and temple of Diana in Roman times. Since Nimes was slightly bigger than the other places, they even had a nice shopping street and a FNAC, where I could pick up another book by Guy Delisle (read his Jerusalem Chronicles! There's no excuse, they are out in English now) before it was time to return to the pool.
Friday had been planned for a quick look at the sights nearby our own abode in Mas Blanc les Alpilles, but little did I know how gorgeous cute-as-pie Les Baux is, a tiny hilltop village best known for the huge castle that once sat here because it offered people a fantastic look across the plains all the way to Marseille and the coast (in case of pirate attacks from the sea). While only ruins are left of the castle now, the views alone were worth going there, but it was also a nice stroll around and watching school kids being busy with all sorts of activities including some jousting on cute little ponies!
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Above is a view on what's left of the castle and the pretty little village at its feet. Below are some pictures of the great view - I just loved the descriptive drawing of what happened to people who offended the Lords of Les Baux back in those days :) And the right picture shows the Val d'Enfer, the Valley of Hell. Apparently this was the exact spot that inspired Dante for his description of Hell in his uplifting Divine Comedy.
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Alright, enough of Les Baux already! From there we went on to Glanum, the ruins of the small Roman town that sprang up around a sacred well just outside of today's Saint Remy de Provence. While not much is left standing there, the neat layout of the place gave a good impression of the town and how it was set up with its forum, temples, baths, public rooms and private housing. The best view is from a little mirador uphill:
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I found the clearly visible remains of the pool in the Roman Baths oddly touching since it looked like only a while ago people would come here for a swim, while most of the other ruins were the typical left-over bits of stones and a few pillars. The two best-kept monuments, the mausoleum (above right) and the triumphal arch are both across the street from the actual side for some reason.
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Part of the complex was the Taverna Romana, serving "Roman" food based on ancient recipes that were found there. The meze-like mixed bag of snacks seemed a great idea at 28 Euro for two containing a glass of Roman mulsum (honeyed spiced wine) and dessert too, so my jaw dropped slightly when the bill arrived and it turned out to be 28 Euro per person. Nonetheless an interesting experience to taste what people would have snacked on 2000 years ago.
More or less next door was the Cloitre Saint Paul, a psychiatric hospital where van Gogh was staying for some time after he cut his ear off. While part of the estate is still a psychiatric hospital today, his room was open to visit as were some of the fields he painted, so that was a nice extra.
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It was almost 2pm by the time we had finished our "quick look around" and returned to the hotel pool one last time to chill and soak up the Mediterranean sun before the return to chilly rainy Germany. The initial plan to be back at the pool by noon and leave early to traipse around Salon-en-Provence later was thus foiled, but we decided to go there anyway to kill these awkward hours between six and eight, when we'd normally want to sit down for dinner but nobody else is doing so yet since the French tend to eat later there. Salon's biggest boast to fame is that Nostradamus lived and died there, but otherwise there wasn't much to see beyond the Chateau de l'Empire, where the archbishops of Salon lived it up till 18th century, the pretty clock tower and a nice shopping street encircling the old city. Since it was still too early for dinner, we just had a drink, then returned to Saint Remy, our usual food bowl, one last time.
Did I enjoy Provence? Yes, I'm sure I did, though not as much as I had expected, although perhaps my expectations had simply been too high after falling in love with the gorgeous area around the Cote d'Azur a few years ago. I was definitely missing the sea here. And all that eating did prove to be a strain, since when I travel alone, I'll so often just have a baguette or something, while my mother insists on sitting down for proper meals twice a day and usually with wine and dessert.
I also would have liked more opportunities to ramble around the countryside on foot or by bike (or ideally on horseback!), but all that said, while the Provence is certainly worth a visit, it simply isn't one of these "OMG! HOW INCREDIBLY LOVELY!" experiences I've had in other areas that, looking back now, usually involved a coast and the sea, so, yea, I guess there's a pattern there... :)
