The Perched Villages... the Reason I Love Provence! - July 13, 2010

Senne's Summary: Today we saw the lavender fields and some hilltop/perched villages. Still stinking hot!

This morning was a slow start. (I think Steve was watching a movie into the middle of the night) While Steve slept in, I finished reading my book out on the terrace.

For those of you who are interested it was "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger (sp?) the same lady who wrote the “Time Traveller’s Wife”. It was good but weird. Some parts left me confused and re-reading, but I still liked it.

When Steve got up he went out to get us some breakfast/lunch sandwiches. Not only did he return with the sandwiches but with some very tasty treats! He bought a chocolate éclair to share. It is by a million miles the best chocolate éclair that I’ve ever tasted. We both took two bites and agreed to put the rest in the fridge for later… such restraint (ha not really!). He also bought a little box with 12 macarons. Carey told us we have to try these because they are a very French thing. We each tried one of the chocolate ones. They are kind of like little meringue sandwiches. Also very tasty. (We did put the other 10 back in the fridge for later).

Then we headed down to the tourist information office to wait for our “perched villages” tour. We were on a bus with about a total of 20 people.

It was tres chaud today (39 degrees on the sign on the building), and the air conditioning seemed to only be sort of working so there was a fair bit of whining (not from us!) at the beginning. The whiners eventually gave up and used their energy to fan themselves and smell bad (Use deodorant people!!!!).

Our first stop was to look at the lavender fields. We had a lesson about the difference between lavender and lavandine... oopsie... I already forget how to tell the difference 🤷 I personally think that the lavender/sunflower field was much more beautiful yesterday... but the lavender/lavandine was still pretty 😁

The first village we stopped at was Bonnieux (sp?) The scenery from these hilltop villages is breathtaking. I could have just sat and looked at it all day long. We spent about 45 minutes wandering around in Bonneiux and then hopped back on the bus to go to the next village.

Our next village was Lacoste, but for some reason we didn’t stop. This village’s claim to fame is that the Marquis de Sade lived there. I had no idea who that was… apparently a writer of very negative/pornographique things… the term sadism was coined from his name. (I’m pretty sure that was what the guide said. He kept going in between English and French).

Next we approach Menerbe. This is another beautiful little village. Apparently this is where the guy lived who wrote “A Year in Provence” ( and “A Good Year” which later became a movie starring Russell Crowe). The book pretty much put the Luberon Valley on the map. Our guide told us that local people can no longer afford to buy property in the Luberon Valley. The upside is that employment increased greatly after this book was published.

 

Steve and I were both starving by now, so stopped in a little corner store for some snacks. We had some yummy Chips of Provence (less greasy, almost bubbly like pancakes, but still very chip-like), some barquettes a la tapenade (super duper yummy!) and the ever-popular oreo cookies (a little six pack :)). Then we toured around the very cute little village and of course Steve took a billion pictures. Rem, you will be pleased to know that Steve said at one point, “We need to take some pictures with people in them for Rem.”

 For you, Rem 😀

Next we drove to… ah crumb… I can’t remember the name...let’s call it, “a la crumbe”. Hmmm... I just finished some wine... it was something like odee de pay… nope that sounds wrong. Okay, let’s just say we went to another hilltop village. This one was interesting because there was an older medieval village at the top and then the current village a little lower down the hill. When they moved the village (again I can’t remember why!) they actually took all the doors and windows out of the buildings to re-use, and also took the roofs off the buildings. Why take the roofs off you ask? Well because you only had to pay land tax if your building had a roof.

This is what I do while Steve takes a bajillion photos. Luckily I was able to find a shady spot!

Next we drove back to Aix. All in all, a good tour. I was very happy to see the beautiful views and the little villages.

When we got home we heated up the leftover pizza from last night (it’s starting to feel like we have pizza almost every night… pizza has all four food groups right???), drank some of our red wine that we picked up at the winery yesterday (which seems to be greatly impacting my memory while I type!) and had the rest of the éclair and another macaron.

Another excellent day in our super duper fun adventure! Tomorrow is Bastille day in France. Who knows what will happen?!?

I thought I might share another interesting fact with you (it’s a theme this week!). The guy who wrote “A Year in Provence” ended up having to move out of Menerbe because people kept coming to visit him after reading his book. One day he went out to the market and when he got back strangers were waiting for him in his pool!!! The price of being a multi-millionaire famous person… I have no sympathy. People (all of you faithful readers I mean!) could show up in my pool every day if I could have a chateau here!