The incredible villages and countryside of Provence

The mountaintop village of Bonnieux

While this post isn't strictly food based, I wanted to provide an account of an amazing day of travel.  If I wasn't such a homebody with a real job and pets and responsibilities, I could fancy myself as a travel writer.  I imagine I'd be cooler than Rick Steves (not too hard), but maybe fall short of Anthony Bourdain in adventurousness.  After all, no one really needs another travel guide on Europe.  It's been done to death.  But this is my blog and I'm going to write about what I damn well please!  So, without further ado, let's get going.

Provence is famously known for its quaint villages and pastoral landscapes.  We certainly intended to explore it as much as possible, but it wasn't until we rented a car in Marseille that the plan really came into fruition.  As I explained in my last entry, I made a last minute decision to rent a car in order to properly enjoy the region.  However, it certainly came at a significant and unplanned cost.  Looking to maximize the return on our investment, we decided that several drives across the French countryside were in order.  After experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, and flavors that we did, I can easily say that every last eurocent of the rental paid off.    

Our original car-less plan was to visit the smaller cities of Avignon, Arles, Aix en Provence, and a few others that easily connected to Marseille by train.  Once we had the car, however, we realized that the true Provencial experience lay in the small villages peppered across the countryside.  After trying to piece together a route from our not so great Rick Steve's guidebook, we promptly gave up and asked our B&B host, Mauro, for his advice.
 
From Marseille, we headed towards Aix en Provence.  During this day, we didn't stop in Aix, but did spend some time there the day before.  The reason I bring it up now is to share the beauty of the Patisserie with you.  Aix was a gleamingly beautiful, charming little city featuring countless food spots.  We were barely in town a few minutes before we found the above delights.  English is scarcely spoken in this part of the country, so we had to try our crude French to get these.  While the woman at the Patisserie was friendly enough, she wasn't going to give us much help when it came to the language barrier.  We had to point and dig deep for any descriptive french words we knew: chocolat, blanche, frese, frambois, and so on.  The French pastry shops were similar to the Italians in that they sold bite size portions of most of their offerings for very reasonable prices.  The above box cost us about 5 euro and tasted even better than it looks. 

Lourmarin

After passing Aix, we went to the village of Lourmarin.  We were pretty hungry, so we set out looking for lunch.  Finding a quaint square that housed half a dozen restaurants with ample outdoor seating, we tried to find one to suit our fancy.  Picking a restaurant in a situation like this is tough for several reasons.  First off, we're pretty hungry and not thinking clearly as a result.  Also, aside from menu prices and the overall vibe of the restaurant, there is little else to help you decide which one to choose.  The square was packed with people eating lunch, and every single one of them was French.  All the menus were exclusively in French and you didn't hear a word of English being spoken anywhere.  Having already gotten over my apprehension about being immersed in a different culture and language, I actually quite enjoyed the confusion.

The restaurant we settled on served omelets.  We figured that we hadn't had eggs the entire time we were in Europe, and imagined that French omelets kicked ass.  We were absolutely right.  Above is mine, which had Roquefort cheese and came with a salad (all the salads we had in France had a dijon based dressing).  The cheese was so perfectly rich and flavorful with the eggs.  The omelet appeared to be a bit overcooked, but didn't have that stinky overcooked egg smell or taste.  It was perfectly light and fluffy and was probably one of the best omelets I've ever had.

After strolling through the market again, we returned to the convertible to head towards our next destination, Roussillon.  As we climbed the mountain ahead of us, we realized we were going to pass through an unexpected village, Bonnieux.  As with Lourmarin, Bonnieux was extremely charming, but was much  smaller.  It was situated atop the mountain we were climbing and just as we began our descent, it revealed a series of roadside cafes overlooking the entire valley.

View from the top of Bonnieux

I'm not sure that any photographer could do this view justice.  The outdoor seats of the mountain top cafe were literally hanging off the side of the road, granting their occupants an incredible view of the village as it faded into the patchwork quilted farmland below.  Realizing we couldn't just drive past, we quickly stopped, bought two bottles of Orangina, and enjoyed the view for a while. 

Realizing we might not get tired of the view any time soon, we forced ourselves to move on to Roussillon.  This particular village is known for the ochre in the surrounding soil.  Hundreds of years ago, the locals would mine the ochre and sell it around the world as an orange dye.

The famous ochre of Roussillon

While we certainly enjoyed an hour long mild hike through the ochre forest, we came for more important things: ice cream.  One of the regional delights that was universally outstanding was pink grapefruit sorbet.  It was exceptionally refreshing.  We also tried lavender glace (ice cream), as neither of us had ever eaten anything with lavender flavor before.  Both were excellent.  

 As we drove across the valley, we noticed that food was everywhere.  Whether it was olives growing in one of the villages or cherries on one of the many farms, the bounty of Provence was omnipresent. 

Cherry Farm

Olive tree in Roussillon

Lavender just about to bloom

Quite possibly the most famous natural wonder of Provence's is the lavender.  We certainly saw it blooming, but it was still a few weeks away from the famous purple countrysides that we've seen in post cards.  Nonetheless, as we drove around, the air was fragrant with the sweetness of these tiny purple flowers.  What struck me the most was how mild and delicate the smell was.  Typically lavender products are very strong scented, but the flowers were subtle and sweet.    

Gordes (the mountain in the far distance is where Bonnieux was situated)

Finally, we ascended the mountain at the other end of the valley to arrive at Gordes, a medieval looking castle village.  By this point of the day, we were a bit tired, but still wanted to explore what seemed like a set out of Lord of the Rings.  The village was the quietest of the several we'd visited during the day, but stores were still open.  We hit up yet another patisserie for what I determined to be the best item of the entire trip: a pistachio eclair.  It was unreal.  The flavor was powerful yet light, the filling was rich yet fluffy, and the pastry was savory yet airy and flaky.  It was superb. We also bought a loaf of french bread for 50 eurocents.  What a bargain!  Finally, we hit up a little grocery/specialty store for the items you read about in last post's picnic #2.  All the shops in this town really seemed to be run by young people trying to keep classic French traditions alive. 

Pistachio Eclair.  Perfection

We still had about an hour and a half drive back to Marseille, but we could hardly care less about it.  The sun was setting slowly as we drove our root beer brown convertible across the lavender scented countryside.  A large portion of the trip ended up taking us along a less scenic and hardly romantic highway, but we didn't care.  We left the roof of the convertible down as we sped at 130 kilometers per hour (approximately 500 miles per hour by my estimated conversion).  As we approached Marseille, the airport appeared on our right.  The mountainous highway was elevated significantly above the runway and we were able to watch planes take off, yet remain below us for a few moments until they took their passengers far away from the paradise that we just discovered.  I knew we'd be on one of those planes in two days time, but put the thought out of my mind as I remembered the bags of produce and wine and cheese and bread and pastries that we had in the back of the car.  The road trip may have been ending, but the feast was about to begin.

Le Petit Jardin (our B&B) at night.