France Road Trip: St. Paul de Vence
While staying in Nice, we took a morning drive over to St. Paul de Vence, one of the oldest medieval towns in the French Riviera. Known for great art galleries and huge flocks of tourists, we were surprised to find the town all but completely deserted when we showed up on a rainy October morning.
Don’t be discouraged by the large canon pointing at your face when you show up, I think that’s just the subtlety of the French, “welcoming” you to their country.
Carly and I walked around the town for a couple hours, found ourselves a grouchy woman who wouldn’t sell us a crepe because her crepe-pan wasn’t hot enough yet, and then found ourselves a delicious bottle of Apertif a l’Orange that we happily drank from various locations on our trip. We didn’t need more than a couple hours here to wander around.
France Road Trip: The Dordogne
In the words of me: “this place is freaking awesome”. I don’t really know any other way to put it. Carly and I continued our journey West and made it to Beynac, near to Sarlat in the Dordogne region of France. We arrived in Beynac in the dark, after about 11 hours of driving (and only God and our late “toll-tracking napkin” knows how many €uros in tolls). We had a bit of a hard time finding our accommodation in the dark. We drove past the ‘road’ that we needed to take several times before I finally got up the courage to try taking it. It was so narrow, and looked like I was going to be driving up into the front door of some crazy castle. Eventually though, we found the glorious Le Petit Versailles, where we were welcomed by Francoise and Jean Claude, which would be our home for the next three nights.
We promptly unpacked our bags and drove the three minutes back into Beynac for dinner at La Petite Tonelle. There are only about four restaurants in the tiny town, and this is the one that was first recommended to us. Carly and I chuckled to ourselves listening to the mostly drunk Irish fellows beside us, who were rating their girlfriends on a 1 to 10 scale, loud enough for everyone to hear.
This area in France is known for amazing Bastide castle-towns, exceptional Fois Gras and strawberries, vin noix (actually, pretty much everything noix – cakes, alcohol, sausage…), and probably other things that I’m not aware of.
If I learned anything in France, it’s this: The answer to the question of “Foie Gras?” is always “Yes, please! And I’ll take Carly’s portion, too.”
The morning after we arrived in Beynac, we woke up bright and early (it was still dark, and -1 outside) because we wanted to head to the market in Sarlat, which was nothing short of amazing. Home made sausages, countless foie gras vendors, fresh strawberries, nut cake, nut wine, nut sausage, delicious cheese, fresh bread… a foodies paradise.
Our next day we spent the morning at the market in the bastide town of Domme, and then canoed down the Dordogne river in the afternoon once the weather warmed up a bit. The thing about this region is that every time you turn around, there seems to be another castle-town staring down at you apologetically “Yes, I know, I’m another amazing castle-town, just like the others that you’ve seen on your way down the river.” – it feels like they never stop, and it’s amazing.
Puech Haut
After we left Nice, we headed back from whence we came (to use a Gandalf phrase) and headed West back towards the Languedoc region, and made a stop at Puech Haut before heading into the Dorgogne region. This is a great winery that was recommended to us by Valerie, the official (and very awesome) Wine Person at Gastronomicom. We were shown around by a gentleman by the name of Alan (if I recall correctly), and had a fantastic time of wine-tasting and wine-acquring.
Also, Carly frolicked in the vineyards.
France Road Trip: Nice and Villefranche-sur-Mer
Better late than never, I guess. Carly and I had about nine days back in October to drive around to more interesting parts of France than Cap d’Agde, but have been too busy to put any of it in writing yet. Now that I’m sitting in Bruges with the snow falling all around, sipping on creamy Belgian chocolate liqueur, we finally have some time.
So proverbial Part 1 of the trip was basically heading East from Agde towards Nice. We made a stop along the way in Bormes-les-Mimosas which is a fantastically cool little town up on the top of a cliff on the South coast of France. We stopped here for a bit of lunch, a nice walk and some ice cream.
After that we proceeded to get lost and drive around in circles for a while on our way towards Cannes. Once in Cannes, we drove around in circles and got lost a bit more. After that, we finally made it to Nice. More specifically, we made it slightly East of Nice to Villefranche-sur-Mer where we actually stayed. I prefer to find the small, cool, less known places to stay in, and although we could jump on the Bus and get to Nice in 10 minutes from Villefranche, the small village had a certain quaintness about it, sitting right on the Mediterranean Sea, on a steep hill, with wonderful little restaurants and a great mystique.
We had three nights in Villefranche at the very pleasant Hotel Patricia. A decent location, within walking distance to nice restaurants, and steps away from the bus to Nice (along with free parking), made it a great choice. Super friendly owners as well.
Carly insisted that while in Nice, we had to rent bicycles to ride along the sea. Fortunately, we found her a bicycle with a basket so I could buy her some roses to put in it. We found a baguette to put in there as well, in an attempt to complete the entire Nice Experience™.
Even in October, Nice was splendidly busy. Bustling markets and shopping tourists everywhere. The views of the Côte d’Azur are absolutely stunning all along the water. Deep, deep blues and turquoise. I remember similar views from Tel Aviv in Israel and Cinque Terre in Italy.
Our last day in Nice we drove two of the three corniches (essentially, these are the roads that link France to Monaco, it was on one of these roads that Grace Kelly died in a car crash in 1982). Initially I had wanted to make it into Monaco to have an evening in the Casino there, but time was tight, and we were both tired, so it got cut. We did stop in the village of Eze, however, which is about 1/2 way between Nice and Monaco. Eze was a neat place to visit for about an hour. It’s essentially a small town, most of which seems to be located within a castle on the top of a mountain. Walt Disney was known to spend quite a bit of time here.
Carcassonne. Yup. It’s real.
I’m writing this post, sitting outside in the sunshine in Carcassonne, happier than a geek with a newly unlocked iPhone tethering prepaid 3G data from Orange France. Not that any of that tethery-3G-whatsamacallit is all that exciting, so …
We wanted to get to Carcassonne at some point before leaving France, and given that we’re down to the wire, this weekend appeared to be it. Originally we thought we’d just come for the day (it’s about a 1h15m train ride away from where we’re staying), but given that there’s generally more excitement happening at a geologists convention than there is in Agde at the moment, I found us a place to stay for a steal of CAD$46/night (thank-you hotels.ca) and we bailed for a Sunday-Monday night weekend in the much famed castle-town (to which some have said: “you mean it’s a real place???”, and to which I have said: “Um, yes”).
Not to be mistaken for a weekend of binge-board gaming, farmer laying, cloister-building hoopla (which is a good time to be sure), we’re happily here wandering through a real castle and eating traditional fare called Cassoulet (a sort of pork and duck and bean stew), and sipping on all the vin chaud (hot wine / mulled wine) we can get our hands on.
We can walk up to the castle walls from where we’re staying in about 10 minutes. Once inside, the primary (only?) industries are restaurants, accommodation and kitchy tourist shops. That’s not to say that the place isn’t awesome, after all, you are walking around a giant castle city. The area’s first settlements have been dated to about 3500 BC, while the actual hilltop that the castle is built on saw fortifications initially built by the Romans around 100 years before Christ.
Forgive the heavy use of the outstanding Aperture filters I picked up from Darryl (also, check out his wife Jodi’s new blog Simply Inspired Home) – I thought they added a bit of edge and mystery.
We head back to Agde tomorrow, and after that we’re off to Belgium for a week as of Friday morning, and then a month-long whirlwind tour of the UK before being back in Vancouver late January.
