Wednesday, September 9, Driving through the Haut Vaucluse

To start, something needs to be said:  How did anyone survive without GPS?  Here in western Provence, with Avignon as our base, our vacation plan is to spend today and tomorrow driving around the countryside visiting the touristic sights and the various small towns and villages that give this region so much charm.  That said, I don't know how anyone did this without GPS, since I am sure there is no way to do this using old fashioned maps!  Our rental car is a Mercedes with built-in GPS, and it works flawlessly!

The sights on today's agenda are in the nothern part of this region known as the Haut (high) Vaucluse. We did not get a particularly early start and actually ended up missing the breakfast service in our hotel (I swear at check-in, we were told that it ended at 10:30am, but it actually ended at 9:30am -- oh well!) We hopped in the car with empty stomachs and told the GPS our first destination: the village of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, which most would be familiar with from the French wine of the same name.  This is clearly a wine town.  As we approached, we passed winery after winery with lots of advertisements.  We made our way to the town center and found a parking space and began to explore.  In the town, there are several storefronts offering wine tasting, but we focused on walking through the old town and climbing up to the top of the town, where the ruins of an old chateau are located.  The views from up here are just gorgeous, as is the weather today:  pleasantly warm and not a cloud in the sky.  Here is a photo that I took:

Another, more artistic picture:

We stopped in one of the winery storefronts as we strolled back down to purchase some local wine, which of course required a little taste, but very little, since we are driving.  The wine in this area is made from Rhone varietal grapes, of course, and this one is primarily grenache (70%) with syrah, mourvedre, and cinsault blended in.  It is very good.

Our next destination is the town of Orange, which is a bigger town, and is known for significant Roman era ruins.  There there are two very impressive sites:  a gigantic old Roman theater and an Arc de Triomphe.  We visited both (as did many other tourists today).  I was pleased that I was able to purchase our tickets to the theater entirely in French, answering questions that I really shouldn't have understood, but I did!  This is my first time in France where I am actually able to use my French, and I am enjoying it!  Here are photos of the two sites:

Lunch in Orange was a grab-and-go ham and cheese on baguette.  No time or desire to spend time at a sit down restaurant.

We then drove a little farther east to the village of Beaumes-de-Venise.  There were no real sites to see here other than cute Provencal village, so we just drove through without stopping.  This did look like a nice place to have a second home in the country, though (Spoiler alert:  at dinner this night, we ordered a wine from this village and it was outstanding.  According to the label it was 50% syrah and 50% grenache).  We continued on to Gigondas, another village, like Chateauneuf-du-Pape, that has a pretty well known wine label.  This is also an very scenic old village with a ruined chateau at the top.  Here is a view of it from the highway approaching the village (vineyard in the foreground):

We did a little walking around here, climbing to the top, and also stopped in a tasting (that's "degustation" in French) to buy a bottle of wine and have a very small taste.  Here is the view from the top:

We continued on our tour with our next destination the town of Vaison-la-Romaine, which also has many Roman ruins (which we did not see -- next time) as well as a beautiful medieval village perched on a hilltop.  Finding our way in the car to the top was a challenge we could not meet -- why are we not using the GPS?  We loaded the destination in the GPS and VOILA, next thing we know, we are pulling into the adjacent parking lot.  This is so amazing and much appreciated.  The village is very cute and again we climbed up to the top with another ruined chateau and breathtaking views.  Here is my photo.  The mountain in this photo is Mount Ventoux, which is our next stop:

And another view in a different direction:

Provence is just lovely, isn't it?

We continued to the east and climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux, Provence's highest peak at about 6,000 feet.  The road is pretty good for driving, and the climb up Mont Ventoux is often (maybe always?) a stage on the bicycle race, Tour de France.  I took three pictures, two on the way up and the third from the top.  Note that temperatures were in the low 80's today, but were in the low 50's at the peak.  Here are my three pictures:

Finally, we turned back to the west and headed back to the city of Avignon.

A note about Avignon:  it is a city and while there are sites here to see, obviously the Palais des Papes being the most important, it is not the best choice as a place to stay.  Our hotel is nice, but the city is just okay.  The restaurants are very disappointing, very tourist oriented and not so good.  We have learned that it would be better to stay in one of the smaller, charming places in Provence and explore Avignon on a day trip.  That said, we had another difficult time finding a good place to eat, so we just ate at the same restaurant where we had eaten yesterday.  It was an okay meal and reasonably priced, but you do expect more in France.  Oh well, off to bed.