• Week One
• Week Two
• Week Three

 

St. Paul de Vence

Le Hameau

St Paul de Vence

In June 2002 Chris and Carmen Grant and Glenn and Karen Marcus once again joined for a holiday in Europe. This year: France and Italy.

Chris and Carmen stayed for the first eleven days and then returned to Vancouver. Karen and Glenn would continue for a week and a half in Italy after that. Despite being a relatively short vacation, only three weeks in total, we packed quite a lot into the holiday. For the first segment it seems that we were out of our house by 9:00 am and we typically did not return until almost 8:00 pm in the evening.

The vacation started with a flight to Nice and staying in Saint Paul de Vence - a small hilltop town, located about 20 minutes from Nice. St Paul-de-Vence is a great looking place. The 16th-century ramparts still very much in tact. The town is made up of a number of narrow pedestrian streets all located within the intact wall. the town was rediscovered by painters Paul Signac, Pierre Bonnard, Chagall band others during the 1920s. The art remains, there are studios, galleries and plenty of exhibitions.

The Auberge de la Colombe d'Or has an art collection that makes the restaurant a museum in its own right. Many an artist paid for their meals by a piece of their work.

The style of the town sets it apart from others in Provence. Go early in the morning before the tour buses arrive!

Due to last minute booking rooms were booked at Le Hameau (Marcus) located a few minutes from the town center and the quaint Hotel Remparts (Grant) located in the center of the old town.

Le Hameau is an outstanding hotel and more is said about that in the Great Places To Stay segment of the travel site. The Hotel Remparts is a good little hotel right in the centre of the old walled city. Chris and Carmen enjoyed it and since that trip we have referred others to the hotel and all found it to be a good place to stay.

St. Paul is one of those towns with lots of narrow streets to walk. Galleries are everywhere. Even a shop where Chris and Carmen are becoming quite regular customers.

 

Gates at the entrance the houses at La Motte, Chris cooked in our somewhat restricted kitchen, but we all enjoyed the pool.

On the second day we spend the morning in the town of Saint Paul de Vence and then took on the major drive (447 kilometers) to the small town of Marcorignan, just west of Béziers, where we had rented a house at the Domaine de la Motte.

Well, we thought we rented a house. As it turned out, it was more of an apartment or townhouse. The Domaine de la Motte is an old château or manor house. The owners have renovated a long building that is attached to the main house and created ten apartments or townhouses.

The grounds were great, the pool very convenient - no complaints here. The apartments, however, lacked charm in their decor. The silence when we walked into the house was deafening and said it all. At one point we thought we would just leave but we stayed and in the end the place turned out to be OK for what we were needing. Definitely not the type of place found last year in Tuscany. But despite a rather limited kitchen Chris took on the challenge and became the Chef-de-maison and he turned out some very tasty meals. Do you really need more than one heat level with an oven? Anything more than two stove elements only means more cleaning! Perhaps one knife can be used for everything! If only the inside of the townhouse was at the same level as the grounds. The pool was very relaxing the the grounds made you feel you were in a park.

 

The first tour day after we arrived was to Carcassonne. This is the largest medieval city in Europe. A double curtain wall completely circles the town. It was a very cold morning and even thought we were huddled together for warmth at times, it was an enjoyable morning.

In medieval times Carcassonne grew in importance due to its location. It was on the main communication route between the Mediterranean and Toulouse. Karen and Glenn had been to Carcassonne before and this is an example of sometimes finding a place better on the second visit.

The town is impressive. The double curtain wall, the 14 towers on the outer ramparts and another 24 towers on the inner ramparts -- there is a look to the place.

We took a tour of the 12th Century Château Comtal. It was originally the palace of the viscounts. The tour was interesting but only reinforced a basic problem with group tours. It just takes so long to shuffle a group of people from room to room. The tour was interesting, we could have listened to the pleasant voice and Spanish accent of our guide for some time. We learned that "hoiling boil" was not really thrown off the walls during attacks (only in the movies) --- we should be so skilled to speak the four languages she rolled off with no problem!

 

On the way back from Carcassonne we stopped by the Abbaye de Fontfroid - a Cistercian abbey. The yellow ochre and pink sandstone of the buildings give the place a great look. High ranking officials of the Catholic church had stayed at various times here. This is a tranquil place and you can kind of understand the attraction of the whole solitude thing.

Dating back to 1093 there was, at one time, over 200 monks living here. In 1908 it was purchased by a private family who still hold and live on the property. The private ownership has proven very helpful in keeping the condition of the Abbaye as it is today. The cloisters are out standing. This was very evident when we visited the next Abbaye - the Abbaye La Grasse.

The final tour for the day was the Abbaye at Legrasse. This was not in the state as Fontfroide. The town is interesting and we enjoyed a drink and learned the errors in our pronunciation of Euros with a waiter who we are sure to this day is still shaking his head. He wasn't giving us the soccer score when he said "dix zero" (or so we thought), he was actually telling us the bill for our drinks was 10 Euros (oh well, live and learn)

More so than the Abbaye, Legrasse is known from the 11th century humpback bridge that crosses the river from the town to the Abbaye.

 

 

Here was an exciting day. We drove up past Ganges to tour the Grotte des Demoiselles. The cave was discovered in 1770 and explored in the 1880s by the noted "caver" E-A Martel.

There is a hair-raising drive up a hairpin road -- we did not want to miss the last tour of the morning -- to arrive at the main entrance. Then there is a short ride in a funicular to travel up in the mountain to reach the entrance to the cave because unlike most caves it has a vertical entrance from way above where we were.

The tour involves a walk along a series of corridors until arriving at the main chamber. This area is over 394 feet long, 262 feet high and 164 feet wide. It is massive. You do feel like you are in another world when walking through the cave and viewing the unique rock formations.

We were fortunate that a woman from Canada who was working at the University of Montpellier as a translator was on our tour. She provided the group with an English translation and this really added to the visit.

Within the cathedral there are massive columns, they all seem to be supporting the roof but in fact they are all formed by water dripping down from the roof of the cave.

In the centre is a rock formation that resembles a Virgin and Child - all in white calcite.

There are a number of great viewpoints and the corridors and stairs take you around the sides and then down into the centre of the larger chamber.

Finally the day ended with a drive through the country side to view the Cirque Navacelles - here the River has retreated from its original course of many thousands of years ago leaving a unique formation of a land island standing where the river used to be. The rather stark village of Navacelles still remains.

 

 

For Tuesday the agenda was to tour the towns of Narbonne and Béziers. Now the pleasure of being on a vacation is really setting in!

Karen looking relaxed in her second country.

Chris walking through the cloisters that date from the 14th Century.

The Archbishop's palace was originally a modest residence. Some residence!

Narbonne has interesting Roman ruins such as the Horreum a Roman warehouse that has been excavated under there streets of Narbonne. The cathedral and accompanying Palais Des Archevêques -- the Archbishop's Palace -- are very interesting. The Cathedral St-Just dates from the 12th Century. The height of the interior is only exceed by the cathedrals of Amiens and Beauvais. The cloisters date to the 14th and 15th century.

Established by the Romans in 35/36 BC, the town located on the banks of the Orb River has always held an important role for the area. During the Albigensian Crusade, in 1209, the Roman Catholics were given the chance to leave the town before a major battle would commence. How thoughtful of those Cathars. The Béziers refused and the entire town was pillaged and all killed. Nice history! On the way to Béziers we stopped at Coursan and had one of the best lunches of the trip. At the restaurant L'Os à Moelle, on route de Salles D'Aude, in Coursan (Telephone: 04.68.33.55.72) we had one of the grand french lunches. Our starters included such dishes as three types of salmon (smoked, fresh and pate) or pate with cream frais, or pate with fig. Oh yes... treat yourself!

Glenn buying his pen in Barcelona

There was also a day trip to Barcelona. Glenn was determined to visit the highly acclaimed Central Estilographica - the best pen store in Barcelona.(See Great Pen Stores). Not only does Central Estigographica have great pens, but a little store down the street, Papirum, at baixada de la libreteria 2 has a very good selection of pen cases. While Glenn shopped, and Karen watched in horror, Chris and Carmen traveled around the city touring the main sites. These sites included the Sagrada Familia - the famous cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi and never finished.

This town dates back hundreds of years, but it was in the 17th century that it was alive with mansions and a court life. It was back in the 1200's when the town became part of the royal estate. By the 1400's it became the Versailles of the Languedoc as the town became the residence of the Governors of the Languedoc and the royal court was established in the town.

Karen and Glenn visited many of the antique shops in the town -- everything was just too big for the car! We all met at 12:30 and enjoyed a very pleasant lunch at the restaurant La Petite Nice.

 

 

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Glenn & Karen Marcus • Chris & Carmen Grant More on Marcus Travels | Best Places to Stay