Like most of the trips I have taken abroad, I approached a vacation in Provence with misconceptions and ignorance. But that, of course, is precisely why I want to travel — to literally and figuratively expand my horizons and see a perspective that is different than what I have had before and at least start to remedy that ignorance.
I have been to France before, but only Paris and a brief road trip between Paris and Geneva, Switzerland through the Bordeaux wine-growing region. But I am married to someone who lived in Geneva and thought nothing of popping down to Provence for a long weekend and couldn’t fathom that I had never been before. And so it wound up on my list of the 20 countries or regions that I want to visit before I turn 60 (it is number four, following Romania, Lithuania and Portugal).
As with those other trips, I started by trying to learn the language to the extent reasonably possible and to read up on the country. I had originally thought that we would be visiting in May, so I began with Level 1 of Pimsleur’s French in December so that I would peak at the right time as each of the five levels involves 30 lessons that are designed to be completed on a consecutive, daily basis. I had taken two years of French in college so thought it would all come back to me. What came back instead is a realization that I probably hadn’t learned as much in the first place as I thought I had. But at least I had some basic starting point.
I made good progress in the courses and finished as scheduled in April, but in the interim was told by someone who used to live in Geneva and would be accompanying me on this trip (which is to say, my wife) that May was absolutely NOT the right time to go to Provence. Oh. But by that time I was already in level 3. So I finished it and peaked early, thinking this extra time would allow me to keep improving my skills and do more reading. Yeah, that didn’t really happen, because then a German colleague joined us at our office and I decided I would focus on German on a daily basis and just add in a couple days a week such as the weekend where I would work on my French. Yeah, no….
I also didn’t do nearly as much reading on the culture and history of the country as I had done for the other countries, which is crazy since there is sooooo much more written on the culture and history of France than any of those other three countries. I did, however, read several books about the experiences of various individuals who lived in Provence, bought a vacation home there, had a job there etc. They were somewhat helpful, but I did myself a disservice by not being as focused as I should have been. During the trip, I also finished a book about some of the folk stories and lore of the country that brought some of the regions alive — but after I had been to most of them. Doh!
All that to say, I started out even more ignorant than I had for the other three countries, though at least I had a French speaker traveling with me who had been there many times before. Which was both helpful and frustrating at times — for both of us, no doubt.
The original idea was that my wife was was going to create an itinerary for the trip, since she’d been there before, knew where to stay and what to see and the like. As the time grew closer, though, I became less confident that such an itinerary was being formed. So I went online and started ordering travel guides and a map. When they arrived, I marked places that seemed interesting and I noticed she was poring over the books as well. I wasn’t sure if that was a reflection of her trying to find ideas, trying to incorporate my interests into her master plan or something else. She had been with me on the trip to Portugal and had seen how I had organized it and so I assumed that she would be doing something similar and I should just back off and let her do so and not interfere because, obviously, I had never been to Provence before so how would I know how it was done? And she clearly had done this many times by all the stories she told of dining under the stars at a small hotel where they just brought out local wine and you laughed and drank and had wonderful food and magical experiences. Give me some of that, please!
As it turned out, there wasn’t a master plan or any type of itinerary (most assuredly not of the day-by-day variety captured in Word as is my wont). We didn’t even have hotels booked for each night, which is something I didn’t realize until we were already there. I suppose it should have been a clue about a week before we left when she asked if I would handle finding a hotel in Nice for the first two nights. Wait, in a week? In August? Over a US holiday weekend? The last weekend before French children return to school? Yep.
At the same time, I am (I think) smart enough to realize that my way isn’t always the best way and, yes, I’m a bit uptight, so maybe a more flexible approach would be a good thing. So we sallied forth.
What became clear rather quickly in reading those books, and later on the ground, is that I didn’t really understand where Provence was located. When I thought of Provence, I thought of lavender fields because of all the photos I had seen showing that and, well, the advertising of L’Occitane en Provence, one of my preferred makers of hand creams and other things. I somehow didn’t realize that it also included the French Riviera.
There are six different areas called departments in Provence: Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Bouches-du-Rhone, Vaucluse, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and Hautes-Alpes. The travel guide that was our primary reference didn’t include Hautes-Alpes, so it is perhaps no surprise that we didn’t make it up there, though we did hit the other five.
One of the other references I had purchased was an old school paper map of the area, which turned out to be so large that one needed an entire table on which to spread it to see anything, so not great for planning on-the-fly. Our rental car fortunately had GPS (which turned out to be very helpful since mobile reception was spotty along the way, thus frustrating the use of Google Maps or Waze), but GPS only works as well as the destinations you feed it and cannot overcome one’s failure to plan. Perhaps as a result of that, the route we actually took and where we stayed were not as, um, efficient as we might otherwise have chosen. Good thing we had unlimited kilometers on the rental!
At some point in time I will figure out how to create a map of the journey and will post it here. You will then see the somewhat circuitous route we took, which tracks along with not having a master plan or a good, small map.
While we did visit five of the six departments, we spent more time in some areas than others, which is my cue to say that now I know where to focus for the next visit. Except that there are 16 other countries/regions that need to be knocked off in 12 years, which doesn’t leave a lot of time/room for repeats and, essentially, do-overs.
I have been to France before, but only Paris and a brief road trip between Paris and Geneva, Switzerland through the Bordeaux wine-growing region. But I am married to someone who lived in Geneva and thought nothing of popping down to Provence for a long weekend and couldn’t fathom that I had never been before. And so it wound up on my list of the 20 countries or regions that I want to visit before I turn 60 (it is number four, following Romania, Lithuania and Portugal).
As with those other trips, I started by trying to learn the language to the extent reasonably possible and to read up on the country. I had originally thought that we would be visiting in May, so I began with Level 1 of Pimsleur’s French in December so that I would peak at the right time as each of the five levels involves 30 lessons that are designed to be completed on a consecutive, daily basis. I had taken two years of French in college so thought it would all come back to me. What came back instead is a realization that I probably hadn’t learned as much in the first place as I thought I had. But at least I had some basic starting point.
I made good progress in the courses and finished as scheduled in April, but in the interim was told by someone who used to live in Geneva and would be accompanying me on this trip (which is to say, my wife) that May was absolutely NOT the right time to go to Provence. Oh. But by that time I was already in level 3. So I finished it and peaked early, thinking this extra time would allow me to keep improving my skills and do more reading. Yeah, that didn’t really happen, because then a German colleague joined us at our office and I decided I would focus on German on a daily basis and just add in a couple days a week such as the weekend where I would work on my French. Yeah, no….
I also didn’t do nearly as much reading on the culture and history of the country as I had done for the other countries, which is crazy since there is sooooo much more written on the culture and history of France than any of those other three countries. I did, however, read several books about the experiences of various individuals who lived in Provence, bought a vacation home there, had a job there etc. They were somewhat helpful, but I did myself a disservice by not being as focused as I should have been. During the trip, I also finished a book about some of the folk stories and lore of the country that brought some of the regions alive — but after I had been to most of them. Doh!
All that to say, I started out even more ignorant than I had for the other three countries, though at least I had a French speaker traveling with me who had been there many times before. Which was both helpful and frustrating at times — for both of us, no doubt.
The original idea was that my wife was was going to create an itinerary for the trip, since she’d been there before, knew where to stay and what to see and the like. As the time grew closer, though, I became less confident that such an itinerary was being formed. So I went online and started ordering travel guides and a map. When they arrived, I marked places that seemed interesting and I noticed she was poring over the books as well. I wasn’t sure if that was a reflection of her trying to find ideas, trying to incorporate my interests into her master plan or something else. She had been with me on the trip to Portugal and had seen how I had organized it and so I assumed that she would be doing something similar and I should just back off and let her do so and not interfere because, obviously, I had never been to Provence before so how would I know how it was done? And she clearly had done this many times by all the stories she told of dining under the stars at a small hotel where they just brought out local wine and you laughed and drank and had wonderful food and magical experiences. Give me some of that, please!
As it turned out, there wasn’t a master plan or any type of itinerary (most assuredly not of the day-by-day variety captured in Word as is my wont). We didn’t even have hotels booked for each night, which is something I didn’t realize until we were already there. I suppose it should have been a clue about a week before we left when she asked if I would handle finding a hotel in Nice for the first two nights. Wait, in a week? In August? Over a US holiday weekend? The last weekend before French children return to school? Yep.
At the same time, I am (I think) smart enough to realize that my way isn’t always the best way and, yes, I’m a bit uptight, so maybe a more flexible approach would be a good thing. So we sallied forth.
What became clear rather quickly in reading those books, and later on the ground, is that I didn’t really understand where Provence was located. When I thought of Provence, I thought of lavender fields because of all the photos I had seen showing that and, well, the advertising of L’Occitane en Provence, one of my preferred makers of hand creams and other things. I somehow didn’t realize that it also included the French Riviera.
There are six different areas called departments in Provence: Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Bouches-du-Rhone, Vaucluse, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and Hautes-Alpes. The travel guide that was our primary reference didn’t include Hautes-Alpes, so it is perhaps no surprise that we didn’t make it up there, though we did hit the other five.
One of the other references I had purchased was an old school paper map of the area, which turned out to be so large that one needed an entire table on which to spread it to see anything, so not great for planning on-the-fly. Our rental car fortunately had GPS (which turned out to be very helpful since mobile reception was spotty along the way, thus frustrating the use of Google Maps or Waze), but GPS only works as well as the destinations you feed it and cannot overcome one’s failure to plan. Perhaps as a result of that, the route we actually took and where we stayed were not as, um, efficient as we might otherwise have chosen. Good thing we had unlimited kilometers on the rental!
At some point in time I will figure out how to create a map of the journey and will post it here. You will then see the somewhat circuitous route we took, which tracks along with not having a master plan or a good, small map.
While we did visit five of the six departments, we spent more time in some areas than others, which is my cue to say that now I know where to focus for the next visit. Except that there are 16 other countries/regions that need to be knocked off in 12 years, which doesn’t leave a lot of time/room for repeats and, essentially, do-overs.
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