Home

Tracy’s Letters from France: Trips in Provence

Dear Ones,

It’s 11:09pm and we’ve just gotten home from dinner! We walked around the small neighborhoods of Avignon and landed on a spot down the street from our flat! It sells vintage clothes and has a family restaurant with a mother and her two daughters working. (I imagine they are all there until midnight.)

Avignon is the perfect home-base from which to explore Provence! It’s about 60-90 minutes from many towns we want to visit. Today, though, we drove 3.5 hours to the Gorges du Verdon. It’s a natural phenomenon like the Columbia River Gorge only deeper in places with deep azure water, like you’d see in San Tropez. From Avignon, we drove 90-minutes on the freeway, then through lavender fields (already harvested) and farmland for other crops. Then, we started climbing up and into The Gorges, which are gorgeous! (pun intended)

Yesterday, we drove to a tiny town, called Uzes, that Isabelle recommended we see. There was a bike race throughout the town, so it make for a fun activity for us watch. It has been blazing hot, but the bikers rode fast, zipping bye as the local’s spectated, sang and drank beer like champs. We stayed in the shade of the plain trees along the sidewalks.

Today we parked along a hillside, then hiked for about a mile for an optimal view. However, mostly we drove our rented Fiat and took in the magnificent views. The narrow road was extremely curvy, so my eyes were fixed on the roadway as the cars were coming towards us. Navigating took a lot of energy. Margaret and Henry were taking photos and videos from their open windows! Of course, Henry spotted lots of birds and trees, made notes for his travel journal and, always the teacher, quizzed Margaret and me on what we saw.

At the bottom of The Gorges, people gathered to swim and sunbathe along the shore like we would at the beach. Their colorful bathing suits and beach umbrellas against the sparkling blue water made for quite a view!

We found some nice shops there. Margaret’s French is better each day, so she confidently translated our questions with the shopkeepers nicely!

It finally cooled a bit today, but as I keep emphasizing it’s been beastly hot. Seems like the whole world is hot this summer. We’ve had several eye-opening conversations about the damage from the relentless heat, which we heard from the woman at the Hertz rental car, the local shop owners and a 3rd generation wine grower. They all expressed environmental alarm. In Provence there’s been no appreciable rain for months. Typically they’d expect some rain in the summer. The result? The lavender fields were harvested in July instead of September; the grapes in the vineyards are starting to be harvested in mid-August instead of October!

We can see the stress on the trees and bushes and sunflower fields. Too many are brown and brittle. You girls know that when we hike, Daddy will typically pinch a leaf or needles off a hemlock, pine or a juniper tree and rub his fingers together to release the scent. He tried several times today and the samples were so dry that they didn’t create any scent at all. So very sad.

One of the great gifts of traveling is that the days stretch out and we lose track of time. (Granddad Hooper always told us to put our wrist watches away when we travel. I’ve mostly followed his advice for years.)

More soon. Tomorrow we tour the Palais du Popes, see some important impressionist paintings in a small museum and go to the fantastic Halles du Marche’ which is like Lexington Market (Baltimore) and Pike Place Market (Seattle). Beautiful fish, meats, breads, veggies, pastries, spices, herbs & wine.

We’ll probably buy fresh prepared food for supper tomorrow because we don’t want to go out for dinner every night.

Time to sign off for now.

Love you dears so much,
—  Mom-Tracy