Part one of our 13 days in France
There’s a quiet in Provence I wasn’t prepared for. It settles over everything in the afternoon — the warm stone, the silver-green olive trees, the still pool — until the loudest thing left is the cicadas. We came thinking it would be the gentle opening act. It turned out to be the part we keep talking about.
This trip was planned, start to finish, by Alexis Jamian — every transfer, every reservation, every quietly perfect piece of timing.
A long travel day goes a lot smoother with the right things in your bag. Here are the few I never make an overnight flight without:
Arrival days are usually a blur of luggage and logistics. This one wasn’t. We landed in Marseille just after eleven, and a private car carried us up into the hills, the city falling away behind us. Home was Crillon le Brave, a hotel folded into an ancient hamlet that feels less like a place you check into than one you’re briefly allowed to belong to. We spent the afternoon doing the only sensible thing: very little. Pool, view, and the slow Provençal pace doing its work.
Dinner was downstairs at La Table du Ventoux, on a terrace over the valley. We watched the light turn gold, then soft, then disappear behind the hills.
The mornings here had a way of slipping past before we noticed. Breakfast was included each day — a beautiful display of pastries, fruit, and local specialties, eaten in front of that view we somehow hadn’t tired of. By late afternoon a car took us to Château La Nerthe, where we walked the vineyard and tasted wines with centuries of reputation behind them. There’s a particular pleasure in drinking something exactly where it was made, under the same sun that ripened it.
Dinner was at Le Verger des Papes, a restaurant built into a villa that once served as the Popes’ summer home. The views from the terrace were breathtaking, the stone underfoot older than most countries, the evening in no hurry to end. I’m still dreaming about the zucchini flower appetizer we had.
This was the day I’d go back for. Our driver took us on a long loop through the Luberon valley, and somewhere along it I gave up trying not to photograph everything — rolling country, stone villages weathered to honey, a light the postcards somehow undersell.
First was the place I’d been waiting for: the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque, a twelfth-century abbey set among rows of lavender. You’ve seen the image — plain grey stone, soft purple fields — and there’s a risk something so photographed feels smaller in person. It did the opposite.
Then came Gordes, a village stacked so improbably up its hillside it looks less built than grown there — until someone passes you with their groceries and you remember it’s simply where people live. We settled in for a long lunch at Carte des Boissons, carpaccio followed by a pizza and an Aperol spritz.
Then drifted off into the narrow streets. I won’t pretend the thought didn’t cross my mind: the honey-colored stone, the unhurried morning bustle, a whole village carrying on around me. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel like Belle in the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast.
That evening we had dinner Restaurant du Vieux Four, just walking distance from our home away from home.
When it was time to leave, our private transfer to St. Tropez took the scenic way, pausing in Roussillon — a town built in glowing shades of ochre, where we wandered through pottery shops and stopped for a sweet scoop of gelato. Provence holds so much more than we could fit into a few days — villages and valleys and corners I’ve barely scratched, and I already can’t wait to go back and explore more.
Stay tuned for part two, where we trade lavender fields for the glamour of St. Tropez.
Every detail of this trip was arranged by [Alexis Jamian]. If Provence is calling, they’re the ones to ask. (Itinerary credit: My Italy VIP — www.myitalyvip.com)
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