in Aix-en-Provence

Aix-en-Provence

The weekend after the La Chouffe Trail was the date of our departure for the south of France, for a longer holiday.  We have made long car journeys before - our last trips to Croatia, and to Corsica took several days - but while planning our itinerary we came to the realisation that nearly all of our intended destinations for our two weeks in the south were within less than 200km from Aix, and most were within 120km.  We thought that a 1,000km + car trip from Brussels to Aix with four people in a small car was undesirable, especially given the french toll road costs, and the fatigue factor, and so took advantage of some seat sales and rode the Thalys high speed train to Aix instead, passing a very relaxed few hours.  There we rented a car, and drove to the beautiful vinyard property of Elisabeth Dumon and her husband Christian, called the Bastide de Richaume, located a few kilometres from Aix, near the municipality of Puyloubier.

 

Their beautiful home, located on a parcel of land in the midst of fields of grapevines, has been in Christian’s family for many years, but now he and Elisabeth run it as a bed and breakfast, with three guest rooms in the main farmhouse, and two outlying guest houses.  These all look out on the mountain range whose highest point is the famous Montagne Sainte-Victoire, painted frequently by Cézanne.

It’s quite magical there, with wonderfully clean air, a quiet atmosphere, beautiful starry skies at night and clear sunny skies during the day, which can get very hot in summer.  Fortunately they have also installed a large swimming pool up near the main house, something that we made use of frequently. 

The guest houses are really nice, and I can see why people come back year after year… one evening we had an apero with the Austrian couple in the other guest house; he is a staging director and she is a lighting and scenic designer at the theatre in Linz.

This is their sixth year renting the smaller guest house, this time for a month.  It says something when people who live in the Alps come to Provence for some quiet and relaxation!

We were in the larger of the two guest houses, which could accomodate up to six people.  Bruce had already arrived in Marseille a few days before we came to Aix-en-Provence, and shortly after installing ourselves in the guest house I drove into Marseille, and brought him to stay with us for the week.  It hadn’t really been so long an absence; we spent last winter in Canada, but we were all happy to see him, and we had a great time together catching up.  I got in a voice lesson, and interestingly so did Malcolm!  But we spent a lot of good times together enjoying everything that Provence has to offer..

A wine tasting was one of those things... The recommendation for Bastide de Richaume came from a friend, the winemaker Gregory Hecht.  Unfortunately both he and his business partner Francois Bannier were off on their holidays, but their colleague Valérie Ferradou was available to greet us at their new location at 45 rue roux Alphéran in Aix, where we opened five different wines starting with their Cotes de Provence white wine 2012, then progressing to the Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence rosé 2012, then to the Bandol rosé 2015, the Languedoc white 2015, and finally the Bandol rouge from 2009.  Yum. yum. yum.  

These wines are available in France, but one can get most of them in Belgium and in the Netherlands from the importer “Le Wine”, and also in Ontario at the LCBO.  As well they are imported directly by Halpern Wine of Toronto.

We purchased enough bottles to make sure that we would have some to bring back with us on the train to Brussels, but also enjoyed having such good local wines on hand to pair with the delicious food in Provence.  We had a nice time shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables at the roadside stand a short drive from the house, making our new favourite summer appetizer, braised artichokes by Mark Bittman ...

 

…and Maggie took advantage of the cheap price for a crate of apricots to make a half a dozen jars of apricot jam.

I took the opportunity over the week that we were there to have a short solitary run up into the mountain, making my way to the Hermitage de Saint-Ser partway up the mountain to ring the bell in the chapel there.  I had hoped to continue to the peak of of Saint-Victoire but my tendonitis was acting up again, unfortunately, so I couldn’t run as much as I had wanted, but at least I got in some mountain time, and the views were spectacular.

We also made a number of trips to different places in the area.  The Grand Canyon du Verdon was one of the first road trips we made.  It’s a little more than 100km from Puyloubier, and boasts some gorgeous scenery.  We first stopped for a beer at the Logis Hotel du Grand Canyon du Verdon, and then started to walk down the trail to the river, a descent of maybe 170m.

The first part of the trail is scenic but the lower sections get much steeper, so Maggie and Bruce left us at the waypoint and headed back up to wait for us at the hotel, and the boys and I continued down to the river in the bottom of the gorge, and walked across the Passerelle de l’Estellier, a footbridge that crosses the river.  

It was beautiful and picturesque, but we didn’t stay long.  It was the wrong time of year for swimming in the river, which was very low and very silty.  Instead we drove about 25 km to the man-made Lake of Sainte-Croix, where there are lots of beaches, and had a nice relaxing swim to cool off, and a nice picnic before heading back to Puyloubier.

Other day trip adventures included a visit to the Chauvet Cave replica, located in the Ardeche region of France, about 180 km north from Puyloubier.  The Chauvet cave was only discovered in 1994, and sealed immediately to the public so as to protect the cave paintings inside.  It is estimated that the entrance to the cave was closed by a rockslide that happened around 29,000 years ago.  Sealed within, and unseen by anyone since, were some of the earliest and most beautiful cave paintings ever discovered, dated to between 30,000 and 32,000 years ago!

Caverne du Pont-d'Arc is a facsimile of Chauvet Cave and is the largest cave replica ever built worldwide, ten times bigger than the Lascaux facsimile. The cave art is reproduced full-size in a condensed replica of the underground environment, located within a circular building above ground, a few kilometres from the actual cave.  It opened only last year, and after seeing the Werner Herzog documentary film “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” we were very much interested in visiting it, and we found it mesmerising.

After our visit to the Chauvet Replica we headed another 50km further north to the Pont du Diable, a beautiful spot for swimming, sunbathing and cliff jumping.

The arch of the bridge rises to about 20 metres above the Ardeche river, and there are lots of cliffs of varying heights on either side of the bridge.  The boys and I did a little bit of cliff jumping into the crystal clear water below, which was quite cold and very refreshing.  Here's Duncan in three shots, followed by some other photos taken from the bridge.

After a good couple of hours stop for a picnic, a can of beer from the café and a cigar with our feet in the water, we headed south again, and stopped in Avignon, in just enough time to dance under a different bridge there, the one made famous in the children's song.  As it turns out we've been singing it wrong all along.

We also had a brief tour on foot around the old city, including a quick look at the Palais des Papes… the Papacy was officially housed at Avignon from the year 1305 until 1378 before it returned to Rome, and there are still some lovely buildings there, especially in the early evening light, which is warm and golden.

There was a popular music festival going on in the main square, and lots of different street art installations. 

We walked along to the opera house, and continued south, hoping to have dinner at Le Petit Gourmand, a highly recommended restaurant on the Rue Vieux Sextier, but it was already booked solid, so we took the recommendation of the Maitre d’hotel and went instead to the Café Ripert just down the street, and had an excellent dinner there before piling back into the car and heading home to Puyloubier.

As you can imagine these kinds of itineraries can be a little tiring even when trying to keep the kilometrage down to under 250 per day, and I was the only driver, so we tried to alternate days on the road with days being relaxed at home at Puyloubier, and one of those “at home” days coincided with Bruce’s birthday.  Malcolm enjoys baking cakes - he made a fantastic Sachertorte for me last year on my birthday, and a carrot cake with cream cheese icing on our wedding anniversary - and he improvised an upside-down peach cake from an old Mennonite recipe for Bruce's special day.  Served with vanilla ice cream it was a delicious end to a nice dinner chez nous.

Bruce and I made a duo trip to Nice near the end of the week.  It had only been a few days since the attacker had driven his truck into the crowd of people celebrating the Fête Nationale there, and Bruce wanted to lay a bouquet at the memorial and to have a look around the city that he had called home for five seasons of opera.  We saw poignant scenes of children with flowers for the memorial mixed with soldiers ready to defend against further attacks.

We read the sentiments of many visitors who had paid their respects to the victims, and then decided to walk along and have a look at the opera house, located right on the beach.  We stopped in to see if we could have a brief tour of the interior… but the salle itself was closed for repairs during the summer months.

Yet as we were speaking with the attendant at the stage door, an amazing thing happened: this concierge, whose name was Patrick, thought he recognised Bruce, and when he heard Bruce's name he immediately started talking about the production of Daphne that Bruce had appeared in, back in 1987!  It turns out that Patrick had been an extra in that production almost thirty years ago, and remembered that Canadian baritone from Liège.  So did another longtime choruster of the Opera de Nice, who happened to be passing by, and he and Patrick started listing off other productions Bruce had played in, and asking for news about some of the other cast members.  It was quite astonishing.

What is also interesting for me personally is that when I asked Patrick about auditioning for the Opera de Nice, he gave me his email address and asked me to send along my c.v.; he told me that that he would pass it on to the General Director, and said that I would be contacted when auditions were held.  (As it happens, I was contacted, and will audition there in later October).

Our week in Puyloubier was coming to a close...  Friday was a quiet day spent packing up and then tidying the house, and on Saturday morning we packed up the car and moved everyone down to Marseille, where we had rented another house for a week, in the 8th Arrondissement, near Pointe-Rouge....

… next… In Marseille…