We spent Sunday in the car with Josh’s mother and step-father, traveling down to Provence together – a ten-hour drive. Rain in Germany led to beautiful sunshine in southern France. We’re staying at Josh’s aunt and uncle’s wonderful apartment in the town of Lourmarin – a tightly clustered little hamlet that rises out of the dry Luberon landscape. Monday we explored the area – Albert Camus’ gravesite (he’s buried in Lourmarin), 18 holes of rather poorly constructed mini-golf, wine tasting at a lovely local winery, Chateau Constantin-Chevalier, and a picnic dinner aside the town’s 500-year-old castle, Chateau de Lourmarin. Today we drove to Avignon, by way of an amazing string of small hillside towns clinging to foothills of the Alps. We strolled through the former seat of the Vatican for some great sightseeing, but had lunch across the river to avoid the throngs of tourists. In the early evening we drove to Pont du Gard, the Roman aqueduct and largest Roman ruin after the Colosseum in Rome, with a brief stop before hand for some more wine tasting (this will happen as often as possible) at the hard to find, but well worth it, winery of Domaine de Valseniere. It’s been cloudless and beautiful, the cicadas sing to us all day and all of us are wondering how expensive local real estate is…
Tomorrow we head to the ocean, we’ll write another post(card) at the end of the week!