April 2-3, 2014

Apt, France 

Wednesday morning we reluctantly left Cassis and drove to Marseilles to visit the Cathedral Major. The great thing about visiting the major cathedrals of Europe is that each is different and has its own distinct feel. The Cathedral Major features horizontal stripes much like the Duomo in Florence, Italy. The particular color of the stripes in Marseilles gives this cathedral a "Moorish" feel. While many of the European cathedrals have a "pieta" in them, the Cathedral Major had two, both very different and very moving. A "pieta" is a sculpture depicting Mary holding Jesus after the crucifixion. Michelangelo's "Pieta" in St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome is the most famous.

From the cathedral we drove to the Marseilles airport to pick up our friends, Lyn and Don Johnson, who you may remember from our riverboat cruise down the Danube last May. After picking up the Johnsons we headed to Apt to move into our apartment that we will occupy for the next week. The owner of the apartment, an American named Paul, spent much time with us, getting us acclimated to the apartment and the neighborhood around the apartment, suggesting restaurants in the area and other points of interest. Our apartment occupies part of the second and third floors of an 18th century building in the old section of Apt. The only drawback to the apartment is the total lack of drawers and closets in which to store our clothes. We were looking forward to not living out of our suitcases the rest of this trip, but guess we will have to wait until Paris to unpack. The rest of the evening was spent drinking wine, eating cheese and baguette and catching up on family news with Lyn and Don.

Paul suggested that we take a drive from Apt to Bonneaux because all of the cherry and almond trees were in full bloom. Thursday we decided to take this drive. But, before leaving Apt we visited the local wine co-op. A co-op is where farmers who don't grow enough grapes to make their own wine sell their grapes. The co-op uses all of these different grapes to make a wine that may not be a vintage wine but is still excellent and is considerably cheaper than bottled wine from a proper wine maker. Interestingly, there is an area in the co-op where you can watch people filling large 5- to 10-gallon plastic containers with wine using a nozzle similar to a gasoline pump. We bought a 3 liter box of red wine thinking the 5 liter box looked too big. We may have been wrong!

The drive to Bonneux was truly beautiful. While Bonneux was not a particularly picturesque village, the road from Bonneux led to LaCoste, a village we are sure you will enjoy reading about.  LaCoste is built on a hill and at the very top of the hill is a castle that was said to at one time belong to the Marquis de Sade. Yes, that Marquis de Sade. Our guide book suggested that we drive as far up the hill in LaCoste as we could and then take the steep walk on up to the castle. The guide book also said that the Marquis brought local peasants to the castle where "he did scandalous things to them.” The walk up to the castle was indeed steep. So steep, in fact, that Lynda did not attempt the climb. We were not able to actually enter the castle once we reached it but the views over the countryside were spectacular. After the Marquis de Sade the castle actually fell into ruins until purchased recently by the fashion designer, Pierre Cardin. He refurbished the castle so that it now hosts an opera festival each summer. We don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but the Savannah School of Art and Design has a branch in LaCoste.

Our next stop was Menerbes. This village is supposedly the home village of Peter Mayle, the author of "A Year in Provence" and subsequent books about Provence. Menerbes has not fully embraced Mayle because after the publication of his book tourists descended upon the village.  The popularity of Menerbes led to foreign investment to clean up the city, which led to higher prices for food and wine for the locals. Sacre bleu! Menerbes did have a rather spiffy look about it. But despite that we found a restaurant for a lovely lunch.

Our last stop was Roussillon. Roussillon is famous for the ochre cliffs around the town. All of the buildings in Roussillon are the color ochre. It is a lovely village with many interesting art galleries and shops. While we enjoyed Roussillon it did not feel like a typical Provencal village. It was like the Disney people decided to build their take on a traditional French village.

In all of our travels Lynda has never found a road that was too small to drive down. She was in her glory today because some of the roads were nothing more than wide sidewalks. Our rental car is a 2014 Peugeot that is equipped with GPS that includes a small video screen showing the route and warnings when turns are coming up. Additionally, a lovely slightly British-accented woman gives verbal commands. Tim is pleased because she never becomes annoyed when he occasionally makes a wrong turn. She just calmly continues to give instructions to get him back on the proper route. We've named her Amelie and are quite taken with her.

We have now returned to the apartment where we are enjoying wine, cheese, pate and bread and planning tomorrow's adventure. Life is good!

Bon soir.

Marquis de Sade's Castle

Provence Countryside

Roussillon