Trip to the Provence pt 1

Dear Blog,

Finally I got to write down about my wonderfull experiences in the Provence... the South of France!

We've left Belgium on the 29th of July and got back home on the 12th of August.. Almost 2 weeks! And what a blast we had.. In this review (and story) I will talk a bit about our campings and our tours and the killerwhales!!.. we drove really everywhere! And had the 'bestest' weather of all times.. while Belgium was drowning in rain...

So here it goes!

First of all.. the company was good too :D! Mic and I were together the whole time and I absolutely loved it with him! :).. It was our second year we went camping with a tent.. (a new one actually).. we did some shopping earlier in June/July at: AS ADVENTURE.. (a big, yet expensive store for campers and hikers..)

I even got myself a sleeping bag and matrass.. also an inflatable one.. (but after 3 days one side already had a hole in it.. so happily there was a second matrass.. to lay on.

Early in the morning about 4AM... we left Belgium for a couple of hours driving to the South of France.. It was nearly a 9hour drive.. and we didn't had ANY trafficproblems or jams.. (so we were warned about a couple of times).. It was lovely, good.. and a bit boring too. :P.. Our GPS really IS the best thing we buyed this year :)

We crossed whole France to get to our first location: 'NOVES'.. (not far from Avignon, one big (and known) city :) ) in our first region 'Bouches de Rhone'.. we're we had our first camping location: 'LE PILON D'AGEL'. We arrived at noon at that location.. http://www.pilondagel.com/ (a 3star campinglocation.. with swimming pool..)

When we finally got out.. we had our first scare.. There was sooooo much NOISE!!!! Aargh... yeah.. my book: 'Capitool Travelingguide Provence and Cote D'Azur'... forgot to mention this tiny bug roaming around this place.. (and it didn't mention it, I rechecked!).. I scared my pants of when I heard this animal.. called 'The Cigale'.. a beetle like creature that loves to sit on trees with millions of other cigales and make so much ****noise! Luckily you got used to it quite fast and even sleep trough it.. but still :) We stayed there for 6 nights.. in a total of 90 euro's.. (it was about 16 euros for 2 pers-1car-1tent) and an advance payment of 50 euros.

We made our tent and didn't do anything anymore for that day. The camping was quite nice actually.. good location, we had 2 trees (so much shades) at our spot, lots of space.. and neighbours of Dutch nationalities.. Quit often we heard Dutch.. and even Flemish! Lots of Belgians on this site.. There were bungalows for family's, a nice restaurant and off course the swimming pool. Only.. the showerblocks.. for my standerds they were quite misereable.. So.. if I had to give points to the bathrooms that woud definitly be a six. I hated the fact it was too cold water.. Even the sinks for the dishes had warmer water!! yeah.. quite a downfactor for this one.. the bathrooms were not that nice, even somewhat oldfashioned and poorly maintained. But they were cleaned every day and looked clean.

So.. where did we go in this region?
I had made my preparions for this one.. (next with the help of all my traveling guides..) so I picked out the best places and we could decide where we wanted to go.. and what there was to see all put together in one map.

first of all:
- Avignon: a whole day of wathing things, seeing things, enjoying things.. We saw the Paleis des Papes, walked around down the lovely streets.. Saw a bookfair and went to the bridge of St Bénézet.. most famous from this children song. 'Sur le pont d'Avignon'.. It's actually a bridge that was never finished.. It was a very lovely atmosphere around and really beautifull..
- Aix-en-Provence: Were we witnessed a lovely group called: 'Pense - Bête singing and performing in French 'country-like' chansons.. (I found them on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/pensebete).. it was so good, I even bought the cd they were selling: 'La folie et let Pain d'epices'.. some good French music.. again there was this lovely atmosphere all around.. on a little market we did way too much shopping and got some gifts and presents, Mic even buyes me a nice necklace and some nice and great tasting things like 'Nougat (yikes..) and Macarons (see on right).. Gosh these were soo good and looked good too! :) We sightseed a bit and even lunched there.. (mjam!)
- Salon-De-Provence.. : Lovely city, great ruines, nice castles.. we searched for the church were Nostradamus is burried.. unfortunatly we didnt got the chance to get in.. as there was a wedding going on.. too bad.. Next time? :P

- Nîmes: They have some nice amphitheaters from the old days.. there was a nice tour (with walkietalkiein DUTCH! whiee) that explained everything about the gladiators, quite exciting and interesting.. Too bad there was some kind of stage set in the middle of the arenas.. so we did not really see the center of the arenas. Ah well.. no biggie. Unfortunatly we had the combined tickets to see the other old Romain buildings of Nimes, but didn't had the time to watch it all...

- Aigues Mortes and the Camargue: The first one is actully a city between walls... very old walls. We took the tour around the walls and did almost 3 km around it.. And again there was a little market where we got some nice things again :D.. (Mic wanted a beachbag and we got some nice beachtowels too.. -big ones).. The Camargue is actually a piece of land, that's actually quit swamplike. There were a couple of horsebackridingclubs across the road.. And I sooo wanted to go horsebackriding! Unfortunatly we didn't had the time.. We had a whole day of driving and seen a couple of nice towns too.

The next days we travelled around the region called the Vaucluse.. also a very nice place!!

- Orange: Not that much to see..

- Carpentras: we went through quite fast.

- Rondrit: Les Dentelles: Lovely to see! A sightseeing trip through the mountains and a couple of stops in tiny little village like Baume De Venice.. et Vaison-La-Romaine.. The first one was not that interesting, and we did some wineshopping.. The Muscatwine is very known in this region, so we bought a couple of bottles. And in Vaison la Romaine, there was a very nice city in bricks and a castle that was closed unfortunatly.. We saw a lot of Belgians and Dutch.. they were really everywhere!

- Fontain de Vaucluse: A bit of sightseeing from inside the car..

- Gordes: A city on top of a hill/mountain.. very nice view :)

- Isle sur Sourge: We wanted to go 'Kayaking', but unfortunatly we were too late! If you want to go Kayaking, you have to reserve the day before you want to go!

- Rousillion: the red city, the rocks and bricks from the mountains are RED! We bought our lovely theaset here and I bought a little bottle with 'colored sand'.. Nice city..

Soon part two of our journey!

xxSara

http://www.visitprovence.com/