A Villa in Orgon, Provence

Booking the TGV (high speed train) to Avignon had been a challenge. Walt checked every day, but the only tickets available on the days we needed to travel were for local trains, and there was no explanation as to why. Eventually, we discovered that the release of tickets for the TGV was delayed because of work scheduled on the tracks and at Gare de Lyon. When the long-anticipated tickets did finally go on sale on the official French rail site, we patiently entered all the information required for ourselves and two friends, but the transaction was rejected at the final step because the site would only accept European credit cards. After a considerable amount of cursing, we managed to buy the desired tickets on the Rail Europe website which happily accepts non-European credit cards although it insists on assigning seats to customers rather than letting them pick their own.

The rail journey itself was very pleasant. There was no food or wine as there had been on the trains in Spain, but the train itself was clean and comfortable. We arrived in Avignon in good spirits, and set off to pick up our rental car.

We had requested the European version of the small Nissan SUV we have at home, but instead we were given a Citroën with about 80,000 kilometers on the odometer. Fitting four adults and all the luggage inside was quite a challege. Cars with automatic transmissions are rare in France so Walt knew he would have to master shifting manually once again, but this vehicle seemed to be particularly cranky about changing gears and it didn't help that the pedals were much too close together for his feet.

We lurched out of the parking lot onto the highway where we soon discovered that Provence has an excessive number of roundabouts. Every time we settled into high gear, another roundabout would appear and Walt would have to downshift again to maneuver around it. So there we all were packed into a too-small space with bags piled on our laps trying desparately to understand the GPS on Walt's phone which was giving us barely comprehensible directions as the car jerked its way down the road. It would have been hilarious if it hadn't been so terrifying.

My nerves were frazzled by the time we made the last terrifying climb through the steep exceedingly narrow streets that led up to our villa. It seemed impossible that we were heading into the right property through the big iron gates before us, but there was no place to turn around so we went forward, and there we were.

The place turned out to be spectacular - a lovely stone house with an enticing pool. Clumps of chairs scattered about the grounds beckoned us. We spent many pleasant hours under the brillant blue skies catching up on each others lives while drinking wine and eating baguettes and charcuterie.

Unfortunately, one of our friends arrived with a bad cold which everyone else picked up to varying degrees. Also, the temperature was never really hot enough to make a dip in the pool irrestible.

Although my daughter told me to suck it up and just jump in, I settled for a bit of what Canadians call "paddling".

Walt contented himself with "Twisting By The Pool" accompanied by Dire Straits

Our bedroom was upstairs. It opened onto the small patio you can see in this picture. Beneath it was a barbeque area.

One afternoon a tiny whirling dervish descended upon us. She was 5 months old, and she belonged to the ower of the villa. Her name was Twisty.

Here's a group shot of five of the six of us.

One of the things we looked forward to doing during our days in Provence was cooking with local ingredients. This turned out to be more difficult than we had imagined. The stove had an induction cooktop which made most of the pots and pans provided useless. We were warned that the knob to turn on the burner had to be pushed in before turning or it would crack in which case we would be charged for its replacement. Also, the oven was quite petite and we never did figure out how to use the microwave. Somehow, however, we managed to turn out several delicious dinners due mostly to the high quality of the local ingredients.

We had planned to shop mostly at the morning markets, but this also proved to be impractical. Several of the nearby villages had weekly markets so one morning early in our stay we headed to the market in the town of St. Rémy. Unfortunately, an awful lot of other people had the same idea. We missed the municipal parking lot on our first pass and had to fight our way through a huge amount of traffic to get back to it. Once parked, we joined the masses in the streets cruising slowly past the stands.

We loaded up on the local delicacies, but for the rest of our stay, we did most of our shopping at the local supermarché where we spent hours roaming the aisles looking for the things we wanted. I really enjoyed those trips to the supermarché. It was like a scavenger hunt.