Planning a 2 week vacation this summer in Provence and am looking for some suggestions. Looking to rent a gite. Any recommendations on best location that is centrally located for day drives to beaches, nice villages, sites, etc? Also, thinking of possibly breaking up the 2 weeks for 1 in Provence and I in Italy. Has anyone done that - your suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I would not try to cram both Provence & Italy in only a 2 week vacation. Provence has plenty to keep you busy for 2 weeks. I would suggest 1 week near ST Remy and 1 week in the Luberon near Gordes. Better hurry if you want a summer rental however. We reserved our Gites for this summer (June & Sept) in the fall of last year. Some of our favorites rent 1 1/2 yrs in advance for summer months.

Stu Dudley

Thanks for the response Stu. Any suggestion for Gites near St Remy and Luberon?

I rent through the Gites de France program. Each department handles their own reservations. There are 90 or so departments in France. Gordes is in the Valcluse dept, and St Remy is in the Bouches du Rhone. Here is their web site - it's often quite difficult to use. There are over 40,000 Gites that are in the Gites de France program.

http://www.gites-de-france.fr/eng/index.htm

You might try another site which is more English friendly, but not nearly the number of rentals available.

http://www.housesforhire.com/

I don't disclose the specific places we stay in - it's getting harder & harder to rent them each year.

Stu Dudley

I know what you mean Stu. I'm glad when someone puts down one of my favorites, less chance they will be booked.

Stu, your point about the gîtes de france website being difficult to use ... I couldn't agree more. It's so unfortunate because there are so many wonderful houses there.

stevet, two other sites you might look at:

www.frenchconnections.co.uk

www.holiday-rentals.co.uk

These sites will put you in contact with the owners. We've rented more than a dozen places through those two sites.

Anselm

>>>Stu, your point about the gîtes de france website being difficult to use ... I couldn't agree more. It's so unfortunate because there are so many wonderful houses there.<<

There seems to be two possible software services that the different departments can use. ResinFrance is difficult to use, and I claim that it does not work at all. I've never been able to find Gites using it. If I happen to want to rent a Gite in a department that subscribes to the ResinFrance service, I send away for the book and don't even try to rent on-line

ITEA, on the other hand, works pretty good. However, like a lot of things in France, you need to be familiar with the geography and where the cities & villages are to use it efficiently. ITEA comes in several different flavors, and some of the flavors allow more selection criteria.

I know of at least two Gites that we have stayed in, where the proprietor has more Gites available than advertised, but does not want to list them because I assume that they pay on a per gite basis. These, of course, are gites where you contact the proprietor directly to rent the Gite, and not rentable on-line.

Stu Dudley