My wife and I are going to Provence soon and are planning on staying in St. Remy. We are currently trying to decide between 2 hotels that have confirmed availability for the dates that we will be there: L'hôtel Les Ateliers de l'Image and Hotel Castelet des Alpilles. <BR>If anyone has stayed at either of these or has heard anything about them, we'd really appreciate any information that might help us decide between the two. Thanks!

Les Ateliers des Images is closer to the center of St Remy... a new hotel built on the site of the really old town variety hall. It has A/C, the proprietors are very nice and helpful. Rooms have all the amenities, but are small.<BR><BR>I'm not familiar with the rooms at the Castelet - since I live in the area. it's a bit farther out of town, older property. I've heard nothing bad about it, however.<BR><BR>PB<BR>

Just in case you don't have the respective websites:<BR>Images = <BR>http://www.hotelphoto.com<BR>Castellet = http://www.alpilles.com/ang1az.htm<BR>These may help you getting a feel for both. They're extremely different: as PB above mentions, Image is brand new, hi-tech and right in town, Castellet is old charm, airy and abt 300 meter from the center (and substantially cheaper). If I'm not mistaken, Images serves breakfast only, Castellet has a restaurant. Bear in mind Image has no parking. Traffic is OK now, but come May-June, it'll get very busy.<BR>Hope this helps. If you're there on a friday, let me know. As from next week, we organize petanque inititation afternoons (in English and free of charge) at Bar Restaurant La Galine, the mecca of petanque (boules) in St Remy.

Thanks for the info on the hotels-sounds like both places are pretty nice so we can't really go wrong either way. <BR>Phillipe, you mentioned that there isn't parking at Les Images but when I corresponded with them they told me that there is a free car park across the street. Is that parking lot hard to find a spot in because it's right in town? I'm so glad you mentioned that because we had pretty much decided to stay at Les Images and I just assumed we could park across the street- but if it's going to be a problem to find parking in that lot then I think we'd reconsider and stay at Hotel Castelet. What do you think?<BR>By the way, we'll be leaving Friday morning for Paris so we're unfortunately going to miss the petanque inititation afternoon-thanks for the invitation though! <BR>Take care,<BR>SS <BR>

Re: Parking - There is a large public parking lot almost directly across the street from Images... it's where the Tourist Office is located as well.<BR><BR>To Philippe: you have English language initiation in petanque at La Galine ? I'll have to polish up my boules and check this out some Friday ! I'm assuming you'll allow females ?<BR><BR>PB <BR><BR><BR>

I should have stated "parking of it's own". Indeed, the public lot is across the street and is sufficient under normal circumstanes, except for market day (wednesday morning) and big holiday periods. But since you mention you'll be here "soon", don't worry about it.<BR>To PB: of course, females are allowed ! Though the petanque community in the U.S. is still quite small, I figure half are female. Looking forward to see you at La Galine.