yipper

We are back from two weeks in France. Thanks to all the good advise on this board. We flew on AA from Boston to Paris. I got $500 tickets on the web in Febuary. We arrived early on Sat. We took a cab to our hotel. There were 4 of us and the charge was 60 Euro. We stayed at the Muguet which I have read a lot about on this site. It was a lovely hotel with AC, which we needed. 103 euros a night with a view of the Eiffel Tower. The first day we had coffee on the rue Cler and bought our bread, cheese and wine for lunch. Off to see the Eiffel tower and have our lunch in the park. The park is not as nice as it was years ago. Next a visit to the Invalides and Rodin museum. Off for a nap and dinner at Le Florimond, an easy walk form the hotel. Nice casual dress is fine. The meal was wonderful fromm the osso bucco, to the chicken, to the beef stew and desserts. With wine about 70 euro per couple.


Day 2
Off to Giveney on the train and dinner at La Fontaine De Mars, also near the hotel. Another great meal from the rabbit, to the lamb, to the escargot and desserts. It was around 70 Eiros per couple.

Day 3
Did a lot of the usually Paris sites and took a ride on the Seine. Delightful. No museums this trip. I have seen them before and wanted to relax. That night we ate cheaply at the Le Comptoir du 7. Great meal for about 35 Euros per couple.

yipper

Day 4
We rented a car and drove to Nice. Do not do this. It saved us about $350 per couple, but it is a 9 hour ride without a lot of traffic. We arrived in Nice at around 8:30p.m. and stayed at the Hotel Windsor. This is a lovely tree star hotel with a delightful garden and pool. 100 Euros without breakfast. We were so tired that we ate dinner at the hotel and the fish was perfect. The next day we drove to Monaco and did the usual, which included gambling and we won 8 Euros, better than loosing. We had a quick , but good meal this night of escargo, chicken, potatoes, wine and dessert.

The next day (5) we went through the Chagall and Matisse museums. There were nice, but I have seen exhibits here in Boston that had more of their art than is displayed there. We went to the beach that afternoon, you need water shoes for this, very rocky. The sea was too rough to swim, so we sat and enjoyed the view and swam at the hotel pool. This night I had a wonderdul large bowl of mussels. There were delicious and they came with fries, of coarse.

Next day(6)
We drove from Nice to St. Tropez. and saw all the towns along the way. It is a beautiful drive and takes about 3 to 4 hours. In St. Tropez we took a boat ride around the harbor, which was lovely. We drove on the express road back to Nice stopping off in Grasse in time to buy some soap, but too late to tour a purfume factory. Had a lovely salad nicoise, with bread, wine and cheese. Not expensive.

cigalechanta

Thanks for the report and welcome back, yipper. Do you happen to know of a spot for great Bouillabaisse on the outskirts of Marseille(we don't want to go into the town but somewhere by water)

mimi in Boston

ira

Tell us more, yipper.

yipper

Day 7-14
Off to Provence and to the gite we rented. This was in the town of St. Quentien-the-Pottery, which is near Uzes. It is a lovely typical French town, but there are about 20 potters who live and hae their shops there. We stopped to see the Pont du Gard, and of coarse it is fabulous. Our gite was an apartment that is attached to a very large chateau. It is on a lot of land and the owner lives there. The owner rents out the huge chateau and our apartment and his quarters are attached to the chateau on the other side. There is a pool there and the gite consisted of 2 bedrooms, living room, and kitchen. The owner has vineyards down the road and a winery. We were invited to a wonderful wine party on the grounds. The owner was introducing his wine and there was plenty to drink and eat. How lucky for us.

Everyday we were off to one Provence town or antoher and then back to the gite for a swim and dinner. We cooked breakfast, lunch, and several dinners. We walked into town in the morning to buy our food for the day. The butcher became friendly as did the baker. All along the roads were fruit and vegatable stands. The fruits were ripe and delicious. The wine was inexpensive and wonderful, the cheese was the cheese. fab! One day I bought foie gras and champange. What a great lunch. Buy the foie gras in the glass jars. It is better than the tins, so they say.

We went to Avignon, Arles, Les Baux, Gordes, St. Remy, Lsle-sur-la-Sorgue, Rousillon, and the Abbaye de Senanque. All were wonderful.

We rested a couple of days by the pool and went to Uzes which was my favorite. It is lovely. The Saturday market is overwhelming. I loved this town. We heard a concert of a boys choir singing sacret music at the local catherdral. It was so relaxing.

day 15
We drove to Versailles and stayed over night. We had a lovely dinner and walked around the cheateau. Tne next morning we walked through the gradens (been inside before). It was 8:30 a.m. and we were about the only people there. Then off to CDG and home.
It was a wonderful trip and we loved having the gite.

Cluny

Tell us more about the gite you rented. Is it in Château de Maruege? I've noticed it when browsing through French Connections, but the listing doesn't show the kitchen or say how far it is from the village, so I've looked elsewhere.

We've rented in Uzes, and we love it there (in fact, we're going back in September). The weekday market is pretty good, too. I was particularly impressed by the guy who sells fresh trout from a tank. You choose, and he dispatches them and then cleans them with a vacuum thingy.

Evey

yipper
Would love to have more info on where you stayed in Provence. Name of gite, website etc. My husband and I are planning a trip in Oct and plan to stay in Paris for a few day and take a trip to Provence for at least 7 days. Your trip sounded great!!
thankx
evey

artlover

What a great trip report! (But it's making me hungry!)

You mention not to rent a car to drive to Nice. Do you say this because the drive was too long? We did this, but stopped off in Aix on the way so we broke the drive up and it was fine.

yipper

Hi,

To Cigalenchanta, we did not go to Marseille so I have no knowledge of where to get great bouillabaisse, but Marseille is the place for it.

To Cluny,

Yes, the Chateau de Maruege is where we rented. For others the web site is www.frenchconnections.co.uk We paid 610 Euros for the week. The chateau is right outside of the town. You cross the street and you are in the beginnings of the small village. It is easy to walk there. There is an upscale restaurant in the town. I think the name is the Hour of the Table. It is 45 Euros per person. We did not go, but I wish I had. The kitchen in the gite was a nice size, but basic. There were plenty of dishes and flat ware. The stove was little and was gas that you had to lite. The refrig was also small and they needed better ice cube containers, but we made do. The sink was wonderful. You opened up what appeared to be a cabinet and there was an old stone sink. There was a dish washer, which we did not use. There was a room below our apartment with a wash machine and iron. We did 3 loads of wash. The furnishing were nice, but basic. Wonderful old furniture, but worn. The windows were lovely, big and with the wonderful shutters. I was told by a friend who lived in France, that gites are great places, but to expect basic, therefore I was plesantly surprized.

I love Uzes. I wanted to believe that I discovered it, but there were other tourist there and in St. Quentine- the-Pottery.

Also, we took a tour of the main chateau. It was impressive. The rooms are very large and the ceilings are very high. There is a grand stair case and quite a few bedrooms upstairs. The kitchen in this house was very large with a wash machine. I was told by an English man at the wine party that there is an American family that rents the large chateau for a month every year. I would recommend the apartment, unless you want the "Four Seasons".

capo

We found Uzès to be lovely as well, a wonderful surprise. We hadn't intended to visit it but decided to go there after visiting the Pont du Gard. I especially loved the main square surrounded by the arcades, Place aux Herbes. I was wondering if Uzès would be considered a bastide, since my understanding is that an arcaded main square is one of the characteristics of a bastide, but a person at the Uzès tourist office said it is not.

Here's a website about Uzès I just found. There's a beautiful winter photo of the Place aux Herbes in the lower left, and click on the link towards the top for a nice panoramic view.

http://www.armchairfrance.com/Uzes%2...e%20Region.htm

cigalechanta

Capo, In Provence, the word Bastide refers to a grand house or mansion. In other areas of France the village is a bastide when built around the square, a defensive devise.

cigalechanta

The Southwest of France is were they made their mark with their characteristic grid layout and the central square for the market surrounded by the covered arcade.
Monpazier in the Dordogne is a perfect example of one. The Bastides were the new towns of the 13th and 14th centuries.

capo

Merci, Mimi. I knew from James Bentley's book "Fort Towns of France: The Bastides of the Dordogne and Aquitaine" that bastides are villages which were built around a fortified square, and often -- as I recall from the book -- these squares were surrounded by arcaded buildings. That's why I thought Uzès may have been a bastide, since the Place aux Herbes has this look, even though it's not in the Dordogne and I don't think it's in Aquitaine. I didn't realize that the word has a different meaning in Provence. Maybe the person in the tourist office thought I was a dumb tourist asking if Uzès was a grand house or mansion.

yipper

Thank you Capo for the web site. I did not realize what a famous town Uzes is. My friends who consider themsleves Francophiles have never heard of Uzes. We were lucky enough to stay near there and fall in love with it. It truely was my favorite town of all the villages we visited.

StCirq

There is a wonderful medieval medicinal garden in Uzès that I visited last September. We also got to climb up inside the old tower and see the grafitt left there by prisoners - amazing! It is indeed a "walled town," but not a bastide. I don't think there are bastides in Provence, but I might be wrong about that. James Bentley is a great source of information about bastides in the Dordogne, though his book about them is one of his worst organized attempts at publishing. The bastides were built by both the English and the French, and there are quite a few that predate the 13th century. In the Dordogne, Lalinde, Monpazier, Belvès, Molières, and Beaumont-en-Périgord are but a few of the bastide towns. The concept was ingenious for the time, kind of the like the "planned communities" that sprang up in the suburbs of major cities in the 70s and 80s here.

cigalechanta

For those who have not been to Uzès, you can see it in the Gerard Depardieu film, "Cyrano de Bergerac.

Cluny

StCirq, we were there last September, as well. Did you see the Chevaliers d'Or exhibit at the jardin? We fell in love with it and bought one of the pictures.