A week in Provence
Thoughts about our first time visiting the Luberon (and places to save for your next trip)
Hello! I started writing this post from my bed at Capelongue hotel in Bonnieux and I hoped to finish it on a tense 9:30pm flight to Heathrow, while the guy in front repeatedly tried to force his already-reclined seat further into my knees. As is tradition, I actually finished it from my sofa last night at 2:30am.
The flight was tense because of turbulence at take-off (I’m scared of flying) and also tense because my boyfriend unintentionally camouflaged my laptop somewhere within our rental car. We only realised once we were inside the airport, minutes from leaving my MacBook – aka my office – in a car park in France. Though, the less said about that incident the better as we’ll only have another heated debate over whose fault it was (not mine) when he reads this…
I’m not in any hurry to tip the entire contents of my suitcase onto the floor of an airport again while my hands vibrate with stress, so a ‘colourful laptop case’ has been added to my shopping list. I bought a navy leather Smythson case a few years ago and it’s smart for work but apparently a bit too discreet for its own good.
The idea of getting back to our gloomy flat was quite the buzzkill after a perfect week in the Luberon region of Provence. It was our first time visiting France outside of Paris and an instantaneous head-over-heels situation for both of us. A week wasn’t nearly long enough – there were so many places starred on my map that we didn’t have time to see. We didn’t get a chance to visit Avignon, the Uzès Saturday market, the ochre trail in Roussillon (I can’t wait to see this), the Atelier Vime shop in Vallabrègues (annoyingly, it was closed on the days we were staying nearby), Camargue Nature Reserve, Aix-en-Provence, Château La Coste, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon flea market or even Marseille itself (lunch by the water at Tuba Club was often suggested by others).
We stayed in Lourmarin, then Paradou, then Bonnieux and we had day trips to Arles, Gordes, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (alas not on antiques market day as there was an epic thunderstorm) and Saint-Remy de Provence. We also drove through the Alpilles to get to our farmhouse rental in Paradou.
I wouldn’t change any aspect of our trip as we had the best week but of the places we visited, I’d say that Gordes (a spectacular town spilling dramatically down a hillside) felt the most touristy with the least to do. Bonnieux was very similar in terms of look and vibe. An hour or two in each felt like enough, so if you have the energy, I reckon you can tick off a few towns in that area in a single day.
I also regret choosing to visiting Arles on a Saturday as the busy market wasn’t our cup of tea – just hundreds of stalls all selling the same tat and it felt a lot like a typical market in the UK. We much preferred the Friday market in Lourmarin, which was more food-focused. Arles itself was a brilliant city, however, with so many vintage shops and a great art scene. We couldn't get a table at Inari, which was disappointing as several people raved about it beforehand, but that’s where we’ll pre-book to have lunch next time we visit.
I’ll share a few highlights below but as a South of France freshman, I know we only saw the tip of the iceberg. Provence regulars, please feel free to chime in with your recommendations in the comments!
Knowing what I know now, it seems wild that it took me 38 years to visit a region that knocked our socks off with its unrelenting, how-is-this-even-real beauty. I think it was partly the overwhelming task of researching which areas and hotels to choose and partly because I’ve forgotten 95% of the French I learned at school, so I feel embarrassed speaking English when I should know better. Embarrassed enough that it genuinely put me off going to France, which is ridiculous and a problem that only exists in my own brain!
Almost everyone we met spoke conversational English but our solemn vow to return every year has motivated me to download Duolingo and see if there’s life in the old brain yet. Can’t be trop difficile to re-learn a few useful phrases?!
I’m thrilled to report that my obsessive sun-dodging and blueish-white skin tone means I don’t have the vaguest hint of a healthy glow, but I did acquire my usual hay-coloured highlights after a week of the sun bleaching my hair. I also brought a couple of itchy mosquito bites back for good measure. A word of a warning that the tiny flying vampires of France are savage! On our first day, I saw so many people with bare legs covered in polka dot patterns, by breakfast time on day two, my boyfriend had joined the club. I realised the mozzies were dining at the blood buffet all day long, not just in the evenings. Trust me that repellent from the moment you step outside is essential!
Before our trip, I had a memorable press stay at Lime Wood in Hampshire to preview writer
’s Savour retreat, which is being held at the hotel in November. It was still fresh in my mind when we arrived in France and while I tend to struggle with mindfulness and anything other than intense worrying and catastrophising at all times, I tried to notice and acknowledge small pleasures and details from each day.
I knew I’d write about our trip here, so I kept a list of things I wanted to mention. Keep scrolling for those and you might want to grab a drink first as apparently, I can’t keep anything short or sweet…
Edit: Since we got back, I’ve been watching Marcus Wareing’s Simply Provence TV series – it’s visual comfort food and now I’m even more desperate to return so I can eat more tomatoes! I can recommend it if anyone wants to whet their whistle ahead of a holiday.
Provence / Luberon notes
When I was a kid we went to Disney World in Florida and I remember an area designed to look like a painted set of New York City. That’s what Provence felt like; a set. Too idyllic to be real. Have you seen the OG Beauty and the Beast lately? It’s like that but the year 2024 and not a cartoon. I took approximately 27,000 photos while repeatedly muttering “Oh my god, it’s like a film set”. In Lourmarin, the place to be is Cafe Gaby – an iconic spot to sit outside with a drink and people-watch for an hour at the start or end of the day, before it gets too hot (and good grief was it hot). On our last evening in town, an elderly man with a theatrical moustache was entertaining diners by singing ballads in a busy street while the sunset turned the sky pink and swallows darted around. The level of charm was verging on absurdity!
Before we left home, I spent two days schlepping around looking for linen shirts but I could only find crispy, paper-thin linen within my budget and M&S (surprisingly good linen shirts for approx £35) had sold out of their smaller sizes. I had no idea that once I got to France, I’d pass shop after shop selling soft, weighty linen made in Normandy. I stocked up on three men’s shirts that’ll get me through summer for the next few years. A reminder that sometimes it’s better to wait until you’re on holiday to find what you need.
I also bought two colourful raffia bags from the Friday market in Lourmarin and had to drag myself away from buying a fourth and fifth. They weren’t particularly cheap (to justify buying two) but they were different to anything I’d seen recently and I prefer things that aren’t ubiquitous. If I needed a sun hat (I didn’t yet know I was about to leave mine in the overhead locker on the plane), the shops and markets were a great place to find one and the choice was far more interesting than in London. There was an amazing Panama hat shop in Lourmarin, for anyone keen to invest in something special.
June and July are the best time to see the lavender fields in Provence but I think unless your timing is perfect, you could be underwhelmed. Not by the smell as that’s incredible but by the colour. It was undeniably purple but not quite the vibrant purple that the perfectly timed and well-edited photos on the internet make it look. Before driving to a famous location (such as Abbaye de Senanque), check photo location tags on Instagram first to see what the flowers are really looking like that day.
We’re into coffee in an irritatingly serious way and the Luberon is not an area that caters for our particular coffee obsession. There are so few coffee shops in general and almost no speciality coffee shops, so if your order is more niche than just an espresso or a coffee with milk, you might have to take supplies in your suitcase. We packed beans, scales, a hand grinder and a V60 and it made the difference between an amazing holiday and a week of grumpy mornings and headaches.
Before booking flights to Marseille, we’d looked around at SO many potential holiday destinations and realised we couldn’t afford to go to most of them in the height of summer. I’m really fortunate that I’m often invited to stay in hotels either for work or to share social content and therefore I have access to experiences that I shouldn’t be able to have on my income. When we began to plan this trip, we realised the hotels we really wanted to book in Mallorca or Greece (for example), were more than £500 and £600 a night and almost everything was fully booked. Provence was a pleasant surprise as there was still so much last-minute availability and it was far more affordable. I had a quick look on Booking.com and there were so many little guesthouses with rooms for £200 a night and less, even in mid-July.
The French have a reputation for being rude to tourists and I don’t know whether that generalisation is only directed at Parisians? But we didn’t find it to be the case at all! People were usually happy to chat and they were so laid-back and unhurried. I was taking a photo in the street in Arles and unbeknown to me, four people were waiting for me to finish so they could walk by, I didn’t notice for an embarrassingly long time but they were so chilled about it, telling me it was OK and they didn’t mind. There were other similar situations too where the locals’ patience and ease made me realise how intolerant and rushed London has made me.
We listened to the same Spotify playlist (Allah-Las Radio) every day in the car because it was the only thing already downloaded on my boyfriend’s phone. It’s the same playlist we listened to in Cornwall last summer, so we now associate it (especially Asc. Scorpio by Oracle Sisters) with being on holiday, which I love!
There were a few occasions when I was tempted to make a ceramics purchase but I only succumbed once and it was for a lady selling handmade and handpainted bowls and pinch pots at the market in Lourmarin. The two pieces I bought were 10 Euros and they’re imperfect but I love the colours.
We went a bit mad with the tomatoes, peaches, and cherries at the farmers market, so I spent seven days with my fingertips stained red from bowls and bowls full of giant black cherries. We had peach and nectarine salads with burrata on at least three occasions, plus days of tomatoes in salads and on bruschetta. We agreed they were the best tomatoes we’d ever eaten – so juicy and flavourful that we could never get bored of eating them. The idea of Waitrose’s fruit and veg aisle at home suddenly seemed extremely uninspiring. The quality of the fresh produce was incredible and it was so bountiful. I loved how differently we approached our food shopping – it felt like a pleasure rather than a chore.
On that note, we kind of hated the Super U on the one occasion we went to buy essentials for a pasta dish. It felt a bit like ASDA, so if you’re familiar with the area, I’d love to know which are the best supermarkets to stock up on basics if you’re renting a holiday home? It’s not always practical to buy everything from a market or independent shop, even if you’d like to.
Pastries and bread tasted better in France and that’s a fact. We had fresh croissants, pain au chocolat and baguettes every day and they were melt-in-the-mouth soft and buttery (I hate an overly crisp artisan pastry that shatters into a million pieces on the first bite). I’m also mildly obsessed with vanilla custard and we had the best vanilla flan from La Maison Jouvaud in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. It was speckled black with vanilla seeds and almost panna cotta-like in texture, with perfectly crisp, thin pastry. So perfect we went back for a second slice and I haven’t stopped reminiscing about it since.
I’d never even heard of the Alpilles until we found ourselves passing through the national park by chance on our way from A to B and I screenshotted our location on Google Maps to see exactly where we were. It was the most beautiful scenery – roads snaking tightly between the mountains and far-reaching views, with olive trees and pines lining the route. I didn’t want the drive to end and it made a practical journey from one place to another feel like time well spent.
We saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone at his eponymous museum in Arles – just yards from where it was originally painted (also the city where Van Gogh cut off part of his ear). It’s on temporary loan for an exhibition and it’s the first time the painting has returned to Arles in 136 years, so it felt really special to see it there. I bought a fridge magnet to mark the occasion!
There’s freedom in feeling comfortable with being a tourist and doing touristy things! It’s cool to discover lesser-known places and towns but I also don’t think there’s any shame in going to a destination for the first time and doing all of the obvious things that you’ve read about. I don’t care if it’s cringe to walk 30 mins around a roadside in the searing heat to take ‘the’ photo of Gordes, or drive miles just to see lavender fields, etc. It was all brand new to me and that was exciting! No one wins a prize for avoiding popular things.
I was constantly enchanted by the variety of markets and events being advertised on cool posters around town. There was an antiques market, a farmers market, a concert of some sort, an art show or a summer fete happening every day, even in tiny villages. Often several things were happening on the same day, so it felt like a really creative and culturally rich place to be, with so much to do. On our second evening in Lourmarin, an entire street was decorated with festoon lights and there were hundreds of people in straw hats, sitting around sharing tables for the town’s annual ‘Wine and Dine’ street party, which charmed my pants off (despite not liking wine) as it was such a happy vibe and didn’t end in a rowdy brawl, as it likely would have in England!
I have a phobia of wasps and it spoils summer every year as I won’t eat outdoors and I can’t sit outside if there’s one near me. Last year in Cornwall, I had to ask a courtyard restaurant if I could eat inside in their events room because we were surrounded by clouds of wasps. In France, there were always lots of them around the edges of swimming pools but they were a slightly different shape to the yellowjackets we have in the UK and they seemed to stay around the pool all day, rather than flying around bothering us. I’m sure no one gives a damn but I’m noting this for the wasp-conscious among us. Which might just be me…
We stayed at two different hotels in the Beaumier group and then visited a third for a quick snoop around, to scope it out for next time. We also stayed at a dream farmhouse for work (I haven’t shared any photos yet as it’s so exceptional that I feel sheepish showing anyone). Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to decide between the three Beaumier hotels in the area and if you’ve done the same, here are my thoughts…
The cafe at Capelongue Le Moulin and Le Galinier are both in Lourmarin, we stayed at the former and loved it – it’s in the very centre of the village with its own little shop and courtyard restaurant, plus a tiny dipping pool at the back. The interiors are stylish (it was recently renovated) and you’re in the heart of the action. Le Galinier hasn’t been renovated so the design is quite different – more relaxed and less stylised as everything there is older. The gardens and pool area are beautiful though and it feels very Call Me By Your Name in its rustic simplicity. Le Galinier is a guesthouse with a selection of apartments for groups – not a hotel – so it’s better for families but it doesn’t have the bells and whistles amenities of Le Moulin, which is only five minutes away on foot.
One of the two pools at Capelongue Capelongue in nearby Bonnieux is also newly renovated (very similar to Le Moulin with its Mid-Century vibe) and that’s a whole other kettle of fish as it feels more like a resort. There are two restaurants, a cafe, two pools and a spa, plus it’s family-friendly and has a kids’ club I believe, so it’s the best option for a fly-and-flop where you don’t have to leave the hotel for a couple of days if you don’t want to. Interestingly, it was our least favourite of the three, not because there was anything to dislike about it, we just preferred the smaller size and more intimate feel of its sister hotels in Lourmarin (and we missed our daily iced coffee, cookies and sandwiches from Twenties Cafe in town).
Thanks for reading! I’ll be back soon with something a bit shorter if I can curb my enthusiasm, and also a break from travel diaries now I’m home and staying put in London for the next six weeks. Feel free to leave a comment if you know Provence and you’d like to share any wisdom, or if you’re planning a trip and have questions that I or any other readers might be able to help with.
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I’m about to move to Marseille and I’m excited to explore more of Provence when I get there – I haven’t been anywhere around there but Marseille since my childhood holidays and one more recent trip to Aix, so I’m bookmarking this! Loved every word.
I also loved what you said about it being OK to be a tourist – people have got so carried away with finding hidden gems (and often only for the online kudos) that there are barely any left hidden anyway, so we might as well relax and enjoy ourselves and take it all a bit less seriously and see the things that are famous for good reason.
Also had to laugh at your Super-U experience. It is horrible, and, as you guessed, the equivalent of Asda. The nice French supermarket chains are Monoprix and Franprix, for your next trip!
This deserves to be in one of the weekend papers Eleanor. Many people should see this.