Bonjour,
We've arrived! With all the hype around Provence, I thought there was a chance of some disappointment, but no, this place is beautiful.
We have been lucky to find a great house for our stay, as shown below. We have a lease here until the 31st of March, so five months to soak up Provence. We're in the Luberon area near the town of Apt. You can just see in the photo below some of the mountains behind us.
Below is a photo of us having our first breakfast at the house. A couple of things to note, 1) in the foreground on the left you can see some olives, there are about ten olive trees in the yard, and they're everywhere around the house, it definitely feels like we are close to the Mediterranean 2) the fresh loaf of bread which I bought that morning from the local boulangerie (bakery), which is about fifty metres from the house, very handy, but it does create some risk around maintaining the waistline, and 3) the jar of Vegemite on the table, this is an essential wherever we live.
Here is the view out our bedroom window. I think it shows some of that "light" that people talk about so much about when referring to Provence. That "light" that famous artists like Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Vincent van Gogh loved so much.
In the afternoon on our first day here we headed up into the mountains to visit Caseneuve, a small hill top village. A lovely, peaceful place with a fantastic view of the Luberon.
On the way down here we stayed overnight in a town called Saint-Affrique so we could visit the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, the home of the king of cheeses, Roquefort. We visited one of the seven producers there, La Societe, it's by far the largest. La Societe producers 70% of the world's supply of this soft, sheeps milk, mouldy blue-green veined, absolutely delicious cheese. Of the 70% that La Societe producers, only 30% is exported, that clearly shows how much the French love their cheese.
We were not allowed to take photos of the actual caves, but I sneaked this one in of Soph on the way, heading through one of the entrance tunnels.
To give you an idea of what the maturing caves look like, I took this photo of an old Roquefort advertising campaign poster. In the photo you can see Maurice Astruc, a Master Refiner of Roquefort, and what he is saying here is " To make Roquefort nature takes its time. Me too." Maurice looks vaguely familiar to me, not sure why, maybe I've seen the add somewhere else .......
Just before Saint- Affrique, we came across the Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world. It's stunning. It's a huge modern looking cable bridge over the valley of the River Tarn and was designed by the British architect Norman Foster. Jane took this photo on approach.
Here is Connor in the back of Black Betty, supervising the packing up after staying in Saint-Affrique. We couldn't believe we were able to fit all our belongings into the car. Packing the car was like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube.
On the Wednesday of our last week at La Vallee, Sabina and Mark, the owners of La Vallee, and there two children, Gwen and Keynan, came around for dinner. They brought around some chestnut soup which was lovely and they roasted some chestnuts over an open fire, now they were delicious, so sweet! Sabina took this photo of us four, a happy moment.
I took this photo at the end of the night, it was a lovely way to say goodbye before we left. They were so nice to us, we feel so appreciative. Thanks for your friendship guys and allowing us to stay in your beautiful house in this special part of the world.
At La Valllee, we saw the seasons change and the effect on the scenery around us was stunning to see. You can see these changes in the following three pictures, looking particularly at the main tree on the edge of that patio area and the hedge on the wall just below it.
When we arrived on the 8th of April this year this was the view out our front door, it seemed like the cold was going to last forever.....
And below was taken just before we left on the 1st of November, with Autumn well and truly in swing. All up we were there for about six months, we'll treasure the memories.
Jane took this beautiful shot of sunset as we arrived in the Luberon, about five minutes drive before we reached our new home.
Sophie started her first day of school in our new village. The school is all of about fifty metres from our house. We can hear the kids when they're in the playground and we can actually see some of the playground from here, talk about handy. I popped down and waved to Sophie over the fence at morning recess.
Here she is walking down the driveway on the way to school for her first day...
And here she is in front of her new school. At the moment she does the morning session from 9 to 12, comes home for lunch and then heads back for the afternoon session from 1.30 to 4.30. When we picked her up for lunch today she said " I love my new school", what a great start!
We're excited about the coming months in our new home and exploring Provence. Bye for now.
We've arrived! With all the hype around Provence, I thought there was a chance of some disappointment, but no, this place is beautiful.
We have been lucky to find a great house for our stay, as shown below. We have a lease here until the 31st of March, so five months to soak up Provence. We're in the Luberon area near the town of Apt. You can just see in the photo below some of the mountains behind us.
Below is a photo of us having our first breakfast at the house. A couple of things to note, 1) in the foreground on the left you can see some olives, there are about ten olive trees in the yard, and they're everywhere around the house, it definitely feels like we are close to the Mediterranean 2) the fresh loaf of bread which I bought that morning from the local boulangerie (bakery), which is about fifty metres from the house, very handy, but it does create some risk around maintaining the waistline, and 3) the jar of Vegemite on the table, this is an essential wherever we live.
To give you some perspective, here is a photo looking down at our village from half way up the mountain behind us.
Here is the view out our bedroom window. I think it shows some of that "light" that people talk about so much about when referring to Provence. That "light" that famous artists like Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Vincent van Gogh loved so much.
In the afternoon on our first day here we headed up into the mountains to visit Caseneuve, a small hill top village. A lovely, peaceful place with a fantastic view of the Luberon.
Here is Jane and Soph, just hanging out in Caseneuve, watching the world go by. Those are the Luberon mountains you can see in the distance.
On the way down here we stayed overnight in a town called Saint-Affrique so we could visit the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, the home of the king of cheeses, Roquefort. We visited one of the seven producers there, La Societe, it's by far the largest. La Societe producers 70% of the world's supply of this soft, sheeps milk, mouldy blue-green veined, absolutely delicious cheese. Of the 70% that La Societe producers, only 30% is exported, that clearly shows how much the French love their cheese.
Here is Jane and the kids as we waited for the tour of the caves to begin. These natural caves is where the Roquefort cheese is impregnated with spores of microscopic mushrooms, Penicillium roqueforti, which results in the blue-green veins, and left to mature.
We were not allowed to take photos of the actual caves, but I sneaked this one in of Soph on the way, heading through one of the entrance tunnels.
To give you an idea of what the maturing caves look like, I took this photo of an old Roquefort advertising campaign poster. In the photo you can see Maurice Astruc, a Master Refiner of Roquefort, and what he is saying here is " To make Roquefort nature takes its time. Me too." Maurice looks vaguely familiar to me, not sure why, maybe I've seen the add somewhere else .......
Just before Saint- Affrique, we came across the Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world. It's stunning. It's a huge modern looking cable bridge over the valley of the River Tarn and was designed by the British architect Norman Foster. Jane took this photo on approach.
Here is Connor in the back of Black Betty, supervising the packing up after staying in Saint-Affrique. We couldn't believe we were able to fit all our belongings into the car. Packing the car was like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube.
On the Wednesday of our last week at La Vallee, Sabina and Mark, the owners of La Vallee, and there two children, Gwen and Keynan, came around for dinner. They brought around some chestnut soup which was lovely and they roasted some chestnuts over an open fire, now they were delicious, so sweet! Sabina took this photo of us four, a happy moment.
I took this photo at the end of the night, it was a lovely way to say goodbye before we left. They were so nice to us, we feel so appreciative. Thanks for your friendship guys and allowing us to stay in your beautiful house in this special part of the world.
At La Valllee, we saw the seasons change and the effect on the scenery around us was stunning to see. You can see these changes in the following three pictures, looking particularly at the main tree on the edge of that patio area and the hedge on the wall just below it.
When we arrived on the 8th of April this year this was the view out our front door, it seemed like the cold was going to last forever.....
This was taken one afternoon on about the 10th of July, it was hard to imagine how high the temperatures would reach, eg over 40C in the midst of summer...
And below was taken just before we left on the 1st of November, with Autumn well and truly in swing. All up we were there for about six months, we'll treasure the memories.
Jane took this beautiful shot of sunset as we arrived in the Luberon, about five minutes drive before we reached our new home.
Sophie started her first day of school in our new village. The school is all of about fifty metres from our house. We can hear the kids when they're in the playground and we can actually see some of the playground from here, talk about handy. I popped down and waved to Sophie over the fence at morning recess.
Here she is walking down the driveway on the way to school for her first day...
And here she is in front of her new school. At the moment she does the morning session from 9 to 12, comes home for lunch and then heads back for the afternoon session from 1.30 to 4.30. When we picked her up for lunch today she said " I love my new school", what a great start!
We're excited about the coming months in our new home and exploring Provence. Bye for now.
A bientot et bonne sante
Jane, Soph, Connor et moi
No comments:
Post a Comment