On the Gardon River
Since kindergarten, Anna, Nate, and Alex have received half of their education in French and half in English. Our family trip to the south of France and to Paris in August 2019 gave the children an opportunity to be immersed in French culture, in addition to the French language.
We flew overnight from Montreal to Marseille, rented a Peugeot, and arrived at our villa outside of Sénas in Provence. With thick stone walls, grape vine patio and an elegant swimming pool, we ate most dinners at the villa, feasting on local cheese, fruit, wine, pastries, and bread.
On the Gardon River
For our active teens, we sought to interact with the landscape, rather than tour it. With scores of tanned French families, we rented kayaks and paddled our way downstream on the Gardon River for a couple of hours to admire, and to go under, the Unesco-listed Roman aqueduct, Pont du Gard, built in 60 AD.
Arenes de Nimes
For 500 years, the 50 km long aqueduct supplied water to the city of Nîmes. We spent much of our day at Nîmes exploring another 2000 year old structure, the well preserved Arenes de Nimes. This amphitheatre is immense. It could hold up to 24,000 people who sat in 34 tiers of seats to watch gladiators battle. Led by the audio tour we learned about different types of gladiators, their weapons, how battles were fought, and social nuances of spectating. Alex listened to every one of the 30+ entries, as we climbed ancient stairwells to see the city from the coliseum's height.
We also loved the tablet tour of Palais des Papes in Avignon, although I took more photos of the Jardine de l'Abbaye. Another highlight was a beautiful evening and terrace top meal in the gorgeous little village of St-Rémy de-Provence.
Mines de Bruoux
The beautiful hilltop village of Roussillon, in the Luberon mountains, is set among vineyards, lavender fields and ancient abbeys. Roussillon is also the source of the red pigment, ochre. At Mines de Bruoux we donned hard-hats and joined a tour to explore a few of the 40kms of underground galleries where ochre was extracted by hand from 1880 to 1950.
Gorges du Toulourec
My highlight (Sarah) of our week in Provence, was the day we spend with many French families walking into the Gorges du Toulourenc (near Ouveze), using the river as our path. We started where the water was ankle deep and the wide stream was flanked by willows. After a half hour, the water was knee deep and smooth sand-coloured rock walls rose on either side of the narrowing river. At times, the water was waist height and we climbed through fast flowing currents, over the boulders, to continue upstream, as the steep sides of the gorge rose high above us. When the gorge widened, the water level dropped, and families laid out their picnics on dry rocks. We ate our picnic, carefully kept dry and baguette undented, in the shade. We had another wonderful meal outside that evening, in the postcard perfect village of L'Isle sur la Sorgue.