To the south of St Remy and signposted from Avenue Van Gogh down Avenue Antoine de la Salle is the barrage lac Peirou also known as the Glanum Dam.
Manmade on the site of a dam originally for Roman Glanum, it’s a leafy spot easily reached on foot and perfect for picnics.
Should you be more ambitious in your rambling or cycling expeditions, why not take a climb into Les Alpilles, the small mountain chain that cuts across the landscape horizontally between St Remy and Les Baux.
Do you know this spot? Have you walked in the Alpilles?
After falling out with Gaugin and famously chopping his own ear off, Van Gogh checked into the St Paul de Mausole asylum.
Here he stayed for twelve months and painted many famous works such as Starry Night and Irises (both 1889). Today the pretty building is a monastery but has a museum open to the public.
Have you followed in Van Gogh’s footsteps at St Paul de Mausole?
Still a gateway to St Remy today, these Roman remains known as Les Antiques can be seen from the main road upon entering the town from Les Baux.
Around 1km to the south of St Remy, they are key parts of one of the best preserved ancient sites in Provence.
Opposite this arch and mausoleum are the Pompeii-like ruins of Glanum, a fortified town deserted since 260 AD.
Glanum was first founded by Celto-Ligurian tribes before being taken over by the Romans in 27 AD. There were baths and a forum but not arenas like those seen in nearby Arles and Nimes.
There are many Roman sites in Provence, notably at Arles and Orange.
These Christmassy photos from a December trip to Belgium originally featured on Maison Cupcake.
The great thing about a weekend getaway to Brussels is that the hotels are such good value.
As the centre of the European Parliament, the hotels are expensive during the week when all the bureaucrats are about. Come Saturday night they’ve all gone home and the hotels are selling off their rooms very cheaply.
That’s not to say Brussels isn’t a place for tourists, December especially sees the streets surrounding the Grand Place filled with atmospheric Christmas Markets.
You can get a very good four star hotel room in the centre of Brussels for under £100 per night including breakfast, we booked Hotel Windsor using lastminute.com. We had driven from the UK and parked overnight in an underground car park near the Grand Place for around 12 euros.
This was 4 years ago now but I have been researching trips to Belgium more recently and know this hotel at weekend would be phenomenally good value even now. Bruges on the other hand, is very pricey, very difficult to book at weekends near Christmas since its proximity to Calais makes it very busy for “booze cruisers”.
Brussels is worth the extra hour’s drive. We were able to leave Brussels at around 4pm on Sunday and using Eurotunnel still be home for a reasonable 9pm and not be too tired for work the following day.
In the hotel lobby, we were captivated by this village of gingerbread houses. I vowed to make one myself but to this day have not yet managed to do so.
Aren’t they gorgeous?
The lobby was filled with smell of gingerbread, it was so welcoming. I think these are the best gingerbread houses I have ever seen.
As a food blogger, taking this many pictures would be normal but this was a long time before so that gives you an idea what an impression they made on me!
This weekend’s Saturday Postcard comes from Ghent in Belgium, one of the larger towns in the Flemish part of the country.
On a weekend trip on the Eurostar we were visiting a former college friend living in Waterloo, some 30 minutes south of Brussels.
My first trip to Belgium had been a work trip to the European Parliament, fascinating by day but deathly dull when spending time with my colleagues in the evening. It was good to go back to Belgium for fun. I always imagined Belgium to be the same as France but it has a style all of it’s own and is more like how I’d imagine Holland to be.
Ghent is famous for it’s architecture and canals. It was a bright day in January and the sun was very low in the sky making photos difficult. I took these pictures long before my days as a blogger so they are very different to what I might try to capture now.
The canal was so still you could see the buildings almost reflected perfectly in the water. Everyone seemed to be on bikes.
Looking up, there were lots of pretty shutters and windows. We drank Kriek (Cherry Beer) in a bar and ate crepes with chocolate sauce in a cafe.
If you are visiting Belgium, I would recommend a daytrip to Ghent. I’ve not been to Bruges but heard that it is incredibly crowded. Ghent is a quieter alternative but still has plenty to look at.
One thing confused us though. All the shops still had Christmas displays and in the streets the trees and decorations were still up. Didn’t anyone tell them it was mid January?!
L’Ile de Ré is a thin sliver of land off the west coast of France near La Rochelle. Accessible only by an expensive toll bridge, the island is a popular place for holiday makers as well as for Parisians, French celebrities and politicians to buy second homes.
Ré vie (translation: Ré life) is very close to rêvie, the French for “dream”. This is highly appropriate. (more…)
This summary of 3 places to stay in St Remy de Provence first featured on Maison Cupcake.com
Too sick to to cook this week, I am taking you a weekend mini break in my favourite town on earth, St-Rémy-de-Provence. >As you might expect by the name, St Rémy is at the heart of Provence, southern France around 20km between Avignon and Arles. It has been home to Romans, Nostradamus, Van Gogh and Princess Caroline of Monaco. With chic hotels, shops and restaurants, St Rémy has an upmarket Parisien air. I have been fortunate enough to stay there around half a dozen times in the past twelve years and have watched it become even more well-to-do in that time. That’s not to say that it isn’t friendly or welcoming. No St Tropez snobbishness or disdain here. St Rémy is very down to earth and there are still a few scruffy buildings waiting to be renovated… but you’d better be quick!
Small but perfectly formed, St Rémy forms a tightly packed circle around a single plane tree lined boulevard. With 10,000 inhabitants yet stuffed with maybe fifty restaurants, it is clear that food is high on people’s priorities here. The Wednesday market draws a huge crowd each week. >Our most recent visit was for 2 nights in September this year. I can show you round the hotel where we stayed and let you know about a couple of other places we have stopped in before. In a future post I will show you some places we visited nearby such as the Sunday Antique Fair at L’Isle sur la Sorgue.
The garden at Hotel Les Ateliers de l’image >We returned to one of our honeymoon hotels; Les Ateliers de l’image. Initially a quirky three star hotel built in the shell of the town’s old cinema that made it onto the pages of the popular boutique Hip Hotels guide. The name means “Photography Workshop” and the hotel runs bespoke photography courses for groups. The owners later expanded the hotel into the long derelict Hotel de Provence on the nearby main boulevard around the town. With the large new wing came an expansive garden and new luxury facilities; suites, a larger pool, a sushi restaurant, even a tree house.
We stayed in a room like this. Standard rooms are from 165€ per night.
(Photo reproduced with permission of Hotel Les Ateliers de l’image )
Superior rooms start from 300€ per night depending on season.
(Photo reproduced with permission of Hotel Les Ateliers de l’image )
The Treehouse Suite is 300€ off season but I cannot say whether it might be bit draughty then!
(Photo reproduced with permission of Hotel Les Ateliers de l’image )
The lovely cocktail bar set inside the old cinema music hall building.
We enjoyed fabulous glasses with Baileys in crushed ice here on our honeymoon.
At weekends, they still show films in the cocktail bar.
Above the screen you can see what was previously the projectionist’s gallery.
(Photo reproduced with permission of Hotel Les Ateliers de l’image )
Ephemera from the hotel’s past remains; flip up cinema seating….
…and old movie cameras.
The new swimming pool. A private area surrounded by trees. Nice cold drinks to hand.
The terrace outside the cocktail bar looking towards the pool area.
A tunnel underneath leads from the road to the car park so not to upset the tranquility of the garden. >As well as photographers, the hotel is also popular with American cycle tours using it as a base whilst they explore the rest of Provence. Should you find that Les Ateliers de L’Image is fully booked when you want to stay, there is another way you can access their pool and garden. Guests staying at nearby Bed & Breakfast, La Maison du Village, are able to enjoy these facilities at Ateliers de L’Image for a supplementary fee of around 10€.
Violette Suite at La Maison du Village
Photo reproduced with permission of La Maison du Village
We stayed one night at La Maison du Village back in June this year, this time with our 2 year old son. La Maison du Village is a beautiful old French house in the heart of the town. Rooms have huge high ceilings and period furniture. We were amused that our son had this huge room above, in their Violette Suite to himself whilst we were next door in the smaller adjoining room. (We chose there as it had the television and we’d not disturb him using the bathroom!).
Ted in the garden at La Maison du Village.
A very pretty breakfast table at La Maison du Village. Croissants and pastries arrived moments later. >Breakfast was served outside in the garden. A typical Provencal setting with curvy iron furniture, a tinkling fountain and dappled light filtering through the trees. Ted was a little obsessed with the stones on the floor wanting to arrange them on the tables and the giant glass hurricane lamps made us a little nervous he might fall and hurt himself near one. Toddlers and beautiful things do not really mix…
The tea room at Hotel Ville Verte
Photo reproduced with permission of Hotel Ville Verte
The last place I will share with you today is Hotel Ville Verte which stands on the corner of a square where the Wednesday market is held. The interiors of Ville Verte are highly decorative and definitely not child friendly. Their website even holds the intriuguing warning, “Careful! for security reasons no babies or children or extra person are accepted in the rooms.” It says elsewhere that the hotel is not “adapted” for children although I think you would get away with a well behaved 8 year old.
We stayed here for around five nights back in 2005. Their room rates are very reasonable 145€ considering the standard of the furnishings and the fact that Ville Verte is also one of the few places other than Ateliers de l’image with a pool and private parking in the centre of town. Our room had stone coloured toile de juoy soft furnishings and a little balcony.
Breakfast is served in the tea room downstairs and it does feel a little like the set for Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette with constant piped opera playing – possibly Gounod’s “Mireille” which was composed during his stay in the building. Amusing on day one, the tone of the tea room can grate towards the end of your stay – although the rooms, pool and service were faultless.
Teatime treats at Hotel Ville Verte
Photo reproduced with permission of Hotel Ville Verte
I will leave you now with a few street scenes of St Rémy… the Eglise St Martin…
Streets near La Musee des Alpilles. The channel down the middle carries water through the town.
Restaurant table at Xa
Me, sitting in restaurant, La Gousse d’Ail.
Not sure that lead would pass health and safety in the UK…
Nostradamus fountain
The joy of St Rémy for me is that such a little place should be stuffed with so much to look at. I haven’t touched on the shops, restaurants, museums and galleries nor history. I struggle to find a comparative destination in the UK and can think of only St Ives, Cornwall which shares an artistic legacy and also has narrow streets filled with artists galleries and shops.
I hope you have enjoyed this little trip to France. I expect this will become an occasional series when I am too ill to cook but can share my tourist tips from my favourite destinations.
Nearest airports:Nimes – Ryanair (We flew for a ridiculous £8 return from London Luton)Marseille – Easyjet, British Airways, Air France (flights from London Gatwick)Montpellier – Easyjet, British Airways, Air France (flights from London Gatwick) Trains:TGV stops in Avignon and Arles. No station in St Rémy. I recommend hiring a car. Buses to St Rémy from Avignon are few and far between.
Need more travel tips for Provence, Cote d’Azur or elsewhere in France? Email me and see if I’ve been there!
Mont Ventoux is the highest point in Provence and quite possibly the highest place, bar a skiing trip to Meribel, that I have been. Situated 20km north east of Carpentras in the Vaucluse département, it was a little way off from our usual stamping grounds of St-Remy-de-Provence and The Camargue and it took six or seven trips to the area before we visited.
1912 metres at the peak, Mistral wind speeds of 200mph have been recorded there, hence the name Ventoux which means “windy” in French. Locally nicknamed “The Bald Mountain”, the bare terrain is a memorable stage in the annual Tour de France cycle race. A website showing daily webcam conditions of the area is called Cycling on the moon.
We cheated and drove up there. Although a very pleasant September day, it was very cold at the top and during winter would often be covered in snow. Mont Ventoux is geologically part of the Alps but has no similar size peaks around it and stands alone. The view, it goes without saying, is breathtaking.
Oysters are alive aren’t they? Just to check I kept pricking these little guys with my fork to watch them flinch. I’m a bit of a sadist like that.
I do like my oysters. As you may recall in this post here. These ones were pretty amazing, not least because they were from one of my favourite restaurants, the humble Skipper on Île de Ré, a sliver of island just off the Atlantic coast of France close to La Rochelle. A chic getaway beloved by Parisians at weekends, apparently Johnny Depp and wife Vanessa Paradis holiday there.
I’ll save my views on how the island has changed since my first visit in 2002 for a later post, for today is devoted to our two meals at this harbour side fish restaurant in the island’s main “town”, St Martin de Ré.
Won’t you just look at that. Pink as my rosé wine, dripping with shallot vinegar. And I really deserved them…
…having spent the previous night holed up in here, a cat swinging cabin courtesy of Brittany Ferries.
Deep in the HULL. I have a phobia of submarines although they are easily avoided in normal life. Mortified by the prospect of a night below the waterline, the only thing that stopped me pacing the upper decks in my pyjamas was the necessity to stop Ted, then dogged by a persistent cough, falling out of his bed opposite.
Pitch black, laid out in close proximity to whole family in confined space. A mausoleum for the living. Hours lurching about in the dark, paranoid about the English Channel being feet away from me. On the floor, Ted is surrounded by pillows, a comfy landing should he wander. But not level with the bottom of the bed. Where he landed, head first, at 4.30am.
It was the second of six sleepless nights. So if you think I look rough here, imagine what I looked like by Friday. Tonight, even if we only ate out once this week, the rosé wine and oysters were waiting for me.
Skipper stands on the harbour in a detached building, a former hotel. We hadn’t eaten there since 2003 but were nostalgic for its splendid seafood platters served in kitsch giant plastic lifeboats (sadly unphotographed – we didn’t order one and it’s not the done thing to photograph strangers’ food, even if you are a crazy food blogger).
The weak pound was a source of dismay all the week. Not so long ago we ate great 3 course meals in France for around fifteen pounds although inflation and a strengthen Euro mean double this amount is now common. We had two trips to Skipper during our stay, our first and last nights. We ordered from the 29€ menu and the pictures below straddle both our visits.
My husband peruses the menu.
He speaks “menu French” but is otherwise limited to “Ou est le vay-say.”
The amazing oysters. They make the ones at the Cadogan Arms look a bit rubbish now.
My starter from second visit – Cassoulette St Jacques (baked scallops in cream – heavenly)
Husband’s starter – crispy spring rolls with tuna and red pepper (special of the day)
Carré d’Agneau (lamb). Husband raved.
My dish – sea bass with roast mushrooms. Delicate, fried in butter.
My dish, second visit – squid with balsamic vinegar. Tender fat pieces of squid. Not a trace of rubberiness, anointed with sharp balsamic vinegar and languid olive oil. Artfully (or strangely, depending on your view) adorned with a thin bread stick and served on a very 80s plate.
Second visit, my husband’s steak with Bearnaise sauce.
He asked for it “medium rare” but they brought it “English medium rare” i.e. well done. Humph.
My husband’s profiteroles. He always orders these. Nothing especially special about them.
First visit – my unctuous chocolate mousse – with shards of patterned chocolate
and swirls of chocolate and caramel sauce.
Second visit – Two chocolate mousse. Again decorated with a shard of chocolate and
a bread stick (this time dipped in white chocolate and poppy seeds).
The mousse was beautifully intense, I really lingered over it. I enjoyed the presentation of my desserts at Skipper.
Interior of Skipper – after most diners had left.
After so many years since our previous visit, there were things that disappointed us about Ré. Our return to Skipper was not one of them, the staff are very friendly, the portions generous, the decor cosy and casual. It was reassuring to go back and relive some holiday memories from our pre-Ted years.
There is plenty of atmosphere here, sat across from the harbour boats with their masts chink chinking in the wind. Lanterns and lighthouses decorating the interior without feeling twee.
It will probably be some time before we return to Skipper, but I can relish the memories both distant and recent of the evenings we have spent there. My quest in the meantime is to find oysters this good elsewhere.
For peak holiday times, you have to book very early to get a cabin on the overnight crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo. It’s not cheap but when you consider how pricey a Dover Calais crossing can be during school holidays (£90 each way sometimes) and bear in mind the extra petrol costs, motorway tolls and an extra night staying in a hotel to break up your journey, actually the £200 extra you are likely to pay for the longer crossing becomes more tempting.
We’ve previously travelled on the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. Big mistake. Driving down the Cherbourg peninsula is like going from Dover to Birmingham without motorways. It’s a long, dull drive. Plus you’ve only had four hours sleep on a six hour crossing (they wake you up at 5am British time, an hour before you get into port at 7am French time).
However the Portsmouth to St Malo crossing is around ten hours and arrives in port at 8am French time so you get more sleep and do less driving. It’s a win win situation, especially if you have a toddler who doesn’t like sitting in the back of a car for more than two hours at a time (less if hungry).
So with much excitement we boarded Brittany Ferries’ Bretagne en route to L’Ile de Re which would be four hours further drive from St Malo the next morning.
The Spinnaker Tower and harbour side bars
Out on deck. It’s windy but plenty of room to stretch your legs.
“We don’t need a window” I told my husband.
“But Teddy could have looked out of it at the sea.”
“It’s cheaper to not have a window and we will be asleep when we’re in the cabin anyway.”
I hadn’t quite bargained we’d be down in the hull of the boat. I didn’t even know that was possible but you go down in a lift below the car deck to reach your cabin.
The food is much better than Dover to Calais routes. There are salads and cheese plates as well as hot dishes.
The desserts looked very tempting too.
My husband had fish and chips which admittedly in this light looks like the meal from the Secret Nuclear Bunker post.
The photo of the chocolate-mousse-to-die-for is rubbish. Imagine though if you will, that scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta tells Samuel L Jackson that “it’s the little things” that make Europe special i.e. the glass of cold beer in the cinema, mayonnaise on the fries etc.
Well the little thing that I thought made these chocolate mousses special was that they were served in china ramekins. A totally unnecessary touch since they were in plastic pots as well but it’s these details that make eating on a French ferry company more special than the service station service you get from the British equivalents.
Off to bed.
“It’s rather nice” said my father, impressed it had a telly. You get TVs on the St Malo crossings although you only get a radio on Caen crossings.
The bathroom was predictably tiny but serviceable. It reminded me of the scene on the train in Sex and the City where Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall are travelling with Amtrak to LA and have a toilet situated underneath their shower.
So down in the bowels of the ship how did I sleep? Not very well. How much this was to do with feeling like I was in K19: The Widowmaker and how much to do with fretting that Ted would roll out of bed I’m not sure.
That said, since taking this crossing we’ve travelled mostly on the Portsmouth to Caen evening crossing, and even though we don’t need to go to bed, for having privacy and access to your own bathroom, somewhere quiet to sit, somewhere to drop your bags, I’d highly recommend hiring a cabin even for day time crossings (they’re half price in daytime too).
On this occasion I was struggling to sleep and fancied pacing the decks in my slippers, even if it meant dashing down a corridor that looked like another scene from Titanic, the one where Leonardo has been chained with handcuffs to a pipe and Kate dashes off to get help. But I couldn’t as my husband and father were on the top bunks and there was only I to stop Ted rolling out.
Which he did, with a loud thud, head first at 4.30am, following by much more relentless loudness i.e. crying. None of us went back to sleep after that but then they wake you an hour before you get into port anyway.
The view of St Malo’s city walls and pointy buildings as you arrive in the morning is delightful.
