Welcome back everyone! I’ve figured out how to duplicate blog post templates (for free) which hopefully means these are a bit faster to write and my OCD need of post-to-post conformity will be met. I’m still figuring out the e-mail notification settings so apologize to anyone receiving duplicate e-mails.
This week marks the first time on our year of travel when it is just our immediate family together. It’s been a lot of go go go with getting our lives in Seattle closed up, a pair of phenomenal weddings in Colorado, and sorting out how to live life from a suitcase. We took this chance to slow down and enjoy our close surroundings with plenty of playground mornings and boulangerie stops. Emmett and Mae continue to be awesome travelers adapting to their parents crazy travel ideas. Emmett loves the attention he gets as a toddler and makes friends wherever he goes. Mae talks about her friends back in Seattle and all the things she wants to do with them when she gets back but is also very excited by where we will go next on our “Big Trip”, as she calls it.
We made another audio recording (shorter, I promise) and Madeline figured out how to get it on Spotify and other podcast platforms so you can listen to our beautiful voices on the way to work.
Where Are We?
Our journey continues in France this week as we head to the lavender fields and small towns of Provence for 10 days! From Dordogne its about a 7 hour drive, so we broke it up with a stop at Carcassonne for a night, which is a really cool Medieval castle town(and Awesome Namesake Board Game, by the way). Nimes was also a stop on the way specifically to see the well-preserved Roman colosseum and temple there, which were both well worth the stop. Mostly the kids napped, I paid tolls, and Madeline did her best to keep me occupied with fun facts about France.
The main draw for us visiting Provence in June are the famous lavender fields being in bloom at this time. While the fields and associated purple soap were plentiful, we both were expecting fields upon fields of lavender when in reality it was more dots of purple in the landscape. Also, many were blocked on the roads by hedges to prevent us tourists from taking Instagram photos. The good news is that the fields we did find were beautiful, and the villages, people, and pastries made us love our time in the region.
Provence, is large, with literally 100s of towns you can stay in, each with a quaint weekly market. The most common area for the lavender fields is in the Luberon Valley with the village of Gordes essentially being the Aspen, CO of Provence – think beautiful but bougie. After extensive (and I mean EXTENSIVE) research, we selected Lourmarin as our home base for our time in Provence. It is actually just outside the valley, about 20 minutes south, but it allowed us to also be a bit closer to the coast and the thriving city of Aix-en-Provence for day trips. Madeline and I typically try find the cute, under-visited town adjacent to the really popular tourist destinations where we can feel more like “locals” while still seeing the regional highlights. Lourmarin was perfect and I can’t recommend it enough for anyone looking to experience and explore this area of France.
Favorite Experiences in Provence
Here were some of our favorite activities from our trip! There is a map at the end of the blog if you’re looking for more details.
Places
- Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque – THE place to see and take pictures of lavender fields with a beautiful abbey in the background. We got there at 9:30am when it opened and it got crowded quick but was totally worth it.
- The Luberon Villages – There were so many that we visited. – all with picturesque, winding streets and separated by rolling hills of olives, vineyards, wheat, and lavender. I’ll divide them into ones that were better than we expected and ones that were more “meh”.
- Better: Goult – cutest town, almost stayed here and it didn’t disappoint. Sleepy but enough to have everything you need, Bonnieux – best valley view and a good playground, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue – larger with water canals, known for antiques and it’s market
- “Meh”: Roussillon – very crowded and famous red cliffs were cool but small. Cue the line of tourists taking pictures. Gordes – Beautiful and tiered but very, very crowded.
- La Ciotat – We went here to cool off on the coast after being with wall-to-wall sunbathers on the beach in Cassis. Plenty of restaurants right on the water and the beaches were calm, perfect for kids.`
- Lourmarin – We have a special spot in our heart for the town we called home for our time there. It was the perfect, walkable, French village experience. The playground was shaded and perfect for our kids. We loved strolling to different restaurants, going to the extensive Friday market and one particular night getting ice cream with an orchestra in the square playing “Beauty and the Beast” songs while the kids danced.
Food
- Farmers Markets – This one makes the list again, just like in Dordogne, the markets in France have been such an authentic and delicious experience. The Lourmarin one on Friday is the best around, according to the vendors we asked. On any given day, there are multiple villages having a market.
- Domaine Bastide du Laval – We did a wine tasting, olive oil tasting, and picnic lunch at Domaine Bastide du Laval. The staff were amazing with the kids: there was a dedicated kids table to play at and they were able to participate in olive oil and chocolate tastings. The picnic up in their olive orchard was really tasty!
- Cooking Class in Aix – We love taking cooking classes when we travel and our experience with Vic (Link) was top notch! She was soooo good with the kids, teaching them how to make a bechamel sauce and fold crepes the right way. Our only regret is that we didn’t take the class at the beginning of our trip since Vic gave us an extensive list of places to go visit, shop, and eat!
- Restaurants – We cooked meals at home mostly and of the few restaurants we went to for meals, honestly, there were not many highlights. The places we went to served basically the same food for meals (french salads, meat + fries).
- Le Bistrot- This was our favorite meal in Lourmarin. The main dishes were excellent and there were vegetarian options beyond salad for Madeline. The patio was the quintessential experience you would expect.
- Au Panem – Our favorite little bakery in Lourmarin. The local specialty olive oil bread was particularly tasty!
- Fromagerie Lea – Cheese shop in Goult that was as pretty as it was delicious
- Ravi – Best ice cream! Lourmarin
Family Moments
- New Friends! – One of our hopes for this year of travel was to meet people along the way, and we made first official new friends! We met Sarah, Dan and kids Ruby and Alice (from NY) at the playground, where all new friendships between adults with children start. They were kind enough to invite us back to their pool which was a godsend in the heatwave and we became fast friends. The kids loved playing together (bake a lot of “cakes” in buckets) and we connected on all of the random Small World connections we had. As we left them after our 3rd pool date Mae said “I like Ruby, she is my friend now and can come to my Birthday.” so definitely a hit. We promised to send Ruby a picture of her favorite animal, the kangaroo, when we make it to Australia and visit them in New York.
- Mae finding shells near the Roman bridge – Two Roman Empire mentions in one blog?!? The bridge was awesome, but Mae finding teeny-tiny snail shells in the tall grasses near by and showing them to us was indescribably cool. It was one of those classic moments of kids finding the beauty in something we would normally step over.
- Emmett Exploring Independence – Emmett was fun to watch explore the tiny, cobblestoned streets on his own. He walked miles in these places and only skinned his knees once. At one point, he started preferring to walk behind us and we (parents) got really good at walking backwards.
- Per Mae: Favorite moment was “bakery with Mom” – Special one-on-one time walking to the bakery down the street together. Mae prefers the chocolate croissants and Emmett loved the mini carrot quiches. We all loved the bread (duh!).
- Per Emmett: Favorite moment was “pool” – Emmett regained his love for the water after his traumatic spring swimming lessons.
Lessons Learned
This is a fun section, where we put all of the things we learned along the way about traveling in the region as well as traveling in general with toddlers.
About Provence, France:
- Europe Heat Waves – This was still a thing in Provence, only worse. we had 10 days of 95-100 and one poorly working A/C unit our Airbnb’s attic. That combined with no screens on windows in Europe basically meant we had to chose between overheating and mosquitos. I chose mosquitos, and I regret that decision. I’m saddened to say that I don’t think we will ever travel to Europe with kids in June without A/C again.
- Driving the Luberon – We elected not to stay in the Luberon and do a day trip instead. We spent a full day there driving and that felt sufficient with kids. They had only so much patience for views and hot cobblestone streets. I think it is very doable in a day but could be stretched to multiple if you took it slower.
- Southern French People – The people across southern France were more friendly and happy to talk to us travelers than those we encountered in Dordogne. Our cooking class host said it’s because they have more sun. They smiled when we said our three words in French and loved the kids. One of our favorites was the employee who was really excited to do a “chocolate tasting” with the kids at the winery we went to. They loved seeing them eat French food and practice their “bonjour!”.
About Traveling with Toddlers:
- Potty Training and Travel – Just before leaving we potty trained Emmett and were feeling pretty cocky (pun intended) about it. When we were on the move he did great, but we soon realized it was because we were reminding him every 5 minutes to do a “check pee” before we got on an airplane or in the car. As soon as we had a day where he wasn’t constantly prompted, there were accidents galore. We also had some accidents in very public places, including the middle of a supermarket. Lesson here is to have lots of spare pants and always prompt, especially on the easy days.
- Playgrounds – These are one of the cornerstones of our travel with toddlers now. It lets the burn off energy, gives Madeline and I chance to catch up and, as we found, meet other families, both local and traveling. It’s also cool to see the different play structures of the world. The U.S. is very tame…
Closing
Thanks for reading everyone! In our next post we will be leaving behind Europe to head to southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana)for the next two months.
I’ve listened to both eps of the audioblog/podcast and it’s so fun listening to you two talk about the journey! I hope you guys keep doing it. The photos are also so wonderful, I hope you get to cool off in Africa next! Heads up it’s gonna be hot in Australia in Dec so bring really strong sunscreen. You guys are so brave and this is really fun to follow along to!