Tarascon

Recently, Nick, Sarah, her friend, McKenna and I all went on a day trip to the old town of Tarascon. This medieval town's real claim to fame is it's magnificent 15th c. castle right on the banks of the Rhone River. Although massive in appearance, its inner architecture is elegant. The fine state of preservation has earned it the reputation of being one of the finest medieval castles in all of France. With that kind of introduction, we had to check it out.
Tarascon is only about an hour's drive northwest from Aix. We went on an extremely windy Saturday afternoon and aside from one other family, we had the castle to ourselves!
When you arrive in Tarascon there's no trouble finding the castle. It's the biggest(only?) attraction they have and it's right on the river. After we parked the car, like all folks going to a castle we first had to cross the moat! for those who've visited real castles before this may be old hat but for us debutantes(french word for 'beginner') this was a thrill!!


Once inside, we really felt as though we could imagine life here in the 1400's....and were SO glad not to have had to actually experience it. I would surely have frozen to death. At the time we were there, I was reading Phillipa Gregory's "The Other Boleyn Girl". Even though the book is set in England, it still felt like we could have been right in one of Henry VIII's grand castles! The Tarascon Castle was begun in 1400 by Louis II, Duke of Anjou, it was continued by his sons, Louis III and Rene I. The latter converted it into a Renaissance Palace and in 1481, when Provence was incorporated into the kingdom of France, the castle became in turns a residence for the kingdom's dignitaries, a mint, a military prison and from 1816 to 1926 a remand prison. The State acquired the entire estate in 1932.


The entrance door once you cross the moat...

Looking up at the King Rene and Queen Jean's chambers, otherwise known as the seigniorial residence...

A nice view of the castle from the garden...

After going through the entire inside of the castle, we found our way to the top and enjoyed a spectacular view of the surrounding countryside. Across the Rhone River is the town of Beaucaire. There is yet another hilltop castle on the other side. They kept track of each other in those days...

Here you see the mighty Rhone and evidence that wind power is alive and well in France...

Here are a few views of the town of Tarascon below...

and here's what you see if you look STRAIGHT down....

Sarah and McKenna taking shelter from the wind...

We drove across the river to check out the town of Beaucaire and enjoyed seeing all the boats tied up along the Canal du rhone a Sete. Mostly full of small yachts and a few fishing boats, Nick spied this one and said "I'd like to live on a boat just like that one".....Looks just right for one salty dog, don't you think?!?

Les Deux Alpes

We're on the road again! During Sarah's recent winter break, we took another driving trip; this time for three days, to the French ski resort of Les Deux Alpes. This resort is situated about an hour's drive southeast of Grenoble, making it a little over three hour's drive from Aix. Les Deux Alpes is a large, popular ski town/resort. This guide book blurb accurately describes it like this:

"Like the name says, this resort is made up of two Alps, two alpine pastures put together over 50 years ago to form a ski resort. Today 35,000 Frenchmen at a time flock to the mile-high resort. They come to enjoy the extensive, mostly treeless ski terrain, efficient lifts and lots of sun on south-facing slopes. They ski on 220 km of groomed slopes, 20 percent of them black, and 44 percent intermediate and 36 percent easy. A top skiable elevation of 3600 meters and a vertical drop of 2300 meters are impressive statistics rarely found in a ski area. Stout-hearted skiers have a mile-long couloir to jump into. The Mont-de-Lans glacier, near the top of the main mountain, is claimed by the tourist office to be the largest skiable glacier in Europe."

The town itself is nestled in the long valley created by the two main mountains and is chock full of restaurants and shops. We stayed at The Hotel Mercure, part of a chain of French hotels, located slope side on the mountain. Here are some photos Nick took from our room.

A nearby ski lift was just a two minute walk from the hotel and at the end of the day you could practically ski in to their back door-so long as you didn't mind side-stepping down a teeny weeny hill with a fair amount of grass and dirt showing! This winter hasn't been the best in French skiing history and the snow level while we were there was right about the 1800m mark so there were slushy spring conditions at the bottom and hard packed, groomed snow up on top of the glacier. the weather was quite erratic too-even though it might be warm and sunny down below, it was sometimes freezing, cold and windy up top. On our second night there, Mother nature blanketed everything with some fresh snow which was welcome and wonderful! What a difference a few inches can make!

After a morning of skiing, we stopped at this mountain chalet for some coffee and hot chocolate.

Here are a few more shots from the slopes. as you can see we had varying weather conditions...

The Mercure is perched up on the mountain at the top of the town and since our lodging included breakfast and dinner, we really didn't spend any time in town. However, one night, we did go for dinner at our friends' hotel, La Belle Etoile, located at almost the opposite end of the town and en route we got a good look at the main street. It's not as quaint as Val d'Isere but still charming. While at our friends' hotel, we watched a spectacular fireworks display on the mountain which was followed by an equally fabulous torchlit parade put on by the ski instructors. They carried red and white torches and skied all the way down the mountain. It was really impressive!

On our third and final night our Dutch and Norwegian friends came to our hotel for dinner. We had lots of fun recounting the days' events and planning where to go next year! Here's Sarah with her friend Jeanne relaxing after a day on the slopes.

Signs of Spring!

In the last week or so, signs that spring is just around the corner here in Provence are turning up everywhere....

We thought this final shot, taken in Aix this weekend, captures spring's arrival the best!