"Almost" a Year in Provence: Girls' Trip to Ile de Porquerolles

In early May, a small group of us went on a girls' trip to Ile de Porquerolles. This beautiful little oasis of an island is located just off the coast of southern France, closest to the port city of Toulon. It is only a 1 1/2 hour drive from Aix to the ferry terminal nearby and then a mere 20 minute boat ride to the island and yet, when you arrive you feel as though you are in Bermuda or the possibly the Bahamas!! Porquerolles is a mostly un-inhabited island of covered in Mediterranean forests, rocky calanque coastline, nature reserves, beaches, a yacht harbor and one small village.

Our two day hall pass began in the morning when we left from the International School our children attend. We were the perfect international group as we represented Norway, Holland, Great Britain, Scotland, France and America-and there were only 7 of us! With this assortment of nationalities, English was the language of choice, but we spoke quite a bit of French too.

It was windy for our short ferry boat crossing....

but once we got onto the island, it calmed down and the weather was lovely.

One of the great things about Ile de Porquerolles is there are no cars on the island so travel is by bike or on foot. Once we disembarked, we strolled our bags the short distance to the little village and our hotel. En route we passed little shops, restaurants and bicycle rental shops.

In the village there is a large, open square in the style of a North African colonial settlement, lined with large eucalyptus trees. The village church sits at the end and our hotel, L'Auberge des Glysines(this means "wisteria" in French!! these flowers follow me everywhere!) was right next door. Even though it was mid morning and well before check-in time, the hotel nicely gave us one room to put all of our things. We changed into bathing suits and headed off for the day. We stopped briefly for coffees, croissants and putting on sun screen and then rented mountain bikes for the day and went off to explore the island.

Once we got onto the dirt roads we found that some of them were quite steep....

that vineyards were everywhere!

that we needed to stop for water breaks a lot!

and that there were awesome views around nearly every turn!

When we came to the western end of the island, we stopped at the lovely beach called Plage de L'Angustier to rest, have our picnic lunch and a go for a swim.

To get down to it the only trick was to lock up our bikes to some trees, climb under, over and through some brush...

and climb down a rocky cliff...

but we made it and all enjoyed a very restful afternoon on the sunny beach.

We rode our bikes back into the village around 5pm and immediately went for ice cream/glacee at this spot, Cocofrio. Sarah had been to Ile de Porquerolles on a four day trip with her school the week before and had raved about it! Some in our group preferred a cold beer after our hot ride back into town so we found a table where we could all enjoy our cold refreshment of choice.

Afterwards, we walked back to the hotel to have a rest and then meet to go out for an aperitif. We wandered down to a little spot in the port area where we sat in the lovely evening sunshine.

We went back to the restaurant at our hotel where we'd be having dinner in this adorable Provencal outdoor dining area. The meal was fantastic and we all had a very giggly time flirting with our waiter, Nicolas. Somehow thought, in all the gaiety, we forgot to photograph the event...but it was memorable!

The next morning, after a proper French breakfast at these same tables, we opted for walking/hiking instead of biking. We chose the trails leading to the eastern end of the island. It was a hazy morning, but the views were still impressive!

We followed one trail up to an old monastery called La Repentance. The girls had a hard time making it up these stairs to do their repenting!

The trail continued to another gorgeous beach on the northeast side of the island called Plage de Notre Dame...we practically had the place to ourselves....

Once we hiked back into town it was noontime and our stomachs were growling. We stopped at a nice port side restaurant for a delicious lunch. Most of us had the very traditional )and one of my favorite) Provencal lunches: Moules-Frites and Rosee(that would be Steamed Mussels served with a side of fries and a cold glass of local rosee wine-YUMMY). Soon it was time to get our bags from the hotel, take the ferry ...