Chapter 5 brings us to a much-anticipated part of the trip because this was a visit to the area where our son lived as a Rotary Exchange student in 2019-2020. Welcome to the Cévennes, the UNESCO heritage site in the south of France!
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| Château de Portes |
We had a hard time finding a place to stay in this area that wasn't too far from Alès, the small city where Julien went to school. At first I found a great apartment in a villa with a pool and amazing views, but the owner decided the market was too good not to cash out and sell, so that didn't work out. Then I booked a really nice Bed & Breakfast right in Alès, but the owner had to cancel our reservations on short notice for medical reasons, and so we had to scramble to find someplace nearby at a time when everything was already booked. What I found was a newly-listed AirBnB apartment in the nearby, tiny medieval village of Vézénobres. The village was picturesque, the apartment not so much, but it was a bargain at half the price of the other accommodations. The owners, however, were lovely, and provided a bottle of wine they produce, plus ran out to buy us 2 fans so that we could try to stay cool in the sweltering heat.
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| The kids greeting us from our living room window in Vézénobres |
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| Views from our walk in Vézénobres |
Because it was such a short distance from Saint-Victor-La-Coste, we decided to stop in the dreamy, historic town of Uzès on the way to experience their exceptional market day (as recommended by Costas in Saint-Victor-La-Coste,) and have a leisurely lunch before getting to Alès. Arriving on a market day meant finding parking was a challenge, so arriving a bit earlier might have been prudent. Julien had spent time in Uzès during his stay, and I wish we'd had a bit more time that day to visit the château or the cathedral. Uzès has an interesting history and was home to some very progressive women. The market did not disappoint and around every corner we found more and more stalls and vendors.
We had 4 days in the area to visit Julien's old stomping grounds and hopefully see some of his friends (a lot of friends were away on vacation.) He gave us a tour of the small city, took us to one of his favorite lunch spots, his school, hiked the hill overlooking the city, and we visited some of our favorite French stores, plus picked up groceries for the apartment. I don't know if other people love foreign grocery stores as much as we do, but food shopping counts as a cultural experience in my book, bonus if it's at the outdoor markets!
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| We hiked up the hill overlooking Alès |
We visited nearby Nîmes for a walk around town and a really nice lunch. We drove out to areas of the Cévennes Natural Reserve, through the mountains and explored an old castle (Château de Portes) we'd never heard of. We took evening walks on cobblestone streets in our little village to watch the sun set over the hills. Fun fact: Mick Jagger had a house in our little village! Apparently he liked it for the quiet. It's not an area with a lot of tourists, and I could totally see him just riding his bike down to the bakery or walking into the café for his coffee. We also made it down to the Mediterranean less than an hour away to end the day at the beach and it was SO nice. I'm such a beach girl that I'm going to say it was a highlight!
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| Nîmes |
I know it all sounds pretty perfect, and I'm writing this several months later with a bit of nostalgia already, but I don't mean to sugar coat everything. Not every day was perfect, and there were definitely a few bumps, some bad moods, a case of food poisoning, and days when we just did not agree on activities. That's life as a family, and 5 weeks of togetherness is a lot.
At this point Charlotte also had some Summer classwork to catch up on, so we made time to go to the gorgeous new air-conditioned public library in Alès where she could hunker down for an afternoon. It was modern and had all of these great seating areas to work. This really was a highlight because that's when one of Julien's host brothers came to come meet us! Pierre arrived on his motorcycle and it was so great to finally meet him. Julien had lived at his house for a few months and they had traveled to the island of Réunion off the coast of Madagascar together. That was an absolutely amazing trip for Julien, and his first time seeing the Indian Ocean. The boys went out for a drink and some food while we read books in the library.
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| Yep, that's from his Instagram! Meeting up with his awesome host brother! |
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| Downtown Alès |
Later that night Julien met up with another friend for drinks while Charlotte was back at the apartment doing more reading, and Scott and I went out for a dinner date in the city. This was when we first discovered the absolute brilliance that is "le café gourmand." It is literally the best idea ever, and I don't know why we don't see it here. On the dessert menu at dinner, was this option. It comes with a shot of espresso and miniature-sized versions of the gourmet desserts on the menu...we're talking 3-5 desserts where you just get a few bites of each and it's perfection. I'm not a girl to skip dessert when we travel, and this will be my order from every meal onwards. Travel Tip: When in France, order le café gourmand!
One of our unplanned top experiences was something our AirBnB hosts invited us to, the annual Cévennes wine festival in Anduze. For $6 each we got an event wineglass and a passport to taste the 84 locally-produced wines being offered. It went all day into the evening. It was ahhhh-mazing! There were local food vendors in the center of the park with the wine booths set up in a circle around them, and at the end, you could purchase the wines to take home. We found our hosts and thanked them for inviting us, and they offered a tour of their vineyard & farm as well. While Charlotte was incredibly patient and hung out in the park under a tree, or playing games, the 3 of us walked around with goofy smiles, talking to the local wine producers, learning about Cénevole wines and the grapes they've reintroduced, and feeling like we'd won the lottery. Seriously, tickets to an event like that here run about $150 and you're in a crowded, noisy space, nothing like being outside under the plane trees in a park in a charming village at the foot of a mountain range, talking to the actual vignerons just a few miles from their vineyards!
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| Getting to meet the winemakers |
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| So many booths to visit and deciding where to go next... |
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| Do you see that happy face, and those beautiful hills in the background? |
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| There were also games in the park for the kids |
I'm wrapping up this post with another travel tip. We used the smart TV in our apartment to log into our Netflix account and watched a few episodes of some shows together one night. We realized maybe a month or more later that we hadn't logged out, because our account was still being watched on that TV and their viewing came up on our account - some cute French cartoons. (This actually happened to us again later when Julien was traveling in Slovenia and I only noticed recently that he was still logged in and someone was still using the account there until I logged off the device.) Travel tip: If you log into a streaming service on someone's smart TV, be sure to log off when you're done!
Our next stop on the tour was a reunion with old friends in Montpellier we hadn't seen in a very long time, and included a surprise reunion with someone else we recognized when out for a stroll!
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