February 24 & 25, 2018 - Off to Marseille!, Church Fail, Gordes, Pont du Gard, & Les Baux


Thinking it would be significantly warmer on the southern coast of France in February than other areas we could visit, we planned a few days in the Marseille area.  Unfortunately, cold seemed to follow us.  The days we were there were some of the coldest in years, including snow, which hardly ever happens.  Despite the weather, we loved the area!


The apartment we rented through AirBnB in La Ciotat was extremely cute and comfortable.  Because of the rain and our exhaustion from the intense days in Paris, we spent our first afternoon relaxing.





The following day was Sunday, and we tried to go to church in Aix en Provence; however, when we got there the building was empty and locked up.  We bumped into some missionaries the following day and found out they had had stake conference that day.



We spent the rest of the day visiting some amazingly cute medieval towns in Provence (Gordes, Uzes, Avignon, Saint Remy, Les Baux, etc.) and a very impressive Roman aqueduct (Pont du Gard).  Thanks to Louise Wheeler for some great suggestions!

Gordes:











Pont du Gard:






Les Baux:

This ancient hilltop village, was our favorite! On one side you can see the remains of a very old castle that has a museum and tours in the summer, but it was closed in Feb. The other side, is all old stone buildings, made and re-made, on top of each other, over the centuries. Each alley, stairway, arch, or doorway, has vestiges of earlier parts of it, and old ruins of former structures pop out all around the mountain. Yet, inside nearly every door, what once was a home, is now a shop that looks as nice as this picture of Hannah in the candy shop! They are all beautifully decorated and catering to the tourist in every way, selling everything you can think of. But very few of these were open when we were there, so we got to experience an entirely older and more sincere version of the village. It was peaceful, quaint, and maybe even a little bit sad and melancholy. The really cool thing about this mountain top, is that much of the rock was hollowed out to become part of the buildings of the town. It has caves and cellars below to tour, and many houses have only fronts built on to caves, and there are windows cut in many of the stone faces, with lights on inside. The parking lot was nearly empty when we were there, but there were marked spaces all down the mountain, attesting to the fact that summertime here could be tourist madness! Even though it was bitter cold in the wind, we were glad to see it at this time of year.

















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