Holidays and highlights…

I’ve just got back from holidays a few days ago and it was fantastic.

Lots of sunshine, beautiful scenery, good food and friendly folks. I felt so relaxed and really enjoyed the pastel colours of Provence and its history, cuisine and culture.

I went to Avignon to see the Pope’s Palace (the Pope was resident in the South of France several hundred years ago), then Aix-en-Provence - a beautiful and charming city in Provence where Matisse once painted, then down to Marseille and with a final day just across the border a couple of hours away in Italy, at Pietra Ligura a coastal resort.

It was all wonderful but the highlight of highlights for me was to see, just off the coast of Marseille, the island fortress of Le Chateau D’if, made famous by Alexander Dumas in his novel ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’.

I loved this book as a kid and read it over and over. Then when I learned French, I read the original and delighted in the novel once again in its original language. To see the actual fortress was awesome. Imagining Edmond Dantes in his cell and the Father Faria next door. To see the Mediterranean where our hero swam after his escape. Too cool!

Pietra Ligura was nice and had a charming town square where husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends strolled cobble stone streets or ate outdoors in the local bistros in the cool of the summer evening.

At the end of the vacation it was time to head back through rolling Italian countryside to the Mont Blanc tunnel. Drive through several kilometres of tunnel with the highest mountain in Europe (4,808 metres of solid rock) right over your head to emerge back in France and head down the valley back to the apartment.

Well worth the trip and definitely worthy of another look later on and explore some more of the Roman history, the Gorges at Verdon, the markets etc.,etc.

I recommend the region and it is a great antidote to the workaday grind.