Provence Eats Me Alive

Wait, where am I?

I wake up in the middle of the night after dreaming about accordions and rocky hillsides. Did I dream about being the middle of a huge outdoor marketplace in an ancient town in Provence called Isle sur la Sorgue? No, it was real, but it seems so long ago now. Traveling is bringing on a familiar disorientation to time. It's only a problem if you have to deal with reality in any significant way.

We awakened early this morning in the villa hotel, in the outskirts of an old weatherbeaten town in the south of France called San Remy de Provence. The hotel - more a B&B than anything - has about 20 rooms or so, each one tastefully if not fluffily decorated and outfitted with many of the comforts of home. It has two stories and two terrasses (the French word describes a combination of patio, courtyard and deck), the main one being out in the villa's front area where several tables are set with chairs and market umbrellas. Out on that terrasse, we eat our petite dejeuner. With no other Americans evident, we represent the USA in the eyes of the other guests who are from France, Germany, Portugal and England, judging from the accents I overhear. We behave ourselves and do the country proud.

Two cups of caffeine and maps helping quite a lot, we round up our rental car and set off for Isle sur la Sorgue (island on the Sorgue river). There are very long flat stretches of country two-lane highways that are bordered on both sides with tall old sycamore trees that form a green tunnel of dappled light. Did Napoleon plant them? Or some fanatic gardener turned regional government leader? I love them, as they feel a lot like I am traveling into a beautiful time tunnel out which I will emerge in the middle of another century.

We arrive in Isle s.l. Sorgue, park about a click away from town and walk in to see it. Lo and behold, there is an open-air market going on. What at first seems like a small plaza of space taken up with a few stalls, we wend our way further and further into the old part of town amidst hundreds and hundreds of people cramming the narrow spaces between buildings and the vendors stalls.

Here is Provence in all its color, flavor and vigor. It is upon me in an instant like a welcome tsunami of flavor, fragrance and energy. Provence is a region massively identified with a zillion types of olives, tapenades, olive oils, earthy colors, cicadas (like hummingbirds and dragonfiles are popular in California), bees and honey, chevre cheese, lavendar and herbs. All of those are displayed in heaps, baskets, bags and trays throughout the market. A man selling fruits has cherries on stems draped from his ears. A woman shouts to the crowd about her olives, oils, and garlic. I taste some and want to buy all of it (of course). Another booth is selling roasted chickens and has a huge tray of paella to sell. Flowers, pretty dresses, linens, jewelry, and some booths selling more ordinary junky stuff go on and on, winding street after crooked street. It is Monterey's farmers market times 1,000, without exaggeration.

As if spit from a chute, the market releases us at last. I managed to find a good bargain on a pretty scarf and a set of four bowls painted in Provencal colors. It takes some time to calm down, catch my breath, get a grip on reality. The market is addicting and intense. I want more. My husband drags me away. I thank him for it later.

Then, while we begin our long walk back to our parked car, we see a big waterwheel next to the road, slowly turning its moss-covered paddles in the stream. This is one of seven that remain from 200 years ago when they powered silk factories and paper mills. We snap pictures, admire them and the steady flow of the shallow streams and decide to take a shortcut back to our car. Ha ha ha. An hour and a half later, after getting totally lost (hoping our supposed shortcut will eventually pan out), we get to our car all sweaty, tired and very footsore. Ugh, food please, water please. I am thinking I have to suffer for my joy in this world and this proves it.

While baking to death in our black car parked in the blazing sun (no shade to park in), we see a nearby town on our map marked with a star and decide that's our destination. So, off we zoom with A/C on full blast. My feet are throbbing and I hate France for a split second until the interior of the car gets cooled off.  Then, I love it again.  Fickle, huh?

The town is called Gordes. It's on a steep hill overlooking a pastoral valley whose gently undulating slopes have settled in over the years just like a pretty coverlet laid over someone's knees. We climb up and around a winding narrow road that begins to show signs of arid ruggedness; rock walls are lining it on both sides, and they are dry white stone with jaggedly angled slabs of rocks along their tops. All of a sudden, the medieval town comes into view and I yell, "Oh my God, there's a castle on top!" See what an American I am? It's a densely clustered heap of crazy steep angles, stone walls sloping upward and all clinging together as if a regular town on the plains has been pushed upward by a big hand and smashed together there with plaster.  That sounds ugly, which it isn't. It's just so fairy-tail-ish that my words fail me.

We park our car, pay the lot attendant and begin the walk up to town with me taking pictures of every step, every pebble, every little thing. We get to the town center and see that the area is a big abbey cresting a steep hill surrounded on its lower flanks by the town, which now basically serves as pit stop for tourists. There are many fine restaurants, cafes, ice cream vendors and beauty everywhere. I find a "saladerie" and we enjoy the plat du jour consisting of a vegetable torte, leafy green salad provencal and plenty of water. This is just what we needed after our long trek back in the last town. Refreshed entirely we explore the nooks and slopes of this beautiful old city. The local stone is very pale limestone, the same color as the plaster. Iron fixtures are used in graceful ways to attach doors and shutters and small peepholes emerge in the oddest spots, all charming and a perplexing at times. It's amazing to think that people live in such a place and think of it as just a regular ol' place.

The tourist information center is in the citadel abbey at the tippy top of the rugged hill. There is a man at the counter who speaks good enough English to be able to answer my question about the status of the town as one of France's 150 most beautiful towns. He gets out a map for me, indicates others in the region and wishes me bonne journee.  I ask him about the most prominent and austere landmark in the entire region, Mont Ventoux. He shrugs that classic Gallic shrug with a chin gesture that says, "What can you say?" Mont Ventoux is one of the h'ors categorie (beyond category) climbs in the Tour de France that humbles every racer to a point of tears. I see it and think of nothing but the Tour and its legends. This mountain is one of the most legendary of all climbs, a killer. It's a white ghost-like hump some distance to the north, and it looks frightening in its massiveness, bare at the top and known to be windy as hell and unearthly to riders as well as ordinary humans who drive cars.  It's a beast.

We see that Roussillon is across the valley, ochre and green in the distance. It's our next destination and one of the 150 Most Beautiful Towns, a must see.

Oh, my dear lord, I love this place. It was recommended by my sister who is an artist and who knows me pretty well. "I think you're really going to like Roussillon." It seems like saying, looking back on it now, "I think you'll really like breathing."

It's off-the-charts beautiful, saturated in colors that range from a dark rust to orange-red to melon orange and then to paler shades of sand and brown. All colors are derived from the local sandstone cliffs and their mineral deposits that are so vivid that they have to be seen to be believed. When you see them, one's usual aversion to over-the-top intensity in bright colors flies right out the window.

I take more and more pictures. It seems nearly impossible to take a bad shot. Nothing is ugly in this town. Well, a few dog piles kind of miss out on beauty, but the rest is spectacular. Photoshop is unnecessary. As a matter of fact, when I see the images downloaded later, I think they are so satisfyingly rich in color that no one will believe that they are raw. They are unretouched, totally as the scene was recorded by my iPhone.  

The car is parked again at the bottom of a modest hill that we walk up slowly, taking photographs. It's exciting to see so many shots. I think about sunset and how a good sunset would be incredible here, but we are a little too early to be able to see that last best light of the day. It's getting better, but we can't stay until sunset.  A sorbet and a bottle of water renews our flagging energy, and we finally say good-bye to the colorful, rustic town perched on a sandstone cliff and promontory in this visually rich part of France.

On the drive back to the hotel, it seems that Impressionism had to evolve here because of the nature of light and the textures of grasses, the soil, the trees and shapes of the craggy limestone cliffs and promontories. I wonder if Van Gogh hadn't painted what he saw, would someone else have eventually produced similar images? Most see that his images are timeless in their freshness and ingenuity, and it is certain that when the artist found his muse in the region of Provence he was unable to resist the urge to depict scene after scene.

We wind up the day at a pretty ordinary pizza joint in San Remy, one of a handful. I am in a bit of a fog after so much looking around today, maybe not a new sensation to me really, but it's due to the visual overstimulation. I have to sleep, have to process, have to let it sink in. This place, a jumble of things at first, is just beginning to layer into my conscious mind. People who live here have deep roots that go back centuries. The buildings are mostly 300 years old, some 800 or 1,000 years old, and things are done in certain ways for a reason, usually generating from the very stone and dirt itself. Nothing is skin deep, no place is temporary. I have a lot to learn.