Gordes

Our trip to Gordes in Provence was our longest car trip. It took about 2 ½ hours to get there driven mostly on the A8. This is similar to our interstates only it’s a toll road. When you’re traveling that far, the tolls really add up. I think the highest one we paid was 12.70 euro.

There was parking just on top of the hill so we didn’t have to climb into the town. We ate lunch at the café featured in the movie “A Good Year” and we photographed where various scenes were shot. The town is quite picturesque and we roamed around the very steep streets for a couple of hours. We had an ice cream and decided to go to see the bories which are dry stone huts -- some built centuries ago. We discovered there was one right in our car park so just photographed it instead of going to the historic borie village (saving us some euros). They all look pretty much the same.

We decided to drive back to Monaco on the N7 which is like our state highways and have no tolls. It was a much more enjoyable, if quite a bit longer drive. The highway was lined with old sycamores and vineyards most of the way. We passed a large field of purple iris. We went through town after town, all with a number of roundabouts. They were landscaped, some quite elaborately. Dan merrily pirouetted his way across Provence. He then drove on the Bord de Mer (the coastal highway) from St. Raphael to Cannes. This road was slow going, even though we seemed to be speeding along, with lots of hairpin curves along the sides of mountains with nothing but the Mediterranean below. We decided to get back onto the A8 at Cannes as the sun was beginning to set and a fog was rolling in off the water. Plus, I was getting nauseous. The trip back took about 5 hours.

Top photo is from the drive on the N7 showing the sycamores and the bottom is the town of Gordes from a flanking hill.