{"id":39180,"date":"2018-06-19T17:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T22:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/?p=39180"},"modified":"2018-06-19T14:54:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T19:54:15","slug":"biking-in-provence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/?p=39180","title":{"rendered":"Biking in Provence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biking in Provence has been on our bucket list for a while, and we finally checked it off last month.\u00a0 Mike and I spent a glorious week bicycling in the hills, farm land, and charming villages of Provence.\u00a0 We started our trip in Avignon and ended in Aigues Mortes.\u00a0 If you look at these two towns on a map, they don’t appear to be that far apart, but by weaving in out of towns and country roads, we cycled about 150 miles.\u00a0 Our trip was a bike and boat trip meaning that we stayed on a barge\/turned passenger boat at night and met it in a new town each evening after a day of cycling and exploring. The boat we were on was the\u00a0 L’estello which has 10 cabins, each with a private bath.\u00a0 There were 20 people in the group, and we, along with a nice couple from Illinois, were the only Americans.\u00a0 The other countries represented were Australia, Germany, Switzeland, and Canada.<\/p>\n

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Famous Sites<\/h2>\n

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Mike and I went a day early and explored Avignon.\u00a0 Do you remember hearing the French song about the bridge in Avignon?\u00a0 I learned it in my high school French class.\u00a0 This is the famous and historic bridge.\u00a0 It’s real name is Pot du Gard, and it no longer goes all the way across the river.<\/p>\n

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Biking in Provence gave us just one day of bad weather, and that was the first day.\u00a0 It was soooo very cold and poured the rain, and so our guide shortened our cycling trip that day.\u00a0\u00a0 I was so cold when we arrived at the boat that my bones ached.\u00a0 Thankfully, we had beautiful weather the rest of the week.<\/p>\n

French Markets<\/h2>\n

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We were in Saint Remy on market day which was really fun and colorful.\u00a0\u00a0 There were tons and tons of people, and it wasn’t even really tourist season yet.\u00a0 I can’t imagine what it is like in August.<\/p>\n

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The vendors go from town to town, so each day a different village has market day.<\/p>\n

Quiet Village Life<\/h2>\n

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Saint Remy was so quaint and charming, and we spent a morning there just wandering around the streets.\u00a0 Then we tackled our only big climb of the trip and rode our bicycles up a mountain for about five miles.<\/p>\n

Cool Creations<\/h2>\n

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There we saw one of the best things I have EVER seen.\u00a0 It is called Carrieres de Lumieres, and it is located in Les Baux, Provence.\u00a0 It was an art show in an former rock quarry.\u00a0 I know it sounds crazy, and it is really hard to explain.\u00a0 This photo does not do it justice.\u00a0 It is loud and colorful and cold and constantly moving.\u00a0 The photos that are projected onto the wall are moving and constantly changing.\u00a0 When the local quarry had no more limestone to be used, people built an underground audio visual art gallery inside, but it isn’t actual art.\u00a0 Famous art along with contemporary art is projected onto the walls of the quarry, and music plays in the background to accompany the art.\u00a0 It was hard to take photos in there because it was so dark.\u00a0 Mike and I had our picnic lunches, and we sat on some stone and watched the show.\u00a0 Each year they feature a different artist, and this year they were highlighting the works of Picasso.\u00a0 Go to this websit<\/a>e to see the highlights and to get a better idea of what it was like.\u00a0 But I am telling you, it was one of the best man-made things I have ever seen.<\/p>\n

Famous Cities<\/h2>\n

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On another morning we cycled to Arles and spent time walking and visiting the sites of many Van Gogh paintings.<\/p>\n

Art<\/h2>\n

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This is the corner cafe where he painted “Starry Nights.”\u00a0 Those buildings in the background weren’t there when this was done.<\/p>\n

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This quiet garden tucked away in an alley is the site of another famous painting.<\/p>\n

Everyday Scenes<\/h2>\n

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A local guide gave us a small tour of the city and included its history.\u00a0 Then we walked around for a while and had a great lunch.<\/p>\n

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Biking in Provence is a Must-Do<\/h2>\n

When we were near Aigues Mortes which was our final destination, we realized that we had cycled in that area before when we rode from the top to the bottom of France a few years ago.\u00a0 It was one of those grueling trips we take where we cycle 60 to 80 miles a day.\u00a0 We really didn’t have time to “stop and smell the roses.”<\/p>\n

If you have ever thought about biking in Provence, I say go for it.\u00a0 On these bike and boat trips, we average around 30 to 40 miles of cycling a day so there’s a lot more time to enjoy life.\u00a0 There are so many more photos I could show you, but I don’t want to bore you too much, so that’s it for Provence.<\/p>\n

Thank you for reading our blog and spending time with us today.<\/p>\n

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Take care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biking in Provence has been on our bucket list for a while, and we finally checked it off last month.\u00a0 Mike and I spent a glorious week bicycling in the hills, farm land, and charming villages of Provence.\u00a0 We started our trip in Avignon and ended in Aigues Mortes.\u00a0 If you look at these two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39180"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39180"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39228,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39180\/revisions\/39228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/the2seasons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}