How to Travel in Provence

…The best family vacation you will ever take, by Cynthia Bogart of The Daily Basics.com

Today we are very pleased to welcome American Cynthia Bogart as our guest blogger.  Cynthia is editor of the fun blogazine The Daily Basics.com.  Subscribe and you'll get a daily, brief article that will keep you absolutely au courant on what's happening in beauty/books/food/environment/house/ garden/ entertaining.  We never miss it! 

PROVENCE!  Glamourous, rich, steeped in history.   And it is still #1 on the list of the best vacations my children (then 10, 12 and 14) will say they have ever had (Photo:  daughter Chessy at the B&B Domaine Saint Luc).

We were the odd parents who didn’t take our kids to Disneyland.  Ever.  We wanted the kids to see the world. Of course we were like every other young family then (eight years ago). Three children, a house, cars, schools, expenses.  A five star vacation was not in the budget. But a trip to England to stay with friends and then on to France was. That is if we traveled like the Europeans did. In B&B’s.  We did it on the cheap. 

The first stop we made was to visit friends in the south of England for a few days before embarking on a ferry to Dieppe, France, where we rented the largest family car we could find,  a psychedelic blue Renault car (spaceship) which screamed AMERICANS. 

Aiming south, we drove through Chartres and through the Loire Valley to our final destination, the B&B, Domaine Saint Luc.  Located in their own vineyard in Drôme Provençale just an inch north of Provence proper, it had been recommended to us by a friend who said the accommodations were clean, the food good and the wine fantastic.  What we found was charming beyond belief.  The 18^th century farmhouse had simple guest rooms with modern bathrooms (YES!), amazing food (we later found out the owner was in Town & Country magazine as the best B&B Chef in Provence) and their vineyard which produced a Côtes du Rhône Village and a Coteaux du Tricastin that delighted us every evening. (Photo: the boys on the Roman toilets at Vaison La Romaine).

Using the Vineyard as our base we took day trips all over the South of France.  From the Roman amphitheater in Orange to Aix-en-Provence to Saint-Tropez, we traveled and ate our way through the region.  Our innkeeper would tell us what town had an open market that day and that was where we would point our spaceship. We would buy our lunch throughout the markets. Cheeses, breads, patés, sausages and tapenades were topped off by Orangina for the kids and a half bottle of wine for my husband and me. The meals would be no more than $20 including the $2 bottle of wine.  Of course when we found pizza in one town my children wolfed it down, professing it to be the best they ever had.  A very thin almost crisp crust was the base for a local semi hard cheese topped by a thick mound of thinly roasted vegetables.  It was a feast.  

Some recommendations:

Best Restaurant: in Suze la Rousse  – Le Garlaban

Best Inn: Domaine St Luc

Best Town visited: Grignan 

Best Wine – ALL 

A fabulous trip, with the exception of:

1) when we lost our daughter, Chessy, in a village that was cut into the side of a hill, topped by a castle and not too dissimilar from Hogwarts 

2) when our 10 year old hit a car with a rock with his newly acquired slingshot 

3) when we had to leave …

We are still aching to return to that part of the world where the people are wonderful, the food is amazing and the life is sweet.   

P.S. My kids have still not been to Disneyworld and really don’t care.  

RECIPE:  Pizza Provençal

Leave it to the French to make a healthy pizza.   Photo courtesy Deviantart.com.

Toppings: 

• Grilled vegetables
• roasted red peppers
• olives
• artichokes
• mushrooms
• onions
• pesto 

choose your cheese- mozzarella as a base, sprinkle another hard grated cheese of your choice

Pizza Crust: 

• ½ pint of warm water
• ½ oz yeast
• 1 tsp of honey
• 12 oz of strong white flour
• 1 egg
• salt

Process

-Melt the yeast in ½ pint of water with the honey stirred in until it becomes frothy

-Mix the beaten egg into the flour, add salt and stir in the yeast mixture.  Add enough water to form a firm dough

-Knead for at least 10 minutes on a floured table and leave it in a lightly greased bowl, covered with a towel, to rise, preferably over night.

-When you are ready to make the pizza, punch the dough down and roll out to the desired sizes and try and make it fairly thin.

Add the toppings adding the pesto on last. If you omit the pesto, drizzle a good olive oil on top.

Merci, Cynthia!  And Dear Readers, If you're like me and don't have time to read many magazines these days,The Daily Basics.com is the perfect answer.  Here's how to connect:

thedailybasics.com  

thedailybasics–Twitter

thedailybasics–facebook

In the Comments this week:  Speaking of Provence, Anne and Kirk have found a great breakfast place in Aix. Caterina has a lovely story to tell (and the perfect quote, from Downton Abbey). Lots of readers–Carol, Barbara, Julie, Page–have thoughts on a French breakfast.  Mille mercis for all the comments!

Favorite Reads:  You're bound to know the Peter Mayle series, A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence. But did you know A Year in Provence (DVD) was also a British mini series?  The film of his novel, A Good Year is a favorite too (even Ron, who will reject any movie without a car chase, liked it). And he has two other books you'll want to read, if you're a fan: French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew and Provence A-Z: A Francophile's Essential Handbook.  Both have bite-sized chapters perfect for a bedside read, or for sharing.  Ron and I packed these two in the car, to read aloud on long roadtrips.