We’ve taken May by storm by traveling as much as we can manage. We’d toyed with taking the short flight over to Stockholm for a long weekend, but I just couldn’t get excited about the trip. I know Stockholm is a nice city, but sitting at my computer in cloudy early April, I couldn’t imagine using our travel funds to travel further north! I secretly calculated what a similar length trip to Provence would set us back, presented it to the board (Blake), and we made our bookings all within about an hour. I guess Provence takes Stockholm in our book. I’m okay with that.
Blake has documented the trip culinarily over on The Paupered Chef, here, here and here.
But we didn’t just eat, we soaked in ever stunning landscape the region had to offer. We really only had two full days to play with and lofty ambitions for what we could see. But as Blake notes in his write up of the Provencal markets, our 5 point plan quickly fell to the wayside and we did our utmost to wander the hills, stop the car at erratic intervals for photos, and slowly drink as much café and Orangina as we could afford. Embracing all cliches, Provence is spectacular. I spent a good deal of the time in the passenger seat daydreaming about the house we would rent here and the copious amount of artichokes I would consume (at least one each day, preferably steamed and served with lemon butter).
One aspect of Provencal life that really struck me were the shutters. From town to town, I’d order Blake to photograph this window and that door and over and over again I’d say, “How can so many people uniformly have such good taste?” The colors are all matte, mostly blues and greens and they each accent their 400-some-odd-year-old stone homes perfectly. Like when we traveled to Italy in October, my fascination with the shutters in Provence probably has something to do with my interest in what goes on behind them. What would it be like to have grown up here? Does each bed in Provence come standard with a fluffy white down comforter? What’s for dinner tonight?
More photos from our trip can be found on our flickr photostream.
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