Mountains, Wine, and a Fortress

From St. Tropez we left the coast for the mountains. Our first stop was Aix-en-Provence. We stayed right outside the city center at Hotel Le Mozart which was another great deal as long as you don’t mind the 1-mile walk into town. Aix-en-Provence is a fun city with a large University population. My favorite description, from our friend Zach, is that it's a mini Paris. I’d have to agree – I thought it’s especially like the Latin Quarter and Marais districts of Paris. We just leisurely walked through the old town, watched street performers, and people-watched.

The next day we made our way to wine country. France is full of vineyards….everywhere you look. It made for a really pretty drive! We stayed at a B&B, La Sommellerie, in Chateuneuf du Pape which is right in between Orange and Avignon. It rained that day so we didn’t do our wine tasting tour by bike (we drove instead). ☹ The wine was good but the best part of our stay was dinner that night at La Sommellerie. The food was great, topped off by Darsh’s dessert platter, which unfortunately for us we finished! We hardly ate the next day to make up for it! ☺

On our way to Montpellier we stopped by Pont du Gard to see this massive Roman Aquaduct built in the 12th century. It was pretty cool! Luckily for us it was also a French holiday so they had free live music. We got there just in time for the “Electronic” set. Darsh snagged us two lawn chairs and we chilled for a few hours listening to beats. We both kinda wished we could have stayed longer but we made our way to Montpellier to do nothing and enjoy our splurge of a room at the Montpellier Pullman Antigone (I’m sure the town of Montpellier is great but “doing nothing” won.) It was nice to have a comfy bed again! You need that sometimes. ☺

We woke up the next day and forced ourselves to use the lame gym….but it did the job and we both felt better afterwards! We stopped on the coast at Palavas-les-Flots for lunch. It was actually one of the prettiest sandy beaches we’ve seen. And then finally we made our way to our last stop in France, Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is known for La Cite de Carcassonne, a massive fortress with an enclosed city. It is the grandest fortress/castle/medieval city we've seen! And it's in perfect condition. We got there in the evening so we could see it by day and night. It was awesome! We spent the night drinking French wine, eating French food, and finishing up with a Nutella crepe. Pretty fitting for our last night in France! :)