We spent 5 days mid-June in Sainte-Maxime, a delightful, slightly more low-key resort town than St Tropez and its cousin, on the Cote d’Azur. We travelled 90 minutes from the busy port town (with the most chaotic traffic we have ever seen) of Toulon to Sainte-Maxime in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur department in the l’Aquittane region. We stayed in the nifty little Hotel Le Revest (super friendly owners and a little […]
Perpignan is a French town that used to be Spanish! And you can definitely feel the Catalan /Spanish influence in the food, the language, the architecture and the historical monuments around town. Perpignan wasn’t just Spanish however, It started out as the capital of the Kings of Mallorca – and the palace they built (Le Palais des Rois de Majorque) is still standing and in good nick today. The region […]
We spent a week in Mauroux, a tiny hamlet on the Lot river, in early May and discovered a dozen incredibly beautiful bastides, chateaus and fortified towns in the area. A quick word on the particulars of each: A bastide is a ‘new town’ established in the 13th and 14th centuries as a means for the French to secure parcels of land (before the English did) across France and to […]