Friday, October 21, 2011

Europe Part IV: The finale! Provence, Annecy and our surprise visit to London

After a taste of France in Nice, we were ready for more. We rented ourselves a lovely little Eurocar and headed down the highway over to Provence. It may or may not have taken us two hours plus a visit to a local superstore and have a conversation with a security guard to find the highway, but the important part of the story is that WE MADE IT! Roundabouts and stick shifts, we are not scared of you. Period.

Driving through Provence at sunset was simply magical. The sun was streaming through the vineyards and orchards and I loved each little cobblestone town better than the last. Before we landed at our "home" destination of Les Baux de Provence, we made a little stop in Aix. This darling little university town is charming, historic and bustling. It gave us just the taste of lavender and crowded cafes we had been craving.





Back in the car and onto our weekend home: Les Baux. Little did I realize that Les Baux is built into a mountain, making it a real life cliff side town with sweeping views of the Provincial valleys surrounding it. Gasp. It's true.








The next day we visited St. Remy - a picturesque town to stroll through with a coffee - and much larger Avignon for a quick tour of the city and a gander through the fantastic Papal Palace. On the way home we made our prized stop in Chateauneuf du Pape. Hoping to sample and purchase a special souvenir to bring back home, we meandered down the country road admiring the lovely vineyards and chateaus. To our right, we spotted the most beautiful one yet, so we figured it would be worth a drive up to see if someone was home and giving tours (is this how it works?! eek?). To our delight, we drove up to the sight of what had to be another southern couple from the US - he in croakies, she in Lily Pulitzer, we knew we were in luck. We followed them in and joined a small tour group. Before long we were tasting and buying wine to save for something special, like a 20th anniversary or a future-child's engagement - wow - this was kind of surreal. But equally fun. We have some special pieces in our stash and will open them with fond memories some day.







And that was the night when everything changed. Thanks, Irene.

While we did not have a TV in Les Baux, we had prior to that been noticing increased news reports from home that Hurricane Irene was gaining momentum - and - heading straight for the Massachusetts Bay. We were of course concerned for everyone back home, but also feared for ourselves because our precious flight home was scheduled during the exact window the weathermen had projected for the hurricane to hit. Though we knew a delay was possible, we tried to live in ignorant bliss.



So we strolled around Arles.





But around lunch time, it was clear we were both unfocused and panicked we would get stuck in Europe for weeks if we didn't act immediately (in retrospect, was this really such a crisis?!). We hopped back in our car, drove back to Les Baux and decided to make some calls. Hubby's dad saved the day and booked us a hotel in lovely Annecy (very close to Geneva where we were scheduled to fly from the next day). Lo and behold, on the drive to Annecy, we got that ill-fated auto-text from Expedia: "your flight has been cancelled." A cancellation is one thing, but trying to remedy it abroad, while driving a stick shift, while cell phones cost $8972384/minute was suffice it to say, stressful.



Thankfully Hubby had the foresight to get us close to an airport and book the next available flight back stateside. We enjoyed a lovely evening in Annecy, which turned out to be one of the absolute highlights of the trip.






We then headed up to London - again so we could be near an airport - and planned to see the Royal sights. London was lovely - even though I was wearing beach clothes the entire time (it was 60 and rainy), we still loved seeing everything, most notably the Buckingham Palace souvenir shop where I almost bought 12 place settings of all of the Royal ladies' personal china patterns. Ok, not really (wink wink), but it was truly great to see so many sights I had always heard of but never experienced. I was really hoping for a Duchess sighting, but no such luck.








I think that's the long and, well, long of it. Glad we could (finally) share the fun!

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