L’Isle sur-la-Sorgue

La Maison sur la Sorgue
www.lamaisonsurlasorgue.com
6, rue Rose Goudard; 33 4 90 20 74 86
( April 18-20, 2008 )

We have always enjoyed our visits to this charming village, laced with canals and home to several hundred antique stores, so we decided to go there for a weekend after we found a bed and breakfast that is right in the center of town.

The Saturday market in Arles

Every Saturday morning there is an enormous market on both sides of the Boulevard des Lices, the broad tree-lined street which forms the south border of the old city of Arles.

Arles travel notes, September 2007

When you schedule your visit to Arles, be sure you stay through a Saturday morning. The market along the Boulevard des Lices is one of the best we have seen.  

We stayed at the Hôtel d’Arlatan September 19, 20 and 21, 2007.

Le Cilantro, Arles

On September 21, 2007, Linda and I dined at Le Cilantro on a festive little street in Arles which curves up from the Roman theater and  arena towards the summer garden. The street has many restaurants, bars, discos etc for both Arlésiens and tourists, but Le Cilantro is clearly the class act.

Alexandre, Nîmes

Terry and Helga invited Linda and me for lunch at Alexandre on September 21, 2007. We started with two of the house aperitifs: mine had an essence of pine topped with Champagne, quite unusual and nice. Olive madeleines were served with it.

La Chassagnette, the Camargue

La Chassagnette is a restaurant opened in 2000 on a farm owned by Swiss pharmaceutical heiress Maja Hoffmann. It is in the Camargue, the swampy region of the Rhône Delta famous for white horses, black bulls and pink flamingos. Under chef Jean-Luc Rabanel it was the first “all-organic” restaurant to receive a Michelin star, but Rabanel left to open his own place in nearby Arles and Michelin took away the star.

L’Atelier de Jean-Luc Rabanel, Arles

Jean-Luc Rabanel was the first chef of an organic restaurant to receive a Michelin star. This was at La Chassagnette in the Camargue, 20 km south of Arles. But he left in the fall of 2005 and in the spring of 2006  opened his own small place in the old part of Arles. He got his star back in March of 2007.

Le Clos de la Violette, Aix-en-Provence

On June 22, 2006, we dined at Le Clos de la Violette, one of the very few Michelin two-star restaurants in South-eastern France to which I had never been.  (Linda lunched there once many years ago.) It is in a residential area just far enough north of central Aix-en-Provence that you can’t easily walk there. 

Mt. Ventoux

(November 7, 2005) Our mission, posed by Gary’s brother, Jeff, which we gladly chose to accept, was to check out Mont Ventoux for Gary’s brother, Jeff, an avid cyclist.