Em's running away to become a mime...

We've just returned to Castellane after a road trip around Provence in Twingo (Olivier's little Renault).

The main reason we wanted to get away was to check out the Avignon Festival, which was amazing! Not only is Avignon one of the most beautiful cities we've seen, but the festival meant that the streets were full of performances, and the theatres and clubs had incredible shows on.

We could only stay in Avignon for 2 nights, but we got to check out Archaos on the first night, and Julien Cottereau, the mime from Cirque du Soleil, on the second. We thought a mime show would be easy to understand because of the lack of dialogue, and Julien was incredible... and he decided to bring Em into the show (between playing a catwalk model and a damsel in distress it was a little embarrassing!).

The other highlights of Avignon were the Popes Palace,

and the Pont d'Avignon ("sur le pont d'avignon, l'on y danse, l'on y danse..."). And yes, we dansed on 'le pont'!!


We drove through lots of small towns on the trip, but our favourites were:

Puimoisson - famous for it's lavender fields

(This was taken on the way to Puimoisson... the entire field of lavender was being harvested by hand!)

Allemagne-en-Provence - has a huge castle that is now used as a hotel


Greoux-les-Bains - in summer, Greoux uses it's old citadel (which is partly in ruins and has views over the whole town) for concerts. The old town here is huge and very intact


Manosque - the home of L'Occitane


Forcalquier - one of our very favourite stops. Amazing old town, great food, lovely people


Mane - we got snap happy in Mane. Fields of sunflowers sit infront of enormous chateaus.


Pont du Gard - a 2000 year old Roman Aqueduct that was built to carry water to Nimes. It is huge and incredible to think that they had the skills and power to build such an amazing structure


Nimes - The Ampitheater in Nimes was also built by the Romans when the area was under Roman rule. It used to house gladiator fights, but is still used today for bull fights, and also for huge concerts. We were one night too late for Goldfrapp and Depeche Mode!


Arles - the home of Van Gogh. We went to the cafe where Van Gogh painted his "Le Cafe, le Soir" in 1888.

We also saw the building which used to be the hospital that Van Gogh was a patient in after he cut off his ear. The garden in the centre of the building was painted by Van Gogh in 1889, and they've kept it looking the same today.

Aix-en-Provence - the home of Cezanne, and another big festival town. The Cezanne festival (2006 is the year of Cezanne), the Aix-en-Provence music festival, the Retro Car Rally and the Lyrical Music Festival were all on while we were in town. We went to see Cezanne's studio, the 'Secret Gardens' of Cezanne, the house where he died in Aix, and 'Jas de Bouffan' which was Cezanne's father's house. There was also a huge Cezanne exhibition on, but you needed to have a reservation to be able to buy tickets... and the reservations line was 200 people deep at 8.45am!

(Gwil re-enacting Cezanne's pose outside his studio)

St Raphael - we had planned to visit St Tropez... but had been warned that on weekends you can sit in traffic for 2 hours to get into St Tropez if it's a nice day. The sun was out, and we couldn't wait to get in the water, so headed straight to St Raphael. The water was amazingly clear, as it is along the entire Cote d'Azur, but the beach was packed! We drove from St Raphael towards Cannes, stopping at a few small bays along the way, where you can climb down steep steps to reach strips of sand and pebbles that aren't too crowded.


Mandelieu La Napoule - Right near Cannes. There is an enormous castle next to the sand, so while you swim you look back at turrets and stone walls.


Cannes - glitzy night clubs, long strips of sand, and one big tourist town!