Traveled June 2012
The decision to travel to the sunny, warm, French countryside was made at the bookshop whilst my travel partner and I were flicking through French travel guide books. Conflicted with the array of options and choices - Lyon? Normandy Coastline? Mont St Michel? The Champagne region? Loire Valley? Once we saw photo spreads of Lavender fields, we both decided that there was no other choice, we had to head to Provence!
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| Beautiful Lavender fields |
Months and many after-work long nights were spent researching the best options to tour Provence. Bus trips? Private Tour? Self-drive? Trains? There is an abundance of information and resources in books, web pages, travel forums, blogs dedicated to ‘Provence’ that it was all a bit overwhelming! I actually spent weeks researching all the private tour operators, since it is meant to be a ‘holiday’ and I didn’t want to plan out each day and stress myself out with driving…on the other side of the road! However, the price-point for a private tour just proved a bit too expensive for us (approx EU350-450 per day), so we went with the self-drive option to cut costs down. In hindsight, I can say the self-drive option worked out very well – it definitely added an element of adventure to the holiday - moments of cursing the GPS; accidentally setting the speed limit to 50km/h on the German hybrid Mercedes C-Class hired car; driving 6 different ways from Avignon to our B&B; taking the backroads of Provence and almost driving through private driveways. After conquering the hills and windy roads of the Alpilles region (why is the GPS showing trees? omg we are driving up the little alps!) I can now say with confidence I am able to drive on the other side of the road. Win!
