Help Needed Provence 2020

[JeannieL]

I know it is a long ways off !

We are planning a trip to Provence. We will do a river cruise from Lyon to Arles (probably April/May 2020). We'd like to stay in Provence at the end. Our cruise ends in Arles on a Thursday. Rental bookings at a villa are mostly Saturday to Saturday.

Do you think a rental property would allow adding a few days on to the weekly rental(currently looking at Luberon) ?
Or would it be better to stay in Arles for a few days, and rent a car there?

Also, I can see that we can fly back to the US from Montpellier - would that be the best choice of airports?
Then take a train from Arles to Montpellier to the airport? Is this easily done?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Andrew]

You'd need to connect through Paris or another European hub, and there aren't that many flights. For more connecting options, you might look at Marseille.

 

[Cameron]

I've always used Marseille for the Arles/Aix areas. We'd check out of our apartment and travel around the day before our flight--then, spend the night at the Best Western across from the Marseille Airport for our last night. Dropped off our car, then walked over to the hotel. The hotel also has a shuttle, if I remember correctly.

One year, we drove through the Camargue, lunched, then to the Marseille Airport/BW Hotel in the evening.

 

[Parigi]

"Rental bookings at a villa are mostly Saturday to Saturday. "
Indeed many rentals start on Saturday on a weekly basis, but not all. It depends on the indidividual rental.

However, Arles is a great place to spend your extra 2 days before your rental starts.

Besides its breathtaking Roman ruins, Arles is not only one of my favorite towns. Arles is a food town. It has great eateries ranging from multistar food temples to street food to authentic Bo Bun (don't laugh; France has some great Vietnamese food, Vietnam beging a former colony and many of its people settled here).

it is also a good base to explore some nearby beautiful spots.
Southern Provence (am simplifying), which is the area where Arles is, is very different from the Luberon part of Provence. If you have an extra two days to explore it then move on to the Luberon, that is ideal.

I need not recommend guidebook standards like the Pont du Gard. There is the ruins in Barbebal, where no one ever visits. It's like a smaller Pont du Gard where you can picnic and take a nap, while Pont du Gard itself has become an example of what not to do intourism, where gigantic parking lots - very expensive - are built a ways from the bridge, and visitors are herded through a visitors' center before they can start the long walk. A total theme-park experience.
I once recommended a different approach: by canoe, rented from the village of Collias. Roz and Mike (is Roz here?) tried and liked it a lot. (Don't worry abuot rowing back to the village. You can leave the canoe downstream and have the boat operator come pick you up in a van.)

Back to Barbegal, it is right outside Arles and is easy to reach.
The Ferme-auberge de Barbegal offers wondeful farm-fresh dishes simply cooked. Must reserve.

Plus towns and villages like Uzès, Nïmes, St Rémy (must not miss the sanatorium where Van Gogh had stayed; the lavendar fields and orchards outside his window have been kept just as they were when he was interned there and looked out and painted the hell out of them.)

 

[JeannieL]

"Rental bookings at a villa are mostly Saturday to Saturday. "
Indeed many rentals start on Saturday on a weekly basis, but not all. It depends on the indidividual rental.

However, Arles is a great place to spend your extra 2 days before your rental starts.

Besides its breathtaking Roman ruins, Arles is not only one of my favorite towns. Arles is a food town. It has great eateries ranging from multistar food temples to street food to authentic Bo Bun (don't laugh; France has some great Vietnamese food, Vietnam beging a former colony and many of its people settled here).

it is also a good base to explore some nearby beautiful spots.
Southern Provence (am simplifying), which is the area where Arles is, is very different from the Luberon part of Provence. If you have an extra two days to explore it then move on to the Luberon, that is ideal.

I need not recommend guidebook standards like the Pont du Gard. There is the ruins in Barbebal, where no one ever visits. It's like a smaller Pont du Gard where you can picnic and take a nap, while Pont du Gard itself has become an example of what not to do intourism, where gigantic parking lots - very expensive - are built a ways from the bridge, and visitors are herded through a visitors' center before they can start the long walk. A total theme-park experience.
I once recommended a different approach: by canoe, rented from the village of Collias. Roz and Mike (is Roz here?) tried and liked it a lot. (Don't worry abuot rowing back to the village. You can leave the canoe downstream and have the boat operator come pick you up in a van.)

Back to Barbegal, it is right outside Arles and is easy to reach.
The Ferme-auberge de Barbegal offers wondeful farm-fresh dishes simply cooked. Must reserve.

Plus towns and villages like Uzès, Nïmes, St Rémy (must not miss the sanatorium where Van Gogh had stayed; the lavendar fields and orchards outside his window have been kept just as they were when he was interned there and looked out and painted the hell out of them.)

Great information, thank you!

 

[Galgano]

Looks like you are planning for the same time of the year as we visited the area for three weeks in 2015.
I'm still posting all my reports here, and it could be a week before I finish them.

https://www.sloweurope.com/community/threads/three-weeks-in-provence-march-2015.4137/

 

[JeannieL]

Looks great, hopefully a tad warmer by the first week of May! Thanks for sharing .

 

[Galgano]

Hi Jeanie
All now posted.