I'm a City Girl, but Wow, these Little Villages... - Thursday, 30 March

(This post from Provence)

As you'll see from my other posts, we visited several postcard-perfect, history-and-art-packed hillside (and even cliff-hanging) Provençal villages with astonishing vistas - places that would charm the socks off most anyone.

The roads to and from them were scary however, even for this Duluthian accustomed to steep hills! Very narrow roads, one-lane in places, stone walls or dropoffs without edges on the passenger side, tight turns where you can't see what's coming, big trucks and pink buses, incredibly high bridges, kamikaze drivers and motorcyclers coming towards you and following you, bicyclists on the edges, whacky one-lane streets in the villages, occasionally-confused GPS directions, some detours - we saw it all! I must research whether the Tour de France uses any roads like this - if so, I have even more respect for those cyclists!

Conversations in my car often included some variation of "how in the world did people ever find this spot before GPS?" or "why did people generations ago ever decide to settle here?" (my guess - that the wife said "forget it, I can't take it any more, we're stopping here and settling down!"). I need to do some research, but I'm guessing that not too many armies, ancient or modern, marched through these areas!

But the weather is gorgeous, the land and rivers are blessed with edibles of every kind, and, given the number of big walls and high hedges & trees and fancy gates we saw, this apparently has become an area for the rich and famous to get away from it all!

Anyhoo, a few photos from my visit to Le Rouret on Thursday:

Note that its tower includes both a clock and a sundial!

The 18th century Église Saint-Pons on the town square

Inside Saint-Pons - it seats less than 100

A pot of olive branches in front of the lectern

Note that the barriers in front of the war memoria
are missile heads

Their war memorial, on the square outside the church

I am happy to report that I brought my sweet little Renault back to the car rental place in Nice without a scratch, thanks to my expert navigators! And my passengers didn't let out TOO many gasps of alarm on those treacherous roads!