Biking honeymoon in France
After I remarried in 2015, my wife, Barbara, and I spent our 3-week honeymoon in two parts of France in May: Provence and Paris. Most of our time in Provence would be on bikes. Because Barbara hadn’t biked as much as I had, we chose what we thought would be easy day trips.
Shortly after arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport, we discovered that the bottom floor of the terminal housed the railroad station. We had tickets on the TGV from Paris to Avignon. After a wait of three hours or so, we boarded the train for a ride lasting almost four hours, stopping only once, in Lyon.
Our destination was the Luberon, a mountainous region east of Avignon, where we would stay for 10 nights. (We thank author Peter Mayle for wonderful descriptions of the Luberon in his book “A Year in Provence,” which coaxed us to see it for ourselves.)
Many villages are on hills in the region, the locations providing protection from raiders in ancient times. The valleys are covered with forests, fields of hay, poppies, orchards, vineyards or low-growing fruits and vegetables.
Each day’s bike trip began with a coast downhill and a ride through flat or rolling agriculture, followed by a climb to a selected village for lunch, otherwise a roadside picnic. We usually chose villages based on market days.
Afterward, we’d have a long climb back to “our” village, the pleasant Goult, where we were staying in an apartment.
The Goult Studio (www.astayinprovence.fr) was wonderful. We found it on the Internet by Googling “lodging in the Luberon, Provence.” Owned and operated by Ailie Collins and wonderfully located only half a block from the village square, the studio was amazingly contemporary and a fun place to stay.
A French balcony opened onto a gorgeous scene of cross-valley fields, forests and a mountain ridge. Often in the evening we’d sit at the open balcony just gazing at the scenery. We had our own patio, too. We stayed seven nights.
Actually, because most apartments rent from Saturday to Saturday and we arrived on a Wednesday, we spent our first three nights at a nearby B&B recommended by Ailie. We paid the same rate per night ($120) at the B&B as we did at the studio.
The B&B was about a kilometer outside the even-smaller village of Saint-Pantaléon, which is 4 kilometers northwest of Goult. Goult is about 50 kilometers east of Avignon, and a taxi took us there from the Avignon station.
The 4-unit B&B, La Badelle (La Badelle, 84220 Gordes, France; phone +33 4 90 72 33 19, www.la-badelle.com), operated by Mylene Croteau and her husband, Rémy, was snug and delightful. It is Rémy’s family home, reaching back four generations.
Mylene speaks particularly good English, and her breakfasts were delicious, with fresh-baked pastries and homemade yogurt. She even arranged for our bikes to be delivered, and they were picked up when we departed for France. (I Googled “bike rental shops in Avignon” and found one that I wanted. The B&B owner had dealt with that shop before. I cannot remember the cost.)
Shopping in Goult was particularly pleasant, as we matched linguistic wits with the shopkeepers, many of whom, surprisingly, beat us to English before we could jump into French. (This was a radical departure from my experience of speaking French with the locals two decades earlier.) We enjoyed the boulangerie, pâtisserie, épicerie, etc.
The weather in southern France in May was quite warm. I often wore Bermuda shorts around town after we returned each day.
After nine days of biking, exploring and enjoying the area, we returned to Paris on the TGV train to an apartment we had found in ITN’s Mart section. It’s owned by Marie Lefebvre of Newport Beach, California (949/433-5110, www.parisianapartment-2to5.com).
Marie’s apartment was wonderful — not contemporary or brand new but remodeled and comfortable. We paid $200 per night.
It was located two blocks from the Miromesnil station on the Paris Métro, four blocks from the St. Augustine station and a couple of blocks from a Monoprix, a small French department-plus-grocery store.
To orient yourself to the apartment’s location, find the Place de la Concorde, go north to L’église de la Madeleine, then northwest a few blocks to rue Cambacérès. Twice we simply walked to and from the Place. Nights on the street were not at all unpleasant.
Temperatures in Paris were decidedly cooler than in the south. We wore jackets every day.
With only a week in Paris, we decided to not do it all but to do just a few big things and some little things. One of the big things was spending LOTS of time at the wonderful department store Galeries Lafayette. Several stories tall, it has a wide rooftop lounging area, just right for lunch or a snack (from the sixth-floor cafeteria), with the city stretching out below.
About three blocks away is the Palais Garnier opera house. You also can do as we did and walk through the underground tunnel to the Arc de Triomphe, climbing the hundreds of steps to the top for another wonderful view of the city; take bus 67 (guidebook author Rick Steves’ suggestion) as it loops through interesting cityscapes; visit the Fragonard Musée du Parfum and the nearby Lindt chocolate shop across the street from the opera house (Boutique Lindt), or just people-watch on the Champs-Élysées.
GENE McPHERSON
Punta Gorda, FL