We’ve visited southeast France three times. The following is a list of Quick Links you can follow for various places we’ve visited and written about, or you can read the narrative of our two extensive trips below.
Côte d’Azur:
Provence:
Other:
Trip #1: Spring 2022. In late winter/early spring of 2022, we skirted down the Rhone river in the Rhone-Alpes region to the Mediterranean Sea visiting Lyon, Avignon and Aix-en-Provence. We’d not really visited Provence on our first trip here and we are excited to return again soon when the lavender is in bloom.
Once reaching the sea, we trained east from Marseille to Antibes and Nice and explored the Cote d’Azur along the way. In addition to the three places we made home base, we also visited Eze Village and Monte Carlo in Monaco.
Trip #2: Summer 2025. In search of lavender fields, we returned to both the Côte d’Azur and Provence in the summer of 2025. We began on the coast, making Cannes our home base to explore the area including St. Tropez, Vence, St. Paul de Vence and Moughins. You can read about that visit here. We also spent Bastille Day (or La Fête National, as they call it in France) in Cannes.
Off to the north and west to seek the lavender, we spent a week in Provence visiting hilltop market towns (and others not on hilltops on market days). We stayed in Oppède in a fantastic and kind of remote, but well located, Airbnb. We visited Roussillon, L’Isle Sur-la-Sorgue, Bonnieux, Apt, the Abbaye of Notre Dame de Senaque and re-visited Gordes. You can read about that trip here.
On our way west, we visited Nîmes and Pont du Gard. We also caught the Tour de France as it passed through Chateauneuf du Pape and wrote about what we loved about Provence here.
The Traveling Ridleys 