Rose Cantine

Amsterdam, like much of Europe, has been suffering from the hottest summer in recorded history. Everyday it has been 30C or so here. Hardly anyone has a fan, let alone airco.
So it’s a welcome change to have thunderstorms. Except of course, just now, the cracks of thunder are shaking the entire house. As we say [...]

Wondering whether your favorite Provençal village has succumbed to “Quaint Village Plague”? Here are a few signs:
Brocante (flea markets) and expensive antique shops: when rich foreigners move into their bucolic Provence farmhouses, the first thing they do is to dress up their house in the “authentic” style. This is the signal for the locals to [...]

Thanks (or no thanks) to Peter Mayle’s best-selling novel, “A Year in Provence”, the towns that he mentions in the book - Gordes, Menèrbes and Bonnieux - attract a large number of tourists, many of whom arrive in tour buses that barely fit through the streets of these villages.
The crush got so bad that in [...]

Apt is a town of 11,000 people in the Luberon and is only 4 kilometers away from Saignon, so it is the place to do grocery shopping if you plan to stay in Saignon. Apt is famous for its Saturday market and candied fruit (fruits confits), which you can get at La Bonbonnière.
Among the main [...]

One of the delights of staying in Provence is the food: freshly made tapenades from good olives, anchoïade (an anchovy and garlic dip for crudités or toast), olive oil, delicious salads and tapas, local cheeses such as Banon cheese, Cavaillon melons, cherries, white aubergines, deep-fried courgette flowers, very sweet tomatoes, more than five varieties of [...]

After Aix, it’s off to Saignon, a tiny hilltop village outside Apt. Saignon and Apt are in a region called the Luberon, popularized in Peter Mayle’s novel “A Year in Provence”. From May until September, the Luberon gets a lot of tourists but they congregate mostly in Bonnieux, Gordes and Ménerbes, the towns mentioned in [...]

This is the first of travel notes in the Provence this summer. I have gathered together my favorite places — museums, churches, markets, villages — and made random notes of recipes, restaurants, hotels and so on.
Aix-en-Provence is a small city about 45 minutes drive from Marseille’s airport (which is well outside Marseille so there’s little [...]