Gordes, Un des Plus Beaux Villages de France

Gordes is situated in the Luberon and was made famous by Peter Mayle's series of books. As a consequence, it has been greatly yuppified, with a number of large estates located behind stone walls and gates. They are rather nice stone walls though.

Gordes is perched on the side of a hill and is certainly beautiful, albeit somewhat crawling with tourists. It was a lovely town where we stopped for some lunch in the shadow of the main chateau. The prices for our cafe certainly reflected on its ideal location!

There are some nice walks around the town, through narrow picturesque alleyways. The stone that's typically used is rich and yellow, and makes for a storybook ambiance. After a walk around town, we had a drink on a shady terrace of the La Bastide de Gordes hotel. It was gorgeous - yet another hotel to add to my list of future places to stay.

After our break, we drove down the other side of the hill to visit L'abbaye de Senaque, a postcard favorite since it's a pretty abbey surrounded by lavender fields. The lavender wasn't in full bloom as yet, but it was still lovely. We had a nice (and hot!) tromp through a lavender field.

We took the backroads home (unintentionally!) and saw some other beautiful villages like Roussillon and Gault - we'll have to save them for our next trip.

Tonight is our last night in Provence, we're headed up to Paris on the TGV tomorrow. I'm jealous that Leslie and Barry's families are there for another week - I've realized that we can happily spend multiple weeks in almost any given location and still find plenty of different and enjoyable things to do. I felt the same way as we were leaving our villa outside of Siena two years ago.

It's a bittersweet evening as we all sit outside on the terrace - but then we perk up as we spend an animated 30 minutes discussing where we should rent a place in 2 years :)