Cuteness overload 3: Luberon villages

Day 8

The hill towns of the Luberon was one of the reasons I wanted to visit Provence. There are so many noteworthy villages, it was hard to narrow down the list. After a lot of research, I chose Gordes, Bonnieux, and Roussillon. The weather was again beautiful.

Gordes "main" area was around this traffic circle. It was early so we found a parking spot a little up the hill and made our way down.

We popped into L'Eglise St. Firmin

And just walked about the quiet streets

 Even the produce was pretty!

But most spectacular was the view of the town from the road. They have a convenient little parking area so it's accessible.

 

We routed ourselves to Rousillon and the Parking des Ochres (thanks fodors and tripadvisor forums experts for the tip).

High on my agenda was the Sentier des Ochres. Husband is a geologist but balked about touring this site until he actually saw it. It's ridiculously cool. It was well signed in English.

The area was a former quarry but turned over for conservation in 2002. There are two paths, one about 30 minutes, the other over an hour. There are informational signs along the way. 

We left our car in the Parking des Ochres and walked into town.

The views from town were fabulous.

 We climbed a random set of stairs to a beautiful view! (and these amazing blue shutters)

We chose an Italian place for lunch and enjoyed our pizzas.

 
Our next stop was one of our favorites, Bonnieux. It was also the place where the advice from our friend's dad "don't stop at the first parking spot, go as far as you can" came into play.  We almost parked at the bottom of the hill but nope, instead went all the way to the top and parked. Then just walked (really climbed) around the town. We saw folks, young and old, who parked low, struggling in this beautiful town.

We walked up this road.

There were lots of pretty doors and shutters to snap.

We climbed a lot of steps.

Then arrived at a park of some sort with an amazing view!

 

There was a church and more stuff up above so we climbed some more.

The church was closed.

But the bench was perfect.

We took the steps back down

to continue enjoying the amazing view.

 This is when we decided to head to Lacoste because it's the town on the hill in the background.

The kitty came out to play. 

We worked our way down the steps to our car.

 There were lots of cool details that I had to get pictures of on the way.

We left Bonnieux aiming for Lacoste but got totally turned around and ended up in Menerbes, after a gorgeous drive through some cliffy roads. Even this late in the day, Menerbes was teeming so we gave it a pass and continued on to L'Isle sur la Sorgue.

In no time we were back in L'Isle sur la Sorgue, navigating its tiny streets. I was genuinely impressed that husband didn't run into anything in the 4 days we were there!

Dinner at L'Aparte was prefaced by another lovely sunset walk. I do love islands, after all I was born on one!

It was a fitting way to end our time in Provence. A delicious meal, a lovely setting (except for the mosquitos), and helpful, if harried, service.

We did one last turn about the island, got our nightcaps, and turned in.

Next: To my favorite place in the world, Paris!