For years, my husband and I looked forward to one day traveling around France as a family and last August we had the opportunity to do so with our kids ages eleven and six. We had spent the previous two summers in Italy and were ready to expand our horizons across Europe. Our vacation began in Paris where we spent four nights and then we took the train to Aix-en-Provence where we spent five days before we went to Nice for six more days before we flew back to New York City.
I started researching and making hotel and flight reservations about ten months in advance. This head start provided ample time to learn more about the region, to carefully select our destinations and to contemplate how best to maximize our time. Starting early also gave me a variety of options to choose from at reasonable rates. In the time leading up to our departure, I fleshed out our itinerary, worked out train and car transfers, bought tickets to museums and tourist sites, and made a variety of other reservations and tentative plans. I continued to revise our itinerary while on vacation because it is key to be flexible and open to making adjustments while on the go.
This family travel guide explores how I designed our trip and how we spent our time in Provence. Our mission when planning all of our family vacations is to balance the needs and interests of the children and adults while also prioritizing safety, comfort and ease. For more on the basic parameters for planning and implementing a successful family vacation in general, take a look at my complete family travel guide.
Train
The high-speed train took us from Gare de Lyon in Paris to the Aix-en-Provence TGV train station in three hours. A couple months prior to our vacation, I purchased four first class train tickets for a total amount of $247. I was able to select our seats at the time of purchase, an option that I have come to rely on when using trains to travel as a family in Europe. I prefer to finalize as many of the mundane details as possible ahead of time to ensure that aspects such as our train ride are uneventful. The ability to select our seats when purchasing the tickets removes any concerns about finding four seats together and space for our luggage. We normally travel with four carry-on suitcases and four or five smaller bags. Purchasing tickets ahead of time not only guaranteed our seats but assured us that there would be no unwanted surprises along the way. As in Italy, our high-speed train experience in France was flawless and reinforcement that trains are an ideal mode of transport for long distance travel around Europe.
Rental Car
While researching how to spend our time in Provence and after hours of going back and forth over whether or not to rent a car, we came to the conclusion that a rental car was unavoidable. Every blog that I had read and everyone that we had spoken to recommended renting a car because it would offer the most freedom to explore this region. Deciding to rent a car was not an easy decision because we had yet to rent a car outside of the U.S. and for the most part, I am the primary driver. Even though I am a confident driver, I was reluctant to take on the responsibility of driving my family safely around another country because I did not want the stress of driving to negatively impact my experience. I know, sounds a little selfish but given all of the hard work and effort put into this vacation, I did not want to create a situation that could breed unnecessary tension between myself and my husband and potentially put a damper on everyone’s experience.
Long story short, I managed to keep my stress level down despite some tense moments when we were lost or confused because my co-pilot husband and I did our best to problem solve without letting our frustrations get the best of us. Our attitude was “we get there when we get there” and we followed a loose schedule that did not add unnecessary stress to our driving adventures.
When we arrived at the Aix-en-Provence TGV train station we picked up the rental car that I had reserved ahead of time through the Auto Europe website. This website allowed me to compared car rentals from several companies as well as designate the pick up and drop off locations. I selected a Mercedes Benz with an automatic transmission from the Hertz rental desk and arranged for a drop off at Gare de Nice TGV. There are fewer options for cars with automatic transmission and the rates for these cars tend to be higher than cars with manual transmission but I had to choose from the automatic options since I had never learned to drive a stick shift. After we completed the paperwork at the Hertz desk and located our rental car in the lot, we quickly discovered that this car was much fancier than our car at home or any car that I had ever driven. It took some time and a little assistance to learn how to start the car and switch gears (something I always thought would be a no-brainer in a car with an automatic transmission) but once we got going it was smooth travels. Our five day rental cost $834.
Returned this car without a scratch or dent despite some tight situations including this parking spot.
I learned during my research that getting to places outside of Aix-en-Provence would have added up if we booked half day or full day group or private tours to visit other parts of the region as well as relying on taxis and Ubers to take us around. A group tour is not appealing because we prefer to move at our own pace that accommodates our own needs and wants. This is possible with private tours but they are about triple the price of a group tour and I was unsure if this was the best way to spend our time and money. I also had to figure out transportation from our Aix-en-Provence hotel to our hotel in Nice and learned that taking the train would take longer than expected because we would have had to take a train south to Marseille and wait over an hour for a train to Nice. A car service to Nice would have cost at least €200 and it would have been inefficient to take a car service to Marseille and then catch a train to Nice. As I calculated potential tour costs, transport to Nice as well as taxis and Ubers around Provence, I realized that a rental car would be less expensive, more useful and an excellent learning experience.
I did not overload our itinerary with excessive driving in order to avoid unnecessary scenarios of frustration for the adults and boredom for the kids. Despite the precautions to take it easy, we made it to fewer places than I had laid out. I point this out to underscore that it is better to prioritize quality over quantity. This is a family vacation and the main goal is to keep it light and to simply enjoy this time together. There is no benefit to following a generic and stressful checklist of must see tourist spots if it chips away at the quality of the family time.
Overall, the highways are easy to navigate, the road signs are easy to understand and the city streets of Aix-en-Provence are pretty tame. The French love a good roundabout and they did not present a challenge. If I was unsure which exit to take, I would stay on the inside and drive around the circle a couple of times until my co-pilot confirmed the correct exit. I was very grateful for the fact that in France they drive on the same side of the road as we do in the United States. Parking garages are easy to find but a little tight and only in a few instances did I encounter some difficult driving situations.
I rented an English GPS through Auto Europe for about $60 but ended up not using it because I could not figure it out. As we do at home, we relied on the Google Maps app on the iPhone to guide us, which it did in English and it proved to be fairly reliable with a few exceptions. Before our vacation, I got an international license from a local AAA office to have as backup in case we were pulled over for any reason. This process took less than fifteen minutes and is worthwhile in case of any trouble while driving in another country.
In conclusion, I agree with all of the recommendations to rent a car when in Provence. It added a new dimension to our time in France and has expanded our options for future vacations.
Taxis & Uber
Even though we did have a car, there were some instances when we used a taxi or Uber. Mainly when I planned to enjoy a glass or two of wine when we were out to dinner or visiting a winery. Ubers were very easy to request from our app as long as we had a good connection. There is a taxi stand conveniently located in the center of Aix-en-Provence that we sometimes used to make our way back to our hotel which happened to offer a free shuttle into the city center.
Hotel
This region has endless possibilities for where one could stay and I was initially a little overwhelmed when it came to picking the city or town to call home for five days. I quickly narrowed it down to either Aix-en-Provence or Avignon because both appeared to be convenient locations.
Châteaux and castles had come up during discussions with my husband about where to stay in the south of France. I looked into establishments that fell within these categories and found that they can range from a quaint bed and breakfast to grand properties and that they are scattered all over this region. I narrowed down my search on Hotels.com to Aix-en-Provence and found Hôtel Le Pigonnet – a country house that beautifully captures the essence of Aix-en-Provence right on the outskirts of the city.
I reserved a family suite and paid a total of $3,483.98 for our five night stay in August. The family suite is a freestanding villa just steps away from the main building of the hotel. We had a large living room with two bedrooms and two full bathrooms. Our little villa was beautifully decorated and equipped with comfortable beds, soft sheets and towels and nice toiletries. The entire property was set back from the street and overnight was secured behind a locked gate. Parking was free and we parked our rental car right next to our villa. The luxury of our villa paired with the ease of parking felt as if we were staying in a private property deep in the countryside yet we had all the conveniences of a hotel at our fingertips.
As we had in the past, we made sure to find a property with a pool as a treat for the kids. The heated pool was beautifully situated within the lovely grounds and it was a fine spot to relax and fall into vacation mode. Hôtel Le Pigonnet contributed in a large part to our memorable time in Provence and I would happily return to this hotel sometime in the future.
Five Days in Provence with the Kids
In preparation for this trip, I reads books and watched films that romanticized the rustic charm of Provence and although Aix-en-Provence is not a rustic village, it has plenty of charm. We walked along the illustrious Cours Mirabeau where we indulged in a breakfast at Les Deux Garçons. This establishment is a piece of history founded in 1792 and is known as a meeting place for a long list of artists and intellectuals spanning centuries.
On certain mornings, Cours Mirabeau is taken over by the morning market selling clothing and a variety of household wares. Further along is a massive food market with fresh produce, breads, cheeses, prepared foods and many more delights. We spent a couple of our mornings wandering around this market and filling our bellies with a variety of the fresh fruits and more much to our satisfaction.
In Provence, there is a long history of artists who have famously made their mark surrounded by the bright, earthy and dramatic landscapes of this region which have served as infinite sources of inspiration. Artistic legacies abound and one can easily design a trip devoted to re-tracing the footsteps of artists whose legendary histories are closely intertwined with Provence.
In Aix-en-Provence, we came across medallions on the sidewalks that marked places frequented or of significance to the Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. One day we drove over to Cézanne’s studio which is frozen in time from when the artist inhabited this space and painted major works between 1902 and his death in 1906. During this final phase of Cézanne’s life, he painted Sainte-Victoire Mountain numerous times while standing at the top of Les Lauves Hill, just a short walk from this studio. We purchased our tickets to enter the studio when we arrived and had to wait about 45 minutes before we were permitted to go upstairs because there is a limit to how many people are permitted entry to this second floor studio.
The overlap of our time in Aix-en-Provence with Cézanne’s history finally put into context places I had basically learned to spell as a student of Art History. To walk around these places in France that I had become familiar with through titles of paintings brought to life what had been meaningless but memorized words. I felt satisfied to finally have full comprehension.
After Cézanne’s studio, we drove back down towards the city center to stop by the Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur d’Aix-en-Provence where we had the opportunity to witness a wedding ceremony. Sweet and romantic, we continued on to grab a quick lunch before we wandered into a wine shop where we purchased a couple bottles of wine to enjoy back at our hotel room. A stop at a wine shop is never mundane and this day stands out because we spent a little extra time chatting about the wine from this region with the owners of this shop who patiently assisted in our selections.
On another afternoon we stopped by the Musee Granet where a handful of works by the hometown hero Cézanne are featured prominently in their permanent collection. Our visit coincided with the temporary exhibition and retrospective of a contemporary French artist Fabienne Verdier. The entrance ticket to Musee Granet included entrance to Granet XXE, La Collection Jean Planque, a small church that was turned into an exhibition space at a nearby location. The beautiful architecture of this former chapel created a lovely backdrop for the modern and contemporary masters that filled this space.
I had been eagerly anticipating these visits to small but significant museums such as these outside of Paris but my children opted out of the visit to Granet XXE after walking through the Musee Granet. My husband waited outside with the children while I walked through and although I would have loved for them to have experienced the beauty of this space, I understood their need to be kids. On that afternoon, we walked back to the city center where the kids where launched into the air on bungee cords and my daughter rode the carousel with my husband before we made our way back to the hotel so the kids could spend the remainder of the afternoon in the pool.
We did a day trip to the winery Château La Coste which was about a $45 taxi ride from Aix-en-Provence. I had made arrangements ahead of time to join the free tour of the winery that was conducted in English, started at 1:00 pm and concluded with a wine tasting. After the tour, we explored this magnificent property nestled in the beautiful hills of Provence to take in the art and architecture scattered around the vineyard. We had yet to ever visit a winery as a couple or with the children and this was such a wonderful day that I look forward to visiting more wineries in the future. This day stands out as one of our most memorable during our trip to France. Click here to read more about our day at Château La Coste.
Our biggest adventure on the road was driving to Avignon for the day to see the Palais des Papes. I failed to put a reminder on my itinerary that there is a parking garage conveniently located right between the palace and the Avignon Bridge and just off of the main highway. Forgetting this crucial detail, I made the big mistake of not instructing Google Maps to take us to the exact address of this garage in Avignon. Instead, we simply typed in Palais des Papes and found ourselves driving in circles around very narrow streets after we entered Avignon on the opposite side of town. This small but essential detail could have saved us an hour of frustration but it was a learning experience and I hope that readers of this post will learn from my mistakes. We finally found a metered parking spot on the street, took pictures of the car and surrounding buildings to ensure that we would find our car later and made our way on foot to the palace.
Once we got away from the car and closer to the palace, the excitement of being in Avignon resurfaced and washed away our earlier frustrations. This fourteenth century Gothic palace served as the headquarters for several popes who initially took up residency in Avignon to avoid conflict in Rome. In the later part of this century there was a schism within the Catholic church that lasted 39 years during which there were two popes reigning simultaneously – one in Rome and the other in Avignon.
Fascinated by the history of this monumental structure, we were guided through the many rooms of this palace by my eleven year old son who took advantage of the interactive tablet that presented digital recreations of each room from when they were in use centuries ago. This was one of the first times that one of my kids used a device like this to tour a historical site or museum. Unfortunately my six year old daughter was too young for one of these devices much to her chagrin but my son was very vocal about how much he enjoyed using this device. My kids are now on the lookout for such devices whenever we enter similar educational situations and I have become thankful for these devices for keeping my kids engaged.
After the palace, we walked on the Pont d’Avignon that extends only part of the way into the Rhône. This bridge dates back to the twelfth century when it was a complete bridge but it has suffered partial destruction at the hands of man and nature over time leaving it as an incomplete bridge jutting into the river.
After a relaxing lunch at a cafe just outside the palace, a ride on a carousel and a pleasant walk back to our car, we decided to return to our hotel rather than continue onward to see the Pont du Gard aqueduct and the city of Nîmes as had been the original plan for the day. After a somewhat clunky start to the day, we were unsure of how long it would realistically take to get to and appreciate each place. As much as I had wanted to see the remains of the ancient Romans, I realized that a visit to the Pont du Gard aqueduct and the city of Nîmes was a separate day trip and would have to wait for another vacation.
This trip to Provence served as an orientation for us to get a sense of how things worked in this area of the world. It was an experience that we will carry with us forever but more importantly will be one that we will build upon with future trips back to Provence to continue our explorations. There are many villages and vineyards across the countryside, cities with ancient Roman ruins and more that I would like to visit when we return. Above all, we were most captivated by the joys of moving at a slower pace and the beautiful surroundings.
Recommended Reading
| A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, 1991 My Twenty-Five Years in Provence: Reflections on Then and Now by Peter Mayle, 2018 Provence: A Cultural History by Martin Garrett, 2006 The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, 2017 All The Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr, 2017 |
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