Sete, France: After departing Carcassonne, we continued heading east with a stop in Sete which we use as a domicile address in France. It was a quick stop but we picked up a replacement French Crit Air sticker (I messed up when affixing the original one to the windshield this past spring), a German emission sticker and a Fulli Toll Pass for use in France, Portugal and Italy. The new toll pass is an appreciated upgrade so we no longer must battle with the payment toll booths which are never the correct height and randomly decline our US credit card. The new toll pass allows us to drive through a special lane at 30 kph and not have to obtain any toll tickets at all. Well worth it for the few euro monthly administrative fee.

Weather continues to be beautiful with sunny skies, light breezes and 75ish degree daytime temperatures. This is the perfect Fall weather and reminds both of us of the Fall weather from our childhoods growing up in Ohio. The fall colors have not yet started to appear yet in the area.

We almost had a head on collision on this leg of the journey which still has us a bit rattled. I was driving at 80 kph (the speed limit for this road) on a rural “D” road with little traffic.  I just entered a turn and began rounding the tight corner only to see there was a car about 100-150 feet in front of me IN MY LANE trying to overtake 2 semi-trucks. This is a not a US sized road, but a narrow French road with only a few inches of shoulder on each side and then steep ditches just beyond the edge of the pavement on both sides. My choices were to swerve off the road, go into the ditch and roll our van over or to brake hard and move over to the furthest edge before the ditch started and hope the car had enough room to pass which is what I chose to do in the split second I had to react. The semi-trucks both braked hard and moved to their far edge and the old compact car with low horsepower engine tried to speed up but didn’t have the power to make any meaningful speed increase. I am not sure how, but the semi-truck, passing car and our van, 3 abreast on the road, made it through the turn without an accident. I still don’t know how it was even possible. It feels like we went through a time warp because I honestly can’t fathom there was enough room for a semi-truck, a car and our van to fit on this narrow road. There had to be literal inches between each of the 3 vehicles. Tony and I both couldn’t even speak after this event for several minutes and we are still in disbelief this happened knowing there could have been very tragic accident for all of us. I am still a bit shaken even writing about it, but we are fine, there was no accident, no injuries and no damage but this was certainly the closest both of us has ever come to a real head-on collision. Yikes!

Pont de Gard, France: We checked into a Camping-Car Park on the edge of town near Pont de Gard. The campsites managed by this network are our favorite as they are usually in good locations, well-maintained and are low-frills facilities. They have a great app with real-time availability, the ability to make reservations ahead of time as part of the upgraded membership feature and check-in/out is as easy as waving a membership card in front of a post at the entrance. When we arrived at noon the small campground was ½ full but after our walk to Pont de Gard it was completely full. We are finding the campgrounds to much more crowded than we expected, so we have been arriving as early in the day as possible.

We were able to walk from our campsite to see Pont de Gard which is a large ancient Roman aqueduct bridge over the Gardon River built in the 1 A.D. It is the highest Roman built aqueduct in the world and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Being one of the best examples of Roman engineering, it is believed to have taken 10 years to build involving over a 1000 workers. The stones are massive weighing 6 tons each and it was built entirely dry (without mortar). Overall, while there were a lot of cars and RVs in this area, the area around the aqueduct itself was not very crowded. Tony got in a bike ride, although not the route he intended as he found dedicated cycle (velo) paths that were smooth pavement going in all directions.

We have switched over from Google Maps to Waze and we are so much happier with this change. Waze provides better navigation, accurate toll costs, presence of stalled vehicles, police or debris on the road and alerts us to the beginning and end of the camera speed enforcement zones. Thankfully, we can use Waze via Android Auto to display on our Mercedes navigation screen with audio.

Arles, France: We debated about stopping in Arles as there were mixed reviews of this city in my research. Some reviews indicated that it was ugly, dirty and had high crime. I learned in my research that Arles located in Provence was the place that Van Gogh painted many of his famous pieces and we have been learning much about him in our travels throughout France, so I decided it was worth the chance of stopping here.

We found a small family-owned campground just outside, but still walkable, to Arles. The owner was lovely and although the facilities were old, everything was maintained. All the sites were surrounded on 3 sides by tall hedges so even though the sites were on the smaller side each site had privacy. Also, Tony was able to get his bread order in for delivery the next morning.

We walked into Arles and we were surprised to see a mixture of old and very sleek and modern buildings. With a population of 50,000 people, it seemed to have a lot of larger city infrastructure than we expected it to have. We have using the VoiceMap app where creators develop GPS self-guided walking tours and we did a lovely walk 75-minute walk around the city which was narrated by a well-known historian. The tour was “Arles through the lens of Van Gogh” and it took us through numerous neighborhoods including to view Roman architecture, along the Rhone River to the Pont de Trinquetaille (Van Gogh’s Starry Nights Over the Rhone) and to places Van Gogh lived and was inspired by. We were most surprised by the size of the Roman Architecture including the 2-tiered amphitheater built in 90 AD and which seated 20,000 spectators and the 10,000-spectator ancient theater completed in 12 BC. It was a lovely tour!

We have had our first minor system failure on our new van. The kitchen faucet no longer works as nothing happens when the handle is raised. We did some research and learned this is a common issue with this faucet model as the wires that attach to the micro-switches under the faucet are too short and continuously fray as the handle is rotated until they completely disconnect. We are fairly handy and this is something we could certainly fix, but the challenge with making repairs on this van is we don’t know where anything is located and everything is hidden behind panels. Also, everything is still under warranty. In our other van, we know every inch of electrical and plumbing because we built it ourselves and therefore things are much easier to fix. Luckily, Tony worked with a local Hymer dealership who has a replacement part and can fit us in for an appointment in a few days. We will need to make some adjustments to our tentative itinerary to make this appointment happen, but that is why it is only a tentative schedule so there is room to flex. Until it is fixed, we have the bathroom sink faucet. I have always thought it was weird that other campers washed all their dishes at the central dishwashing stations outside of their camper. Due to our faucet issue, Tony has been doing the same. I will admit it…I was wrong. We now feel these central dishwashing stations are so helpful and efficient and they will become part of our routine. I. Was. Wrong.

Aix-en-Provence (Aix), France: We moved 45 minutes down the road to Aix-en-Provence. This city is 19 miles north of Marseille and has 220,000 inhabitants of which 85,000 are students across 3 different universities so there is a young vibe to the town. Cezanne lived there and painted many of his famous works, although like many painters his work was not appreciated much during his own lifetime.

We decided to stay at a campground near Mt. Sainte-Victorie that was a bit outside the city and take the bus into town. While most French campground are closed from 12 – 2pm every day for a mid-day break, this one was closed from 11 am – 2 pm so we made lunch in the parking lot to pass the 3 hours until they opened again. Our initial impressions of the campground were not favorable as we got blocked in by other RVs who arrived after us in the parking lot and they did not want to move until they were checked in and the process was very slow, the site they gave us had low overhanging branches and we had to request  a different one and the campsites were teeny tiny with no privacy. Yikes as we booked 3 days at this place. In the end, the campground turned out to be fine as it was quiet, the bus stop was conveniently located at the entrance, staff was friendly, we could walk to hiking trailheads and they had only recently opened a new shower house and pool.

The city bus we boarded to take us into Aix was wild. The bus driver was a maniac and oncoming cars were pulling off the sides of the road as he wasn’t slowing down. When we tried to go up a steep hill the bus started to violently shake and wouldn’t move forwards so instead the driver allowed the bus to roll down part of this steep hill going backwards. After our recent traumatic almost head on collision experience, this was not just a fun experience. Eventually, the driver got the bus moving but it stayed in very low gear when driving the rest of the trip and there was clearly something wrong with it. Further down the road, an oncoming bus flagged our driver down to tell him there was a piece of molding sticking straight out of the driver’s side which explained why all the oncoming cars were pulling off the side of road to allow the bus to pass. I did mention how narrow these roads are, right?  The driver eventually stopped in the middle of the road and started to kick the molding back into place. It really was a nutty bus ride.

Our initial impression of Aix was we LOVE it! It is a lovely city with Parisian style architecture and is bustling (in a good way) and feels very full of life and vibrant. There are so many markets including daily market that has been running for 200 hundred years! People are more dressed up than in other places we have visited in France. We learned on our tour that the city is brimming with doctors and lawyers and during the pandemic it was a hot spot where many remote workers moved to. In addition, it is a technology hub with a lot of recent investments being made in the area. Part of our purpose for travel is to potentially find a place for a 2^nd home and Aix-en-Provence has made the short list for us!

There are 3 full vegan restaurants in town and we went to Harae and it was fantastic. Lovely décor, tasty food and they even had a restaurant dog. Her name was Joy and she was an 11 year old Spaniel and I wanted to take her home with me.

We were able to hike to Parc de Roques Hautes from our campsite. An easy 5-mile hike that took us through fruit orchards, amongst the shadows of Mt. Sainte-Victorie and to the archeological restoration area of the chapel of Trou. This area was also a frequent inspiration for many of Cezanne’s paintings.

The “D” roads outside our campground were perfect for cycling and proved to be a popular cycling route so Tony got in several longer rides while exploring the countryside further.

Overall, we are feeling good. We have been back in the van for 10 days already and our trip is going too fast! We are moving slowly to the east as the weather continues to be sunny, in the 70s and no rain forecasted.

Onwards!

Up Next: Cassis and Parc National de Port-Cros