alistair sawday special places to stay in france::Why not rent a villa in provence alistair sawday special places to stay in france

alistair sawday special places to stay in france::Why not rent a villa in provence?
We had two young children and our friends also had a child.
We could share the costs and even share babysitting.
Booking was simple and the final price included the ferry crossing, although we opted to upgrade this to the euro tunnel.
We are used to driving on the continent and both our girls are good travellers but our friends flew ryan air and hired a car on arrival.
We stayed in the gatehouse and had two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and dining room to ourselves for about 80 euros all in.
The last half hour was the most exciting when we pulled out the directions provided by the villa owner, which proved to be perfect.
The anticipation was tremendous, would the villa be as good as it looked in the photographs?
Built in an l shape around the pool with french windows from each of the bedrooms leading out onto a pretty terrace.
Inside was a huge living room and super american style kitchen.
After a few minutes a beep from outside announced the arrival of our friends in their hire car.
We now had two glorious weeks to laze around the pool and explore.
The days passed easily, sometimes sitting at home, mums and dads reading and swimming and the children almost constantly in the pool.
On some days we set off on joint expeditions for lunch, a picnic or exploration of neighbouring sights, avignon was not far, aix and the hill villages of the luberon a little further.
We found that french restaurants were quite relaxed at having small children sitting down to lunch, in fact we relaxed, the children relaxed and the meals were altogether less stressful than would have been the case at home.
Special days stand out.
Most of all we enjoyed visiting the local markets; every village seems to have a market on a different day of the week.
These were especially good for buying food for picnics and dinners at home, delicious cheeses, fruit and vegetables.
We also loved searching out and buying all those things that make provence so special, lovely lavender, gorgeous marseilles soap, herbes de provence, provencal honey, olives and olive oil.
On a couple of nights we either babysat or our friends babysat for us and we were able to go out for a romantic dinner