A Good Weekend in Provence

Thursday, I headed west to Provence with a friend who has owned a village house there for more than 20 years. She bought it after spotting an À vendre sign during a bicycle trip and falling in love—with the house, the village and the Luberon. For years it was her vacation home, until she finally had the wherewithal to move to France permanently.

She often visited me in Nice until, one day, she invested in an apartment of her own overlooking the Old Port. Now she spends more time in Nice than in Provence. I’ve celebrated many memorable Thanksgivings, Christmases and other special occasions at her Provençal house. But since her move to Nice, far too much time had passed since we’d been there together…until last weekend.

My friend keeps a car in Nice so she can go back and forth whenever she likes. Under normal conditions, it’s a two-hour-and-twenty-minute drive: west on the A8 Autoroute toward Aix-en-Provence, then north on smaller roads through Pertuis and into the Luberon.

Our weekend plans included a stop at the Fresh market in Le Tholonet, near Aix-en-Provence, for dinner goodies; a visit to “Les Olivettes,” a villa in Lourmarin that we may list for sale (nothing definitive yet); lunch at Tita, an Israeli restaurant in Aix; dinner in Cucuron—famous for its appearance in “A Good Year” with Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard—and another dinner in Lauris. And then there was the weekend’s most adorable mission: choosing her new French Bulldog puppy.

THE FRESH MARKET

Fresh is a smaller, neighborhood version of Grand Frais, specializing almost entirely in produce, meat, fish, cheese, charcuterie and prepared foods. It feels more like a well-organized indoor market than a traditional supermarket. Everything was fresh, appealing and remarkably inexpensive!

We came home with two enormous steaks for the grill and salad fixin’s for a pittance. My friend shops there regularly, either in Saint-Laurent-du-Var or Le Tholonet—but you really need a car to take advantage of it.

LES OLIVETTES

We sold Les Olivettes on behalf of its previous owner to the current owner, who is now considering selling after completing an extensive renovation and redecoration. The villa sits at the edge of Lourmarin, one of the Luberon’s most enchanting villages, known for its Renaissance château, winding lanes, shaded café terraces and lively Friday market. I discovered Lourmarin quite by accident about 25 years ago, during a two-week holiday in Provence and Corsica. We scored a wonderful B&B there. I’ve returned many times since.

I was anxious to see the house after receiving a glowing report from the former owner, who had visited recently. She said that a great deal of care and thought had gone into the house and grounds, and she was impressed by the comfort, the reconfigured kitchen and bathrooms, the upgraded pool, the elegantly shaded parking area and the beautifully maintained gardens. She was very, very right.

It’s a very unusual property, comprising four complete studio apartments, each with its own kitchen and bath. All four share a communal living room, kitchen, pool, gym and gardens with a pétanque court and ping-pong table. A caretaker lives full-time in an adjacent apartment at the rear. The views toward the village are drop-dead stunning, and the grounds are as charming as any novelist’s vision of a Provençal villa. It would make a perfect B&B or retreat center—and it generates substantial income year-round.

The walk into town is about 10 minutes from the villa, and people come from all over the vicinity to attend the Friday morning market. It is one of the best in the region and worth a special excursion, but go early to get good parking! Many people parked in a lot in a field behind the house…it’s just that close. Although we went early Friday morning to visit the villa, we skipped the market this time. Next door is the town cemetery, where Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus—who lived in Lourmarin—is buried. The village also became home to author Peter Mayle, whose A Year in Provence introduced millions of readers to life in the Luberon. Put Lourmarin high on your list when visiting the region.

And we’ll let you know should we have this beautiful villa for sale any time soon.

BULLDOGS

My friend had the pleasant project of choosing her new Bulldog puppy from the breeders, Les Ninjas de Provence, a small, family-style breeder of purebred French Bulldogs established by Willyam Mantione in Jouques, just north of Aix-en-Provence.

Their breeding program emphasizes health-tested parents, carefully planned pairings and official Livre des Origines Français pedigrees (LOF—France’s official registry for purebred dogs, maintained by the Société Centrale Canine). The dogs are entered in canine competitions to evaluate their bloodlines, while the puppies are raised in the home and socialized to everyday sounds and other dogs before leaving at eight weeks. Les Ninjas de Provence also offers an unusually luxurious boarding arrangement exclusively for French Bulldogs, with climate-controlled rooms and an enclosed garden. The name was inspired by Willyam’s first bulldog—the dog he fell in love with and who started the whole kit and caboodle.

Willyam was very gracious and showed us into his birthing rooms where three mothers were nursing their babies. He had picked out two females for my friend to consider and brought them out for us to inspect—cuddling is more fitting for what we did with these adorable baby Bulldogs, each less than two weeks old.

While I’m glad I’m not the one taking on a puppy at this stage of my life, it’s right for my friend, who comes from a family of veterinarians and has always had pets. Me? I’m happy with the freedom that having no pet affords me. Still, while holding those puppies, it was easy to understand how someone falls in love and comes home with a new baby to love and adore.

She’s been considering names. France has a pedigree-registration tradition of naming dogs according to the letter assigned to their birth year. Since 1926, the Société Centrale Canine has designated a first letter for every birth year of LOF-registered dogs, making the year immediately recognizable from the official name.

The letters K, Q, W, X, Y and Z are skipped, so the cycle repeats every 20 years. The breeder normally selects or registers the official LOF name, although the owner can use an entirely different everyday nickname. Dogs that aren’t LOF-registered can be named anything at all. This explains the conspicuous matching initials among the dogs at Les Ninjas de Provence.

This year’s official LOF letter is B. Some possibilities are: Baloo, Bandit, Basile, Baxter, Benji, Biscuit, Bowie, Bruno, Bella, Billie, Blanche, Bonnie, Brigitte and Brume. My friend has been tossing around all sorts of B names, but I’m voting for Boudin.

ISRAELI DINING IN AIX-EN-PROVENCE

Our next stop was to have lunch in Aix-en-Provence. Aix is very high on my list of great places to live in France. It is an elegant university town celebrated for its fountains (at every turn), colorful markets and gracious tree-lined boulevards. It is especially famous for its platanes (plane trees), which form a magnificent leafy canopy over the wide and beautiful Cours Mirabeau and many surrounding avenues, becoming the city’s signature.

Aix has a beautifully preserved historic center filled with honey-colored mansions, lively cafés and tempting food shops, while the surrounding countryside—immortalized by local artist Paul Cézanne—is dominated by the striking Mont Sainte-Victoire.

Sophisticated yet relaxed, Aix combines Provençal charm with youthful energy and a rich cultural life. From the standpoint of our clients, who are seeking a smaller town than Paris or Nice, but want immediate access to easy travel, Aix’s proximity to the Marseille international airport (a 30-minute bus ride away) and the TGV to Paris (only three hours) makes it ideal.

Surprisingly, even though Friday’s temperature climbed into the mid-90s, the air was so dry that we barely broke a sweat while walking all over town and exploring the shops.

Lunch was at Tita, a well-known, family-run Israeli street-food restaurant in the city center. Tourists may not know it, but locals certainly do—and getting a table takes advance planning.

Tita began as a food truck in 2017 before becoming a permanent restaurant. Its founders draw upon family recipes passed down from their great-grandparents, who once operated a restaurant in Alexandria. The menu centers on generous, Levantine dishes: creamy hummus, crisp falafel, babaganoush, labneh, Israeli salad, chicken shawarma and beef kefta. You can order pita sandwiches from €10, hummus plates from €16 or more substantial platters from €21. Vegetarian and vegan diners are particularly well served. Everything is reportedly prepared on-site each morning.

We ordered five mezze dishes and could barely finish them, each more delicious than the last. The young couple beside us had twice as much food on their table. We marveled at their enthusiasm, wondering whether they could possibly make a dent. The restaurant was filled with young families enjoying a cool, delicious Friday lunch—and so were we. I’d go back in a heartbeat.

A GOOD EVENING AT CUCURON

Pigging out at Tita didn’t stop us from dining pond-side at Le 20 Gourmet in nearby Cucuron, one of the most charming—and still relatively unspoiled—villages in the southern Luberon. It’s smaller and quieter than Lourmarin, with medieval lanes, old stone houses, remnants of fortified walls and wonderful views from the upper village. Its centerpiece is the Bassin de l’Étang, a long rectangular pond shaded by enormous plane trees and surrounded by café and restaurant terraces. You might recognize it from “A Good Year,” the Ridley Scott film starring Russell Crowe. “The Horseman on the Roof” was also filmed in the village.

Cucuron is particularly pleasant on Tuesday mornings, when a weekly Provençal market gathers around the pond. From May through September, there is also a Thursday-evening producers’ market. Beyond the photogenic center, the surrounding countryside is filled with vineyards, olive groves and walking trails.

We had a perfect table at the center of the upper end of the pond, with every café and restaurant filled to the brim. At the opposite end, a live band played summery tunes while the sun went down and the lights came up, reflecting on the water and making everything sparkle.

It couldn’t have been more perfect. C’est Provence!

LACOSTE, SCAD AND ANDRE LEON TALLEY

Let’s not confuse Lacoste with Château La Coste—they are not the same place. Lacoste is the tiny, dramatically perched medieval village in the Vaucluse, facing Bonnieux across the Calavon Valley. Its steep cobbled lanes climb toward the ruined Château de Lacoste, also called the Château du Marquis de Sade.

The Marquis de Sade lived there intermittently, particularly between 1769 and 1772. He transformed part of the château into a private theater seating approximately 120 people, staged plays and entertained a circle that contributed to his already scandalous reputation. He later used Lacoste as a refuge while fleeing arrest. The château was attacked and largely destroyed during the Revolution in 1792, after which its stone was gradually carried away for other buildings.

Fashion designer Pierre Cardin purchased the ruins in 2001, restored substantial portions and created a summer arts festival in the château’s former quarries. Following Cardin’s death in 2020, the property and cultural programming have continued. The château opens to visitors during the summer season. Our timing was comically bad—we arrived one minute after it closed for lunch, so venturing inside didn’t happen.

Château La Coste, on the other hand, is an entirely different destination near Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade: a fashionable wine estate, luxury hotel and contemporary-art center featuring works and buildings by Louise Bourgeois, Tadao Ando, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano and other major artists and architects. (I’ve written about it before in our Nouvellettres®.)

Our main goal in visiting Lacoste was to see how the Savannah College of Art and Design—SCAD—has basically taken over the village. SCAD welcomed its first students there in 2002 after transforming approximately 30 historic buildings into studios, classrooms, galleries, residences, a library and dining facilities. The school expanded again in 2022, purchasing another 20 properties formerly owned and restored by Pierre Cardin.

Whether SCAD “saved” or “took over” Lacoste depends on whom you ask. The university has spent millions restoring buildings that might otherwise have deteriorated, while bringing students, visitors, cultural events and economic activity to this tiny village. On the other hand, so many buildings are now institutionally owned that the historic center can feel more like a beautifully curated American campus than a living Provençal community. Students can substantially outnumber permanent residents in the upper village, while rising property values have made ordinary local life increasingly difficult. It isn’t the same village, that’s for sure.

André Leon Talley dominates the Lacoste landscape. He was one of fashion’s most knowledgeable, recognizable and influential personalities. Raised in North Carolina during segregation, he rose from assisting Diana Vreeland at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute to working with Andy Warhol and becoming creative director—and later editor-at-large—at American Vogue. As a Black man occupying rooms then overwhelmingly controlled by white Europeans and Americans, his ascent was groundbreaking.

He was famous for his encyclopedic fashion knowledge, magnificent capes and caftans, booming voice and ability to place a dress within a much larger history of art, royalty, politics and culture. He also had a close relationship with SCAD as a mentor, adviser and champion of its students. He died in 2022.

We hiked up the cobblestoned hill to see the current André Leon Talley: Le Style est Éternel exhibition at SCAD FASH. The exhibition celebrates both his public influence and private world, combining pieces from Talley’s wardrobe with couture, ready-to-wear and bespoke creations by Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga, Manolo Blahnik and others, as well as artworks, personal objects and loans from friends and collaborators.

I have to admit, it was strange and somehow out of context to see Lacoste as a campus—with the letters SCAD on door after door, at almost every turn—and to witness how a classic medieval hilltop village could be transformed into something so contemporary and highly marketed.

The exhibition continues through October 31st, at SCAD FASH in Lacoste on Rue Basse. (Wear sturdy shoes to maneuver the steep streets, stairways and cobblestones.)

LOURMARIN B&B BUSTED

Our afternoon ended by strolling and perusing the shops in Lourmarin, which have the finest little boutiques in the area. It was as busy as one might expect on a summer Saturday afternoon, as well as hot. At the end of the village, we found the B&B in which we had stayed the first time, about 25 years ago. My friend had been a guest there, too, when she was in the process of buying her house.

To our surprise, the owner, Françoise Herry, whose name we both remembered, was in the courtyard selling off most of her personal things, preparing for a move to a smaller house and giving up the Chambre d’Hôtes business. Seeing the sprawling old house and the woman who had hosted us years earlier really brought back memories from our first taste of Lourmarin, the Luberon and Provence.

We left there feeling very sad for witnessing the end of an era—both hers and ours.

HOME TO NICE TO WITNESS THE SOLAR ECLIPSE

Our Provençal excursion came to an end early Sunday morning, when we headed back to Nice, and in a way to avoid the Women’s Tour de France that ended in Nice yesterday. Personally, I didn’t care much about the race, but was more concerned I might not be able to easily reach the beach for my usual Sunday afternoon indulgence!

For the August 12th solar eclipse, various sources recommend the western end of the Promenade des Anglais—around Plage de Carras, near the airport—as the best viewing spot within Nice. It offers the longest, clearest possible view toward the west-northwest, where the eclipsed sun will be setting.

In Nice on Wednesday, August 12, 2026:

– Eclipse begins: approximately 7:30 p.m.
– Maximum: approximately 8:24 p.m.
– Sun obscured: about 95.5%
– Sunset: approximately 8:39 p.m.

The Sun will be only about 2° above the horizon at maximum, so avoid central-city viewpoints where buildings, trees or hills could hide the final—and most dramatic—minutes. Arrive around 6:45–7:00 p.m. because the waterfront will likely be crowded.

An elevated alternative is the western-facing viewpoint near Fort du Mont-Alban, but Carras is easier and has fewer immediate obstructions. Check the cloud forecast that afternoon and use genuine ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses throughout; ordinary sunglasses are not safe.

CORSICA OF COURSE

Next week is our company vacation, and on Saturday I’m off to Corsica—my favorite beach destination on the planet. Three friends are joining me, none of whom knows the others, so I’m the group’s catalyst. That alone should be quite an adventure!

Stay tuned for our island adventures—and to learn why Corsica beats every other island destination, including Ibiza, the Greek islands, Majorca, Sardinia and Sicily!

À la prochaine…