We left Uzes by bus for Avignon on 2nd June 2017. We had rented a nice apartment in the city centre where we would stay for 5 nights.
Avignon is in Provence and is a medieval city on the banks of the River Rhone. A historic centre is surrounded by city walls with its main attractions being the massive Palais de Papes (the city was ruled by the Popes until it became part of France in 1791), the cathedral and the Pont D’Avignon. There is some architecture and the city is very walkable and as always, les Halles here are excellent!
Larger than most cities in the area, there’s good shopping and lots of bars and restaurants. We found it a very liveable city and with good bus and train connections its a good base from which to travel and visit other places in the area.
The Palais de Papes with the Cathedral on the left
Les Halles, Avignon
We left Avignon for Arles on 7th June but see also separate posts for day trips we made in Provence to L’isle Sur La Sorge, St Remy de Provence and Boux-de-Provence.
This was a day trip we made by bus from Avignon on 5th June. In an ideal world this tour should be done by joining an organised tour or by car as buses are few and far between – and stuff we found on the internet wasn’t that encouraging. But we managed to find our way around the bus schedules and worked out that we could visit both places in a day. We would only have an hour or two at each place but these are only small villages and we figured that would be enough time – and so it was!
St Remy de Provence
St Remy is a typical Provencal village famous for its market, shopping (specially food), restaurants and art – this is another place, like Arles, with Van Gogh connections. We had contemplated staying here for a few nights when first building our itinerary but decided on Arles instead as we thought there would be more to see and do in Arles.
We visited on market day and probably saw the place at its lively best before we jumped on another bus to get to Les Beaux.
Les Beaux de Provence
This is a small picturesque medieval village set high on a fortified rocky site in the Alpilles mountains between Arles and St Remy – a quite spectacular location. Whilst it’s small, there’s a lot of history with evidence of life going back to 6000BC and a turbulent military history through the middle ages.
This is a popular stop on the tourist trail and apparently gets absolutely hammered at peak times but thankfully it wasn’t too bad at the time of our visit and we enjoyed an hour or two wandering around the village.
We arrived in Uzes from Nimes on 26th May 2017. There is no train station in Uzes and so we made the 25k journey from by bus for the princely sum of €1.30 each!
Uzes, like Nimes, is on the edge of the Languedoc Rousillon Region of France bordering Provence and it’s another town we had never heard of before we built our itinerary for this trip. Indeed I’m not sure how we discovered the place but suspect we were just looking for a pretty village with a nice market to stay in en route to Provence. We saw it described as one of Languedoc’s prettiest villages along with Pezenas and as a “hidden gem” having one of the best markets in France. It’s a little bit off the main tourist trail and we though it would be a good taster of life in a french rural town. The more we researched the more we liked the look of the place and then when we found La Tour des Reves, the apartment that we rented on line, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to book it.
This small town is the oldest Duchy in France and there is still a Duke living in a castle in town. Its history dates back to pre Roman times with settlers drawn by freshwater springs in the area – the remains of what was apparently a large Roman town have been discovered quite recently . The Romans used the springs as a source of water for Nimes building an aqueduct 50 kilometres to get water from Uzes to Nimes. The aqueduct included the Pont du Gard, the highest of all elevated Roman aqueducts and one of the best preserved as you wills from the photos below.
Our apartment was in the centre of the historical centre only metres from Place aux Herbes, a beautiful market square with a central fountain and lined with restaurants and shops. The apartment is a typical old building beautifully and stylishly updated and we even had our own tower on the roof where we could sit with a glass of wine.
The town centre is a maze of narrow streets with arcades terraces and squares, lots of places to explore in the town itself and some lovely walks in the neighbouring countryside. With a boulangeries on every corner, we were smitten!
We fell in love with Uzes. We stayed for a week but would happily return for a month or longer although it isn’t a cheap place to stay. The town is very well preserved and many of its properties are “high end”. It’s clear that a lot of money has been spent in the town on property renovation to some extent, apparently, as a result of government grants being paid in the past to rejuvenate the place. It seems there are a few American property owners, La Tour des Reves is itself American owned, but we didn’t think the town especially touristy maybe because it’s only small and is a little off the beaten track with many more famous towns and cities around it – Nimes, Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence and Avignon to name but a few.
