Road Trip à la française

March 09, 2019

Road Trip à la française

During our time in France we lived three hours south of David's hometown (read about our place in Cannes here).

Since our days were numbered before moving the the U.S. permanently, we spent a lot of time visiting his family. It was the norm for us to make the drive from Cannes to Gap one weekend a month and stay from Friday to Sunday.

My favorite site along the way- endless sunflowers in the summer!

That meant that we became very familiar with the Provence and Alpine scenery between the two cities. To stave off boredom I took a lot of pictures during the drives. When the weather was nice we would sometimes stop to stretch our legs and visit several of these towns. None of them are super touristy/well-known places, so it was fun to discover small-town France.

Let's relive our road trips, shall we?

Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume

This town (with the longest name ever) is home to an incredible and interesting cathedral. You can see the huge cathedral from the highway and it's especially cool when they light it up at night.

They started to build it in the late 1200s, when what they believed to be Mary Magdalene's remains were discovered. Legend has it that Mary escaped Judea to flee persecution and took a boat across the Mediterranean. Her skull can be found in this basement.

Ollières

Ollières is a little forgotten town on a hill. It always reminded me of my dog nephew Ollie- especially because their claim to fame is that they host a dog festival every year. :)

Rians

This was one of the prettiest towns we drove past. We stopped there a few times to try and visit the church, but it was always closed!

Ginasservis

Valensole

Valensole was slightly out of the way but we drove by a few times. We came for the lavender fields but stayed for the sunflowers (more pictures here).

Sisteron

I loved making it to Sisteron because it meant we were finally almost in Gap!! From what I've heard, it kind of marks the border between the Provence region and the Alps. Sisteron is a fortress that sits on top of a mountain. All of the above pictures were taken from a moving car haha.

The views were even better when we actually visited and toured the fortress!

Castellane

Castellane is not a town we drove through every time, because it meant taking the long scenic route through the mountains- something we did not attempt in the winter. It did save us money, however. If we took the highway, it cost 30 euros round-trip to go to Gap!

So going to Castellane was a win-win! Cute town + no tolls.

The more mountains we started to see, the closer we were getting to Gap.

According to David, Gap is so named because it is a gap in the mountains. Still not sure why medieval French people named their town in English but whatever. Driving in the mountains is lovely.