We thought it would be fun to do a blog this week and next week about my adventures and pratfalls while on a buying trip to France and Belgium.  It’s a travelogue and a blog, so I decided to call it a travelblogue…Forgive the dad joke nature of it.  I am always a tad unfiltered when jet lagged!

Today was a travel day.  I arrived in Paris mid-morning and hopped on a TGV train to sunny Avignon.  I was the extra seat in a group of six with a charming Belgian family traveling to the south for the children’s Easter break.  A gorgeous chunk of France sped by the windows and I loved seeing how the architecture and what the US architects call the materiality of the houses and buildings changed with the demands of the weather and the natural resources available in each region we passed.  Steeper sloped buildings intended to shed snow easily slowly give way to the more shallow pitches of roofs seen in the southern part of France.  And everywhere there are fields and fields that are greening and starting to fruit and bloom.  It is so beautiful.

I drive to Montepellier, where I will be based for the next three days of the fairs.  I am staying in the Place du Comedie, right in the center of town with a fabulous square thronging with people and bustling with restaurants.  I have charcuterie and a very nice white wine sitting outside on the square for my dinner.  As I knew it would, my American accent invited lots of conversations about world events, but everyone is very friendly and respectful and I’m reminded as always that people the world over do very much want the same things - health and happiness for themselves and their families.  We simply disagree on the best ways to achieve those things!

In the background, church bells chime and the sound brings my shoulders down.  One thing about being in a country with hundreds of years of history is that you’re reminded that there is not much new under the sun, and that all things pass with time.

A buying trip IS work, make no mistake about it.  I am constantly monitoring what I should buy, how much I should buy, how much I should spend, whether that Italian dealer is off by 100 years or 200 years in telling me the age of something, etc.  Each day at the fairs, or deballage as they call them here, I have 4 hours to make decisions about what I will be shipping back home.  Here in the South of France, the deballages (in English it roughly translates to “unpacking”) begin promptly at 8:00 a.m. with a furious flurry as vans and trucks are literally unpacked with all of the goods that each dealer has to sell that day.  

 

There is a fair in Beziers, one in Avignon, and the last one in the south is Montpellier.  Today’s fair is Beziers, and it got off to an ignominious start for me - my car battery died overnight.  Ugh - I am based in Montpellier and it’s a 45 minute drive and a 160 euro cab ride to get to the fair.  I take a deep breath and just plow forward to the fair in my cab, checking my list of want-to-haves and have-to-haves on the way. 

Of course, no list survives the first few moments of the fairs for me.  Not on my list but my first purchase is a beautifully bleached and scraped French chest, totally simple in style but with a finish that glows.

In reality, very few of my amazing purchases in Beziers were on my list of have-to-haves or want-to-haves but you don’t always know what you want to have until it’s right there in front of you. Nowhere on my bingo card was this gorgeous painted panel, salvaged from the back from an 18th C. Spanish cupboard with its faded and almost impressionistic landscape.  But it immediately became a must have and one of my favorite finds of the day. Those clouds….

With the fair behind me, I joined a good friend for lunch in Penzanas and had the most delicious warm goat cheese salad in what looked to be a wine cave repurposed into a restaurant.  The groin vault ceiling and high windows are incredibly atmospheric and it would have been lovely to linger, but we both had places we needed to be - she to an appointment with an antique dealer in Avignon and me to spend the rest of my afternoon and all of my evening trying to get someone to jump start my car. Never have I ever had to have dinner at a McDonalds in France before but there is a first time for everything and needs must.  Predictably, it was delicious and bore very little resemblance to a US McDonalds.  And no, for you Pulp Fiction fans, I did not have a Royale!

The beginning of my morning in Avignon is not nearly as fruitful as my morning in Beziers. I arrive too late to one of my favorite dealer’s booths and everything that I might have wanted to purchase was already sold.  In the first 20 minutes of the fair!  This is why people push, run and shove when the gates open - so that they can be the first at their favorite dealer’s space.  But I am pretty philosophical about these things - they must not have been meant for me!  I decide to walk this fair in the reverse order to my usual path and it feels completely different in every way.  A breath of fresh air.  I stop to chat with favorite dealers of mine from Belgium and we agree to meet next week at their shop/home. 

I was happy, if not over the moon, with my purchases and was ready to end my day.  I called my courier and told him that I was finished and then, I saw these…My heart! This dealer primarily sells 1920s furniture but today he had these amazing ceramics to sell.  From a pottery in Uzes, one of my favorite villages in France, these softly marbleized plates, bowls and platters were a must buy.  I cannot wait to style them up for our new boutique website.  I cannot imagine that they will last long..

Nighttime on the Place de Comedie is magical. The opera house is lit, the fountain splashes, and everywhere there are people out enjoying their evening.  I take a circuitous route to a wonderful Italian restaurant and enjoy a guilt-free dish of pasta - my Apple watch tells me that I have had thousands of steps and lots of exercise!

The market at Montpellier usually falls on the last day of my time in the South of France, and it's odd that I’ve still got many buying days to go here.  Traditionally, we treat ourselves to a celebratory glass of champagne at around 11 to mark the end of a successful shopping trip.  Today, I grab an enormous sandwich and a bottle of water and take a pause to review my purchases thus far.  Swedish chairs with the most charming painted motifs and a Catalan bed frame are making their way to Texas.  Neither were on my list and neither were they resistable.  The Catalan bed frame may become a base to a striking ottoman or a pair of end of bed benches…we shall see!

I drive off in what I now call my White Beast.  This Citroen station wagon is far more car than I need or want.  I break out into a sweat driving it on tiny streets, praying I scrape nothing and hoping I read the one way signs correctly.  But it’s great on the open road and I’m off to stay in Saint-Remy for a break in the shopping action. 

Hotel Gounod in Saint-Remy is a delightful suprise.  Clad in jaunty black and white, with plentiful accents of boxwoods, it exudes French style.  The limestone-clad buildings are organized around a central courtyard, with a pool off to one side.  The courtyard gardens are darling and I head up to my room with its wisteria-covered iron railing to slip into a chair on the tiny balcony with my book.  The sounds are wonderful - the gentle tinkling of the fountain, the doves cooing in the background and church bells chiming in the distance.  The wisteria scent wafts towards me and I turn my face to the sun to soak in the moment.

Dinner is a fantastic Vietnamese meal. The Vietnamese food in France is amazing for the same reason that the Indian food in Britain is so fantastic - both are former colonies and their food culture made its way to this continent.  My stomach thanks it!

Today I allow myself to sleep in, drink three (!) cafe lattes and wander the Wednesday market at Saint-Remy.  At the market you can find gorgeous produce, some chic and not so chic clothing, French soaps, French cutlery, and every type of bread, cheese and salami the heart could desire.

The consistent theme here is one after my own heart - straw and scarves!  Countless straw hats and market bags beckon and the selection of scarves is breathtaking.  I finally purchase a market bag because this time I have a large enough suitcase for it and today it is a handy carry-all for the gifts I buy for my family.  But my eyes need a break from all of the shopping and I simply have a wander through the streets and stop at a cafe for what feels like a bathtub of gazpacho and salad.  I find myself back on my balcony, glass of wine in hand, reading a book.  Dinner is slices of the fennel salami I bought at the market with some baguette from lunch and a bottle of water.  It is heaven!

I met - again - the most charming gentleman in Montpellier who sells the most luscious antique quilts and textiles.  Grace and I first met him in Villeneuve Avignon and were struck by how dapper he was.  In Montpellier he was again notable for his great style and I was thrilled to find more antique quilts to bring home.  We had some time to chat and he told me a bit about a town I had never heard of before - Tarascon.  I decided that I needed to pay it, and his little shop, a visit.

Tarascon has an incredibly well preserved medieval castle sitting on the banks of the Rhone river.  The castle is vast, was not well attended, and the route to tour it was circuitous to say the least.  I found myself being rushed out of the castle so that they could have lunch promptly at 12:30!  My view from the parapets was incredible but also fleeting as the young lady was staring me down quite ferociously so that I made my way down countless spiral stairs as fast as my Vejas would take me.  I have learned to never get between a Frenchman or woman and their sacred lunch hour.  Well, really, two hours.  And good luck finding a restaurant who will serve you lunch after 2:30! But I digress.

The castle served as a prison for a while and the prisoners left graffiti over the years.  My goodness, the difference between this graffiti and the current graffiti unfortunately found here is night and day.  One prisoner, a Catalan, carved his entire cell with scenes of ships and religious figures, and every day objects.  It was quite something.

Then on to the Saint-Michel de Frigolet Abbey which is still a working monastery and where they make Frigolet liqueurs.  Frigolet means thyme in the Provencal language and there is thyme in abundance here.It is at the very edge of a national park and so it sits in natural splendor full of pines, olives and natural cypresses.   It’s reached by a few hairpin turns and turrets for lookouts or guards or perhaps some sort of religious path.  And there it sits in the foothills of the Alpilles and it’s breathtaking.  There are two places of worship that could not be more different that one another.  One is a Romanesque church, plainly washed limestone, with a groin vault ceiling and simple stone floors.  The stained glass windows shine small squares of ruby and sapphire into the calm and the only detailed ornamentation is the striking hand-carved crucifix, stained in warm walnut.  By contrast the basilica next door has painted ornamentation on every surface - floors, ceiling, walls.  A riot of blues, reds, greens, yellows and gilt meets the eye as it was modeled after the decoration of Saint Chapell in Paris.   Both were striking in their own ways. 

And such a treat - I got to shop in the Souleiado Outlet, right in the mansion where production began over 200 years ago. The word is unique to Provence and it means the sun shining through the rainbow. And who doesn’t need a bit of that in their life?!

I dip into the antiquaire’s shop for a browse and it’s a treasure trove of textiles, objects and paintings.  No place really for the eye to rest - a bit like the basilica at Frigolet Abbey - but full of beauty and color nonetheless.

Today was my last in Saint-Remy and my last morning of leisure.  I packed into the White Beast and set off for L’Isle sur la Sorgue and more antiques hunting.  On the short drive, I was able to take in the allees of plane trees so common here.  Did you know that this a long-standing French tradition as plane trees signify proximity to water - and indeed most of the trees shaded irrigation canals. Napolean encouraged the planting of trees along the roads to shade his soldiers in the summer and provide them with firewood in the winter.  

 

Since Provence is the breadbasket of France, orchards in bloom are around every turn as are vineyards and olive groves.  In April the irises are magnificent as are the cherry and plum blossoms.  I have to take a special moment for the wisteria, though.  Never have I ever seen so many wisteria vines in full and glorious bloom as on this trip.  My grandmother particularly loved purple blooms of every type and I can only imagine how thrilled she would have been to take this all in!

Tonight I am staying at Fountaine de Vaucluse - supposedly the “fountain” which supplies the water to the Sorge and to the Vaucluse.  As I write this, I can hear the rushing of the crystal clear water all around me and catch glimpses of the trees in bloom and a petal or two have made their way into my open window.  

Au revoir for the moment…see you next week after I have visited Belgium and Northern France. Cannot wait!