Travel Blog: France - Provence and Monte Carlo (sort of)

Our tour from Marseille took us first into the country, to Chateau Val Joanis, for a visit to the acclaimed gardens and lunch, and then to the town of Aix-en-Provence.

Sunflower fields. The lavender is already finished for
the year - too bad.

Chateau Val Joanis now is home to a winery as well as the gardens. The land was the original home of Jean de Joanis, who was secretary to King Louis III of Naples in the early 1400s. From the mid 1700s to 1910 it sat in disrepair until it was purchased and refurbished by the Arnaud family. That family died off and the chateau was bought by the Chancel family in 1977, and they started the vineyard and winery. It was Camille Chancel who established the gardens, which have been on the register of Remarkable Gardens in France for over 10 years. The Chateau is now owned by a Dutch family who plan to make the old bastide, or gated house, into a boutique hotel once it is renovated.

A small plot planted in the traditional Provencal fashion,
not trimmed or set in rows. This isn't done in the fields
as they use a large mechanized harvester.

The gardens. French gardens don't have a lot of flowers, more hedges
and trees, and most are designed by garden architects.

After a delicious lunch of slow roasted chicken that included vegetables from the garden, we headed off to Aix-en-Provence. The town is larger than we expected, and with the tourist season in high gear, it was also quite busy. The old town centre seemed plastered with shops, stalls and umbrellas so it wasn't really all that easy to walk around. Not to mention that they seem to love motorcycles over there, and they aren't restricted like cars, so we spent some time keeping out of their way as well.

The next day in Monte Carlo we turned into an 'in port sea day'. We had been to Monte Carlo before and, although some of our fellow passengers had said a trip to Eze and some of the other towns nearby to see 'how the other half lives' would be a nice day, we needed the break. Obviously, even that break wasn't enough as we are writing these blog posts from home at the end of the trip! We did, however, take some photos of the yachts and of Monte Carlo.

We also had taken some photos of our Oceania Suite when we boarded, so we thought we'd include them here. Now, just because we didn't go anywhere didn't mean we did nothing. After breakfast at Waves Grill on the pool deck, we did our 2 mile walk on the jogging track, spent 45 minutes in the gym, and then hit the pool for half an hour. So we felt we deserved an afternoon of not doing too much. We did, however, work on the blog.

Looking in from the entrance.

The Media Room - TV with Blu-ray player, huge selection
of music and a video game console.

Bedroom with sliding door to the Jacuzzi on the balcony.

This bathroom was huge!

The balcony. A very comfortable spot both
during the day in port and at sea.

Dining area and wet bar. We did have breakfast en suite one
morning and it was nice to have all the room.

We deserved to relax a bit after the tours and our morning of
exercise.

We haven't mentioned the specialty restaurants on the ship yet. There are four of them, providing a real variety at a level of quality and service that is every bit as good as our experience with Crystal. We were given two reservations in each one, and our butler suggested that we book them on the first day and make alterations later if we needed them, since it would be almost impossible to make reservations later on. The restaurants were: Toscana, obviously Italian; the Polo Grill, a steakhouse; Red Ginger, Asian; and Jacques, the French Bistro that features dishes of Jacques Pepin, who is the Culinary Master for the line.