(I almost called this tour "Van Gogh all the way")

Van Gogh in the South? Easy: Arles and Saint-Rémi and that's it!

Saint-Rémi is a beautiful village in Provence where you'll want to stroll down the streets (see the house where Nostradamus was born!), do a little shopping... We will honor Vincent by visiting some of the sites he painted and see the asylum (picture below) were he stayed for a year before moving to Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris. Vincent's spirit is definitely still there...

The thing is: we can stop on our way to (or back from) the Riviera but if we stay too long we'll have to sleep in the area and that will add hotel fees (which is fine with me if that's what you want). Or we could stay until dinner if you don't mind the 2-hour-drive back to Saint-Raphael (anything works and we can take it easy the next day). As usual, I'll recommend we play it by ear.

Quite often my former clients have already been to Provence with a travel agent, so they've already been there, done that. Otherwise, if you've never been there, you'll probably want to visit les Baux-de-Provence!

Same with Arles (on a bigger scale) with interesting Roman ruins.

I'll then highly recommend we go watch the amazing slideshow inside the former limestone quarries nowadays used as a projection site. Check out here the show they had in 2017. In 2018, they had a slideshow on Picasso and the Spanish masters and in 2019 (starting March 1st) it will be about Van Gogh!

And for the lavender in bloom, best time is from mid-June until mid-July.