L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue
by Céleste
We visited L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue with a friend of ours, because I had heard from some Minnesota friends that it was a cute little town to visit, and not to miss it! The principal draw is the town’s canals, complete with old waterwheels previously used for milling and production of various goods. The canals are not at all like the canals of Amsterdam, as they are much shallower and cleaner. Additionally, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue has many antiques shops, and would be a great place to go to get old furniture or kitschy decor.
We got to the town by taking the Number 17 Cartreize from the Aix-en-Provence Gare Routière, getting off at Place Robert Vasse. It was an easy bus ride, at about 9am, and the last bus to return was at 2:30pm. So it was a short trip, but still fun. We started out by just walking around town, after getting a map from the tourism office. We walked by each of the 15 or so waterwheels, reading about what they were originally used for and admiring the mossy wheel-spokes. We saw plenty of ducks, swans, and other birds, and watched them as they watched us. They must get a lot of food from tourists.
The wheels were actually sort of beautiful in their own way, with many newer ones made of wood, and several older wheels with years’ worth of moss on them. We even got to see some city workers cleaning the brush out of the wheels, which seems like a strange job to explain to other people.
After looking at the waterwheels, we headed into the antiques section of town and looked through large buildings filled with individual antiques vendors, each trying to sell items from vastly different time periods. We saw some Mad Men-style 60s rooms, plenty of Napoleonic furniture and paintings, and even some Roman land-markers for sale. It certainly wasn’t the mad rush of the Marrakech markets (more on that in later posts), but it was sort of overwhelming to be surrounded by so many old things for sale. I was mostly just nervous I was going to break something.
We even saw an interesting antiques store that was sort of built around the trees, with trees growing inside the building, and the floors made of loose stones. Here are some photos to better illustrate.
Afterward, we went for lunch at Carré Rond, which was next to the canals, and offered a beautiful view. Vincent had a rumsteak and potatoes, while I had a salmon fillet with sweet potato purée and veggies. Both our meals were delicious, so we followed them up with tiramisu. It was an excellent meal to end the day!
