24 Hours: Nice — Gorges du Verdon (Terri and Finn’s European Adventure Day 2)

We made our way through the thunderstorm and drove west after leaving Nice (See24 Hours: Nice (Terri and Finn’s European Adventure Day 1), without any real sense of where we wanted to stay the night.

We had ideas of staying somewhere in the Gorges du Verdon but we wanted to see some things along the way and again, we were in the ‘in between’ time and we were hungry, not a good state for two jet-lagged Californians.

We ambled our way into Draguignan, a commune in the Provence-Alpes-Cotes d’Azur in southeastern France. We found a parking spot in this little town without issue because, of course, no restaurants were serving food, and not much was going on at 3 PM on a Friday afternoon.

We walked around getting crankier by the minute until we found Les Fundus de Fromage and decided to put a picnic together and get back on the road.

We once again combined forces in speaking with this lovely couple who owned the cheese shop.

Finn understands French better than me and I speak (or take risks speaking) French better than Finn so between the two of us we had a delightful conversation with this friendly and informative couple.

We took their suggestions and assembled a car picnic consisting of cheese, crackers, yogurt, chips, olives, and something to drink.

There’s not much else in this little town but If you are near Draguignan, I highly recommend stopping by for supplies.

We got back on the road and headed northwest’ish looking for something interesting to see. Finn used my phone (and Verizon data) to look for options and suggested Tourtour, “one of the most beautiful villages in France,” per one of the websites Finn found.

It’s called ‘le village dans le ciel’ and it was pretty high up. We explored the village on foot and started to get concerned about the time as we still hadn’t decided on where to spend the night.

It was a charming town but I don’t think I’d go there again or recommend it to anyone else. There are so many other cute towns and villages. We popped into a few shops and restaurants were preparing for dinner but otherwise it was pretty sleepy.

We left Tourtour and made the decison to head toward the Gorges du Verdon and take our chances. Spoiler: this was a great choice.

We drove north toward the Gorges du Verdon, the Grand Canyon of France. The pictures will not do it justice and it may be the most beautiful place we have even seen in person.

This picture is from a bridge and typically the water is really blue-green, almost like the BVI. This is a great place for water activities. The last time I drove by in 2017, there were boaters and kaykers on the water on both sides of the bridge.

Finn, a climber, was practically hanging out of the car, drooling over all of the possible rock climbing spots.

In between wiping away the drool, Finn was searching booking.com for lodging options and found an expensive (but worth it) spot overlooking La Palud-sur-Verdon.

I loved the Hotel des Gorges du Verdon so much that I tried to get us a second night at the hotel. After we booked, the receptionist called to see if we needed dinner reservations and to find out what time we expected to arrive. I’m glad she did because we checked in, were shown to our room, and sat down for dinner shortly before the kitchen closed.

Dinner was fantastic!

While dinner was exceptional, the view was spectacular. The weather was just warm enough, with a light breeze, for us to sit outside and we enjoyed the view until the sun set behind the mountains.

I tried to book some outdoor climbing for Finn but was unable to do so. This is one of the downsides of being spontaneous and not overplanning.

This area is known for hiking, climbing and rafting and we could have stayed there a week. Finn would have done outdoorsy stuff and I would have enjoyed the spa and pool.

This would be a great place for a destination wedding or vow renewal.

The next day, after breakfast at the hotel, we ventured out for a hike down to the village. We knew we were going to be in the car for a while and wanted to get some steps in before the drive. It’s also nice to explore an area, slowly, on foot.

We were refreshed but a little sad to leave our oasis in the Gorges.

As we were checking out, the gal at reception asked where we were going and I told her that we were headed further into the mountains based on a French friend’s recommendation (she has a house there). She advised us to avoid the area due to the recent fires so we hopped into the car and headed southwest toward Aix-en-Provence (not my favorite place) with a quick stop in Lorgues for lunch.

More about that in the next post (Gorges du Verdon — Lorgues — Aix-en-Provence — l’Isle sur la Sorgue).

Terri Hanson Mead is the multi-award winning author of Piloting Your Life, Managing Partner of Solutions2Projects, LLC, and an advocate for women through all of her platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and this blog. Terri is the mother of two college aged kids, is based in Redwood City, CA and in her spare time, loves to travel, cook, play tennis, and fly helicopters around the San Francisco Bay Area, especially under the Golden Gate Bridge.