Romantic, picturesque, surprising: The Provence you can鈥檛 miss
| Avignon, France
Every summer, courtesy of my television, FOMO arrives.
FOMO, or 鈥渇ear of missing out,鈥� is the sense that excitement is happening elsewhere and you鈥檙e not on hand to share it. I especially experience it every July when the Tour de France appears on TV, rolling at bicycle speed through the meadows and mountains and villages of France. Especially rural France. Especially Provence.
You know the images. The poppies, the Roman ruins, the roadside farm carts. Everything looks ready to eat. And you wonder: Is it that gorgeous? That idyllic? That delicious?
Why We Wrote This
This summer鈥檚 Tour de France has come and gone. But memories of cycling through Provence will stay vivid for a long time.
Friend, it is.
But Provence is also not as it seems. It鈥檚 not as sleepy or unpeopled as it appears on postcards. A recent visit 鈥� a modest attempt to quit 鈥渕issing out鈥� 鈥� revealed countless places and people as newfangled and surprising as anywhere, ancient architecture notwithstanding. Many had perhaps heeded their own yearnings and moved to Provence from far away. In Roussillon, we bought a scarf from a Scottish woman, and the evening before we鈥檇 met a woman who鈥檇 emigrated 30 years ago from Amsterdam.
鈥淲hy?鈥� we asked.
She smiled and replied, 鈥淲hy do you think?鈥� And thence unspooled a complicated story about 濒鈥檃尘辞耻谤.
Meanwhile, it鈥檚 true that bikes are everywhere. People commute on them, pull kids to school in little carts with them, use them to ferry produce in giant metal baskets. One day 鈥� a holiday 鈥� bikes were stacked along the parapets of a bridge built in 3 B.C. while their owners picnicked on the riverside meadow, or tended cook fires under nearby trees, or splashed in the water around the bridge鈥檚 stone feet. There were families. There were friends. There were romantics.
We biked, too, of course. But we鈥檙e back home now, and July鈥檚 tour has again come and gone, this time through places we鈥檇 been. Places now unforgettably more vivid.
Which, of course, has made our FOMO only bigger. And sweeter, too.
