I must admit that I never had a strong interest in visiting France. Perhaps it was too well-known and oft-lauded. Perhaps I thought the language was too presumptuous in being called the “most romantic”. However, I can see now that these descriptors are well earned. France’s cities and towns are a treasure for the eyes and the mind, full of beauty and history. The charming polished stone rues in Avignon and Nîmes leave me envious that I can’t pick up and spend a few years living in a medieval apartment overlooking a courtyard, busying myself with the simple pleasures of frequenting cafes and studying le parler.
f/J
A hill town on the southern edge of the Vaucluse plateau, its houses stacked in dry-stone terraces up the slope so that the village and the rock beneath it are hard to tell apart. Fortified since the eleventh century, and built from limestone quarried out of the hillside it stands on.
Images © Joshua Klein — please write for licensing