Second time up to bat and we nailed it. Holy shit this is a beautiful part of the world. Pinch yourself picture perfect kind of pretty.

Here is the journey should you find yourself in this part of the world:

Aix en Provence – Rognes – Lourmarin – Bonnieux – La Coste – Roussillon – Gordes – Aix en Provence

Each village was 15 to 20 kilometres apart, and each had its own thing going on so really quite ideal for a woman who tires from being a tourist in the bat of an Hourglass mascaraed eyelash.

I’m not going to throw superlatives at you because I’m too lazy, but in the tourist day out Buzzfeed article this day would be nudging for some gold coloured metal.

Because it’s Autumn and it was Sunday the roads had been cleared for the Secret Royal tour and were relentlessly decorated on either side by rust and orange coloured foliage.

There were a lot of oohs ahhs and jesus we’re in a French movie exclamations coming from the Renault, I can say that much.

The days are short so we made the team decision to meander till twilight then take the autobahn home… in the dark.

Which is all very well till you’re a bunch of tourists trying to enter a galaxy of stars hurtling past you at 130 kph, and they’re the crazy light and you feel decidedly like the darkness.

The first toll gate:

What the fuck where do we go?

Go to the green the green

Go to the green

What green?

It’s all fucking green

Not the truck, don‘t go in the truck lane

Which one is the truck lane?

Why is there no ticket coming out?

Shit there’s a truck behind us

(truck starts leaning on horn)

Nous n’avons pas de billet! Nous n’avons pas de billet!

Ok ok there’s the ticket great

Where are the lanes ? Where are the lanes? Why are there no lanes?

Jesus this is Crash Bandicoot!

Funny. So funny. Sore on the sides funny. Suspected broken rib.

Then we were back in Aix and it was time to park the car in the building that had worked well the night before. But didn’t work now.

So we found ourselves in the old town in the narrowest streets you could imagine and all I could remember was our airbnb host Sylvain warning us: Don’t drive into the old town!

That GPS bitch who had been immaculate all day pulled a swift one and directed us to a private car park we couldn’t get into, as evidenced by a not negotiable metal bollard, with flashing lights in case we didn’t understand the permanence of the device itself.

So our courageous and cool-headed driver had to reverse out of what was the road equivalent of a water shoot, till he found a small drive way where he pulled the best five point turn I’ve ever seen in my life. Respect.

Then we found a parking building. To be honest we fell upon it.

Then we parked, went home, drank gin and spent the next few hours marvelling at the memories we had just made before falling into simultaneous comas.

A day with two seemingly opposite halves working together to create a singular wholeness. Yin and Yang in France.