Kiwi Roaming

For his 60th Steve wanted to do two things, walk a Camino (that’s next week) and stay in a villa in Provence. It took weeks to find the perfect place, large enough for ourselves and friends, close to a village with a few shops and restaurants, close to other villages for exploration and not too outrageously expensive!

Villa des Fontaines luxury family home with pool is perfect. Our photos won’t do it justice so check it out on AirBNB. The owners are Finnish/Singaporean and they built this as their holiday home in the south of France 10 years ago, it’s modern, really really well designed and oh so spacious. There are multiple outdoor seating areas, an outdoor kitchen by the pool, little things like the portable stereos, table tennis table, pool toys, loads of loungers – all make it seem so lush.

Minna who manages the house is lovely, let us arrive early, really responsive, gave us such a thorough tour and many instructions plus tips on where to go and what to do. We got there early after taking our same Uber Comfort back to the TGV station where we picked up our giant rental car (for my father it’s a Peugeot 5008 7 seater) and waited for Paul and Karen to arrive – they had flown to Lyon and TGV’d down to Avignon that morning. A long game of “can we fit all of our luggage?” tetris was played while the concerned rental car guys kept offering us an upgrade to a mini-van. The collective wisdom won and we headed off on the 30 minute drive to the villa.

We dropped our bags and headed straight back out on foot to buy something for lunch – it was Sunday and after 2pm when kitchens closed so we were limited to quiches from a bakery – and sat in the square in Pernes-les-fontaines. A cute wee village full of fountains, we will go back to explore and try to find all 40+ fountains too.

After a supermarket run (all in the car) we finally poured our first Aperol Spritz and headed into the pool. One executive decision Steve made was to pay for the pool to be heated but with air temperature of 28C and pool temperature of 26.5C it felt cold on entry – but wonderful after a few lengths. It’s about 15m long and deep so Paul and Karen’s blow up flotation devices have been very handy.

BBQ for dinner and lots of catching up. It is quiet here, very relaxed. The subdivision (for want of a better description) is all large properties with large villa’s, big hedges mean you can only see glimpses and rooftops of neighbours. There is a mix of lived in permanently and rented out like our own, 90% are gated and all have gorgeous gardens. Ours has gardeners (Tuesdays) pool person (Wednesdays) and Minna on call / property manager. The owners cars, bikes and other stuff is in the garage (which houses the laundry so we do go in there) and it is so well provisioned, everything we have needed. Below are photos of the villa!