Don't be a tourist. Be our guest!

I am not going to bore you with more pictures of people painting. So, here are a few pictures of what we are seeing on our tour. These pictures were taken in the garden located at the Mausole de St Paul in St Remy de Provence, which is the hospital where Van Gogh spent the last year of his life. Most of his famous paintings like the irises, starry night, etc…were done here.

It is still too early to have the lavender in bloom but it is starting.

Everyone took close up pictures of the red poppies.

The hôpital is still in use. It is only for women who are in distress. The therapy used is art therapy. All these paintings and sculptures were done by the patients.

The patient’s paintings were for sale so Holly and Betsy looked though them to see which ones to buy.

I decided to add a picture of Ghislaine painting since she was not in my series of pictures the first day. The olive trees she is painting are the same ones Van Gogh painted years ago (you can recognize the trunks of the trees on his paintings).

By the way, the group has been there for 3 days and they are already fluent in French, able to read the Figaro magazine. Amazing!

You too can do this. Check our list of tours in France, Belgium and Spain. In addition to painting tours, we also offer cultural and cooking tours.

Who says life is easy? Who says that being on vacation is a piece of cake? Today, the painters on the oil painting workshop to Provence have been confronted to a big challenge: painting the hilltop village of Gordes.

Here is Lynn Gertenbach’s painting in progress (Lynn is the teacher on this trip).

For the students, it was more of a struggle.

Bobbi and Betsy found a shady part but to get there they had to be a bit of a climber.

Holly was even more adventurous. After climbing, she went down a wall to be in the middle of a field with flowers. All the tourists coming to Gordes took pictures of her. She is going to be in pictures all over the world.

From Left to Right, Josephine’s easel (sorry Josephine, you are hidden behind Ghislaine), Ghislaine, Lynn (standing up), Lori and Patrish. They didn’t feel like climbing to paint. Besides, they like to paint a street going down towards Gordes to make it even more dramatic so they chose another spot by the side of a non busy road.

Oh, I do have a picture of Josephine. I can stand behind Josephine and she doesn’t hear me because she listens to her iPod.

Lori is advertising for me because she is wearing the “French Escapade” visor I gave each of them. You can tell by her smile that even though it was not easy to paint all those medieval houses, it was still fun.

But the trip is not all about painting. We went to an olive oil factory and the owner, Andre, gave us a tour of the factory explaining how he makes olive oil.

Then, the best part, was the tasting:  plain olive oil, basil olive oil, truffle olive oil and rosemary olive oil. Even though everyone’s suitcase was already heavy when they arrive, everyone bought the oil. How can you resist such a great first cold press, extra virgin fresh olive oil?

So far, it has been a wonderful trip. The group is great, very funny and everyone is getting along.

Great weather, great food, handsome people, what else can you dream of?

On the first day of our oil painting workshop, we stayed at the house or in our village of Venasque.

Here is Patrish painting from the courtyard.

Lori is doing a sketch before starting her painting.

Josephine chose to paint a little street in the village. She got help from the teacher, Lynn. Lynn is actually painting on Josephine’s painting to add some shadows to it.

Holly and Betsy, all equipped with their aprons, are painting an arch way, the unique entrance to the village back in the medieval time.

Bobbie is not painting, but prefers to chat. Ok, don’t listen to me (or should I say don’t believe what I write) because Bobbie did paint but here we were ready to go out for dinner.

But where is the last student? Ghislaine?? Actually Ghislaine took a nap while everyone was painting so I don’t have a pic because I didn’t dare to go to her bedroom just to take a picture!!! Anyhow, she is allowed to sleep while everyone paints because she is the fast painter in the group and usually does 2 paintings while the others do one.

Tomorrow, we are going to an amazing place: Gordes. Here is a picture of it (and me but that is less important, although….) so it will make you want to read more tomorrow to see what everyone painted there.

Stay tuned.

Lynn Gertenbach, an oil painter from South California, has arrived with her students for a week long in Provence.

Luckily, the weather is wonderful, even quite hot. Until last week, it had been chilly in France, even here in Provence, which is very unusual. But now the sun is here and the sky is blue.

We are staying a week long at the same location, la maison aux volets bleus, in Venasque, a charming village in the Luberon.

Here is the group at dinner:

From L to R: Ghislaine, Holly, Betsy, Bobbie, Lynn, Patrish, Josephine and Lori.

After dinner, we had a great surprise. The little tiny village had a special festivity planned: a latin night. There was a DJ playing not only salsa, rumba and merengue but also some disco, hip pop, etc…

Eight of us went to check it out (while Patrish decided to stay at the hotel and read). The minute we got there, Holly and her mother Betsy went on the dance floor and never left it.

Holly and Betsy danced all night long…

Well, the dance floor was gravels since we were on an outside parking lot. Lori, Josephine, Ghislaine, Bobbie, Lynn and I joined them. Luckily, the DJ taught us the moves for all the latin dances so it became sort of a line dance. There were 4-year-old kids dancing the night away as well as older people. Some were really excellent some were just trying out but the most important is that everyone had a blast.

We called it a night around 11PM. Nice start for our week.

To follow the full itinerary of our painting week in Provence, check our site www.frenchescapade.com.

I continue my serie of pictures with what guests in my group do in Provence.

During their downtime, Cathy and Sandra like to rest and have a glass of wine:

Kaye prefers to just watch the world go by…

…while Carol spend her free time painting and making postcards:

But what are Kay and Susan doing? Nobody have seen them in awhile. Finally we got a phone call from Susan asking what is the name of the hotel we are staying at. What???? Where are they? They actually went to town, the town of Saint Remy, for some shopping and to buy a pizza for dinner. They walked back with their pizza, and walked and walked but didn’t find the hotel.

They finally stopped in another hotel and told them that they were lost. The gracious owner from the other hotel asked them what hotel they were looking for but they didn’t remember the hotel’s name…..They told the lady that the hotel had 2 swimming pools, the food was excellent and the garden very beautiful!!!! Well, that didn’t really help the owner to locate the hotel. They also told her they were part of Jackie’s group. I wish I would be so popular that the enitre town would know who Jackie is….The owner showed them a brochure with different hotels but they couldn’t find it.

Kay was concern….Not about  getting lost but she was worried her pizza would be cold! They finally asked the woman if they could use the wifi connection there and they called us to get the name of the hotel. So they walked and walked till they made  it home with ……a cold pizza.

Besides a cold pizza, the story has an happy ending. They made it back before dark.

On the trip, everyone has different interests. Lupe visited every church. When she could…because some of the doors were quite huge and heavy, too heavy for Lupe’s muscles:

Laurie preferred to go up and down the stairs:

Really, I mean it, she likes stairs:

Judy and Megan preferred to explore the culinary flavors of French food like lavender ice cream:

But Judy also liked to paint some wonderful watercolors:

And you? What would you like to do when you come to Provence with French Escapade?

Today we spent the day in Cavaillon, the “melon” town.

After going to the market and finding out how to recognize fresh veggies, ripe pears and sweet melons, we went back to jJ Prevot’s restaurant and starting to cook.

The chef, Jean-Jacques Prevot, is the melon specialist. He is famous for all his recipe with melon.

We mad a melon flower with a losbster sauce for starter (served with ham):

What will be your reason to decide to live in Provence? The sunshine 300 days a year? The lavender? The olives? The nougat? The potteries? The art? or ….?

Well, Sherri M., one of our guests on the cooking tour for women in Provence has another reason for living here:

Sherri M. says:

“No cooking expedition to France would be complete without an exploration of that most precious of “mushrooms”
known as the diamond of the kitchen- the truffle. While many amateur cooks visiting France would be content to purchase truffle pieces or truffle oilat Fauchon or Hediard, we were fortunate to go on a truffle hunt in Gordes with Robert Florent, a third generation truffle hunter, and his son.

Our hunt took us in search of summer or white truffles, but Mssr. Florent educated us about winter or black truffles as well. We learned about truffles from the region, from Perigord, and the less desirable truffles from China. We now know how truffle oil is made, what truffle products to avoid at the grocery, and how to store and use fresh truffles.

This is not Sherri but Diane holding the truffle found by Robert’s dog.

(Sherri continues..): For me, it was love at first sight, or should I say at first bite. The unique flavor of summer truffles, which we tried thanks to the hospitality of Mssr. Florent who welcomed us into his home and served us savory truffle canapes, and winter truffles which I’ve been privileged to taste in the past, had made me dreaming about relocating to Provence and marrying the charming and entertaining Mssr. Florent :)!”

Here is a picture of Sherri cooking while dreaming of the truffle man!!!!!!

We are now in Saint Remy de Provence and a new group has arrived for….cooking in Provence.

Everyone has received an apron to be ready for the cooking sessions:

Today we went to an educative farm where we cooked a ratatouille, a typical Provencal dish. But first, we needed to go and pick up the veggies in the garden: eggplants, zucchinis, tomatoes, purple basil, pepers and more. Some were not small although everything is organic.

The farm has many different species of each veggies. For example, the tomatoes: you can see on the picture below some of the tomatoes we used for our salad: green tomatoes, black tomatoes, pineapple tomatoes, moroccan tomatoes, roma tomatoes and some whom I forgot the names:

Everyone took part of the cooking, even Stephanie who doesn’t eat tomatoes and Sherri who doesn’t care about cooking but only about eating:

September is also the time for the harvest of the grapes. That is what we did. We used the grapes along with figues and apples to make a fruit clafuti.

As for me, besides doing the translation, I picked up little tiny flowers…

Check the complete itinerary of our cooking tour in Provence.

Although it is a painting workshop, our guests have more to do in Provence: shopping on the  market and eating of course. Ah the wonderful French food!

Norwegian salad with all different seafood:

Here is rice with gambas flambes:

Donna is enjoying her Irish coffee:

Here is a chocolate cake with “creme anglaise”, prepared by Martine, our hostess at our hotel in Venasque:

Bust besides eating, there is shopping: We went to Isle sur la Sorgue to the provencal market. I was told in the morning that they wanted to only spend 30 min shopping and then painting of course. I gave everyone up to 1h15 and everyone came back at the last minute, even Victoria, the teacher, who is usually “obsessed about painting”.

And here is some of the shopping of the day:

Brenda bought a bright shirt/dress/all usage piece:

Linda bought a flowery shirt:

Susan bought some flashy sunglasses, perfect match with her outfit:

You too want to be in Provence? Make sure to check our site to find out more about our painting but also cooking or cultural tours to Provence but also Belgium Switzerland and Spain.

Yesterday, like I mentioned in my previous post, we spent the afternoon in Maubec, a very quiet village in the Luberon. When I say quiet, I really mean it. There was only one car that drove by during the 2 hours we were there. Yes, Victoria only allows people to paint the same painting for 2 hours. After that, the light has changed she said and it is a completely different painting.

Some people chose to paint the church in the background with vineyards in the foreground. Below is Victoria’s painting of the church and vineyards in Maubec.

Some people decided to paint th grapes. Harvest time is coming up, at the end of September, so the grapes are just wonderful. Jan painted the grapes because buidling is not her thing she said.

Brenda painted the grapes beautifully and finished before everyone else. The two hours window for a painting is not a problem for her, she is done way before that. She is quite fast…

Today we went to St Remy de Provence where Van Gogh painted most of his famous paintings like the irises, starry starry night, etc…Everyone was so inspired to paint where he painted and especially the same olive trees like Donna, below.

Susan M was able to paint because she found her glasses that she had forgotten in Gordes. Good for her.!

Karen made a killer today!!! She decided to put her hat on the ground, put a few euros in it and pointed to it when people wanted to take her picture by saying” Merci beaucoup”. One American woman asked her if she would accept American dollar and she gave her 50cents. If Karen is not going to become very rich, at least, she will not be bothered by too many tourists, which was her intention.

Susan H could have made more than Karen because one woman told her that her painting was beautiful and wanted to buy it. Susan was so overwhelmed, she didn’t know what to say and didn’t sell it. Oh well, next time maybe.

The new group of artists has arrived. It is an oil painting workshop taught by Victoria Brooks.

Yesterday, the day started with a demo from Victoria.

Then everyone started to paint a vignette from the terrace. Our hotel is so cute and charming, there is plenty to paint.

Today, we went to Gordes. If you have been reading my blog you know how beautiful that hilltop village is.

From L to R: Brenda, Linda, Susan H, Jan, Donna, Karen, Victoria and Susan M.

In the morning, the group painted from outside the village looking up to the village on the hill. Some people got intimidated by the complexity of the buildings and they decided to paint the landscape or a little shed by the side of the road. I didn’t take many pics because I was busy shopping for the picnic and then looking for Susan’s glasses (which we found!!!).

In the afternoon, we went to the cute village of Maubec but that will be for my post tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more adventures of our oil painters in Provence. See the complete itinerary of the painting workshop to Provence.

I think it is time for you to see what our guests did during this week. Each artist was asked to show one of their paintings they like the best and here they are:

View from the terrace of our hotel in Venasque by Ann:

Ochre cliffs in the village of Roussillon by Carole:

House in the village of Venasque by Bobbie:

Doorway from a house in Venasque by Pat:

Pottery shop in Roussillon by Loris:

Fabric pattern, displayed in Roussillon, by Pollie:

Courtyard from our hotel in Venasque, by the teacher JoAnne:

Last night, we celebrated Pollie and Carole’s birthday with a tropezienne (cake with vanilla custard) and some champagne. It was also Jerome’s, our chef, birthday:

Our lovely group after loading all the luggages in the van:

Since we can’t see Bobbie much in the picture (yes she is there, you can see her eyes under Carole’ fushia arm, I have taken another one. From L to R: Judy (our general), her mother Lois, Ann, Carole, Pat, Pollie (whose birthday was that day), Bobbie and JoAnne.

I drove everyone to the train station this morning. A page is turned and a new one will start. Tomorrow I will go and pick up an oil painting group. Stay tuned for more painting adventures in Provence with French Escapade.

Like I promised in my previous blog, I want to show you that our guests did paint in addition to shopping, eating, drinking and having fun!!!!!

Here is Bobbie in the garden of the Van Gogh museum in St Remy de Provence:

Here is Carole drawing from the terrace (from our hotel) overlooking the Mont Ventoux:

Below is Ann, very concentrated in the old monastery that is now part of the Van Gogh museum in St Remy:

Pat was also sitting in the same courtyard:

JoAnne, the teacher is doing a critique of everyone’s work in the living room of the hotel:

Lois, our senior but I am not allowed to tell you her age, has been very busy too:

Her daughter, Judy, is not painter but came along for the fun. She is a knitter:

Oops, did I forget anyone? Oh yeah, Pollie. You can find her on the phone….

or feeding the cats…

or shopping on the market…

ok, I was just teasing her. She has been painting a bit too, see below the arts of our artists:

Everyone did a wonderful job, some more abstract, some more colorful but all very meaningful. Good job!

Join us next year on a painting tour to Provence. Check here.

Part 2 of the testimonials from our guests on the Provence painting workshop:

“We had an awesome “surprise” today. After spending part of the day painting ( and knitting ) at the hospital in St. Remy, Jackie took our group to carrieres-lumieres (quarry of lights) to see a wonderful presentation of Van Gogh and Gauguin paintings. They are illuminated on the walls of a former limestone quarry. Tres magnifique! “

“The art of Van Gogh and Gauguin displayed in the “carrieres-lumieres (quarry of lights)” was very inspirational, especially with the music of Brahms and Pavarotti. I was so moved, I almost start crying.”

“It was amazing.You felt like you were in the painting, you were part of the art, it was all around you, even on the floor”.

‘When I first got in, I was disoriented because of the the images on the floor moving under my feet. Then I got used to it and it was fabulous. It affected all your senses: your vision, your motion, your hearing,… I had never seen anything like that”.

Below is a picture of the quarry without the show so you have an idea of the size of the walls.

Besides having fun, people have been painting as well. Yes, really!!! Tomorrow, I will post some pics of people “at work”….

More info about our tours to France, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland at www.frenchescapade.com