Everything Provence!
The nitty-gritty of my retreat + recommendations galore
When I think of Provence, two things come to mind. First, the cicadas. They are buzzing at all hours, from the moment we wake up, right up until bedtime. One of the women on the retreat likened their sound to a sprinkler system — uncanny! Now, whenever I hear a sprinkler system going off, I’ll think of cicadas and the French countryside. The second thing is the light. In Provence, it is always golden hour. The light is incredible, drenching everything it touches in a warm, yellow glow. It didn’t get dark until about 10 pm each night. An extended golden hour.
This post has taken a long time to write, and may take you a long time to read. We’re going to cover:
The retreat itself; our hosts, the group of women, what it was like
Where we stayed
The art workshop!
What we did in each of the villages (Lourmarin, Roussillon, Bonnieux, Aix)
This one is quite long, so you will want to click through Substack to read it.
Our Hosts:
We briefly discussed this in Monday’s post, but I ultimately chose The Cottage Table Experience for my retreat. More on why I went, and why I chose this particular retreat can be found below.
This was a bit of a wild thing for me to do. Once I got past the excitement of the trip. (I was going to Provence! I was going to paint in the sunshine!), anxiety crept in. What had I just spent my money on? I was going to spend a whole week of scheduled fun with strangers?