Provence

Hi Aria, Your first trip to Provence! How exciting. When are you traveling? A helpful first step for selecting a base, particularly with only 3 days, is to mark your sightseeing priorities on a map. (After you do this, you’ll wish you could stay longer)

If you want to tour the countryside, charming St Rémy en Provence is a bit more central, as a base. Nîmes, Arles and Avignon are not far. And if you plan on a day for the Luberon villages, it’s less than 2 hours away.

On the other hand, if you want to delve deeply into the Luberon villages, then the countryside around Île sur la Sorgue might be better. But with just 3 days, I’d opt for St Rémy.

I second Saint Rémy's recommendation, it is both charming and very convenient with a car. Arles, Avignon, Les Baux de Provence, L'Isle sur la Sorgue, etc. will all be within easy reach. With 3 days you will need to make choices of course - to me, Arles is the unmissable one.

Provence is bigger than people think, so it kind of depends where and what you want to see. The western part (Avignon, Nimes, Arles), and the eastern part (Aix-en-Provence, Marseilles).

For the West, have a look at L'Isle-sur-le-Sorgue. We loved how the water surrounds and burbles through the town, and took advantage of the river for an awesome tube ride down from Fontaine de Vaucluse. Most of Provence is very hot and dry so this was a nice option. And its very central to Avignon and the Luberon, and only about an hour to Pont du Gard and Nimes.

For the East, probably Aix itself. I'm afraid I don't know as much about that part.

We also found Saint Rémy to be a great base. We visited Arles, Avignon, Uzes, and the Pont du Garde, Orange, Les Baux, and the Luberon from our base.

St. Remy looks nice. I know the original poster indicated they had a car. Wondering if this is also a good base when you do not have a car.

visiting Arles, Avignon, Uzes, and the Pont du Garde and the Luberon from our base is also on my list.

I would not make my base St-Remy if dependent on public transportation for the simple reason that St-Remy has no train station. Any side-trip you wanted to take would have to at least start with a bus ride, which would limit the practical reach of your day-trips. For some destinations you'd be heading first to Arles or Avignon and then switching to a train or a second bus. Not only do those cities have good rail service, but they are also bus hubs from which you'd be able to get to more places without having to make connections.

I recommend playing around with Rome2Rio.com to see what sort of bus/train arrangements you'd need to make from any town you're considering as a base to the various places you want to go. Rome2Rio is generally accurate about the form of transportation available and (I think) also about the point where you'd need to transfer. it is absolutely not trustworthy about fares, travel times, or frequencies, so ignore those except for broad, general guidance. Just keep clicking through the website until you find the name of the bus company providing the service you'll need to take and go to its website for accurate schedule information.

For train schedules, use the SNCF website.

Thank you all so much for the advice!!! So helpful! I wish we could stay more than 3 nights in Provence but we have Nice and few other stops planned for our 2 week trip next month.

Would you like to share the rest of your route? Is it all set in stone? 3 nights (not days) is indeed a bit short, although it leaves enough time to visit a few places.

Hi ariaconn, I sent you a private message on 9/13.

We just got back from Nice in August and we loved it so much that we are going back in a week. It was FABULOUS. I LOVED Eze, Saint Paul de Vence, Saint John Cap Ferret, and Monaco. Cannes and Antibes didn't interest me. Eze and Nice were my favorite. I hope that you have a wonderful trip.