Provence in September

yes, will be renting a car. Will be flying to Paris, and thought we would take a train to Avignon and pick up car there. Does this sound like a good idea?

Coming from Paris, the Avignon TGV station would be a good place to pick up the car, because you avoid having to pick up and drive out of a congested urban area where driving is a hassle.

With a car it makes sense to home base somewhere other than an urban area, that is, not in Avignon, Arles, Nimes, or Aix.

There are many choices for home-basing in Provence. Just 3 of these, in the country, but not too far from places you'll want to see, are:

Isle-sur-la-SorgueRoussillonSt. Remy

Isle is closer to Avignon and points west and north of Avignon. Roussillon is somewhat closer to the Luberon hill towns. St. Remy is closer to Arles.

At some point it will help you to look at a map

such as this one

Any suggestions for somewhere close to Aix en Provence and that area? Thought might make sense to spend 3 or 4 days near Arles and remaining 3 or 4 days near Aix, Are these particular towns worth considering?

Your question: "Thought might make sense to spend 3 or 4 days near Arles and remaining 3 or 4 days near Aix?"

I'm not sure what you propose (quoted above) is the best plan. You're spending your entire time home basing along the southern (Arles) and southeastern edge (Aix) of Provence.

The idea of home-basing most people have is to locate centrally to the things you want to see, so that the day trips are easy and short.

By locating both home bases in the south and southeastern edges, you leave yourself with potentially long drives.

I'm thinking one home base could be either near Arles or Aix (but not inside Aix because of driving hassles); and the other home base could be farther north in Provence.

At this point, I recommend you look at an online map, or hard copy map if you have one that shows detail--and then this will start to make more sense to you.

You said 2 home bases in one week. I've home based in Arles with a car, although don't know if I'd do it again. A car is useful to reach country destinations from Arles, such as Les Baux and other places, if you don't mind some driving challenges within the narrow streets of the historic center of Arles, when returning home in the evening. Arles is the only one of the four larger cities that I'd recommend driving into (the four being Avignon, Nimes, Aix, and Arles).

On days you want to explore urban areas like Nimes and Avignon, you can leave the car parked and train it to the urban areas, train travel is simple and quick and leaves you off in the city center without the need to find parking.

We just came back from 4 days in Provence a couple of weeks ago. We home based in Arles with the rental car we picked up in Avignon, after we had TGV'd from Paris.

We absolutely loved Arles as a home base; because of the central location, the hotel we had picked, the sights, and the wonderful restaurants, that we walk to at night. It was a great town to wander around in at night.

Yep, you don't even want to attempt driving into Arles without a GPS, but it is still a great town.

We really like the Wed and Sat markets. We had a great lunch in the park one day after we had purchased a $4 pizza, $.50 worth of some yummy fresh tomatoes, some fresh goat cheeze, and a good $5.00 bottle of wine.

My wife also bought every French table cloth she could find at the markets, and out them in my luggage. I thought I was going to be overweight comming home.

It would be a great to look at all of the towns, and see which ones will have markets or fairs when you are there.

If you want 2 different bases, I'd recommend you first stay in or near Forcalquier or Cereste for example to discover the Luberon area. Cereste is quite a good base for that. Then you could move down south near Aix en Provence or Aubagne, or even somewhere by the sea like Cassis so you can discover the area near the coastline as far as the western part of the Var departement. But this all depends on how you plan keeping busy, whether you prefer walking or visiting museums and other cultural places - if you prefer being nearer the sea or up in the high Provence mountains. There are also beautiful places in the departement called Alpes de Haute Provence that are wilder and not so much on the beaten path.

Just to offer slightly different advice: Another alternative is to train to Lyon and spend your first night there. After spending a bit of time in that city, you could drive south and spend some time in the northern edges of Provence. Any number of small towns would work as a convenient "home base" and you might even have time to drive through the Ardeche Gorge area. For the southern section, I like Arles as "home base" because it is a bit larger and provides more to do in the evenings when I finish day trips.

The question of car vs. train into towns like Nimes really depends on your personal comfort. Having done both, I think either option works fine, but then I live in an urban area and routinely use trains and cars to travel around congested cities.

We have guests quite frequently who split there time in Western Provence between two bases - one near Arles/St. Remy and the other here in the Luberon. This seems to work very well and gives you broad coverage of the whole are while keeping driving times during the day to a minimum.

-Kevin

We have done this several times. We stay in the twon of Sablet, north of Avignon. We have driven from there to all the locations mentioned as day trips: Luberon towns, Arles, Avignon, Isle sur La Sorge, Vaision, etc. Unless you are going to the far eastern area nearer to Italy, it is easy to get around.

Sablet has a lot of vacation rental homes, but no hotels.

Last fall we stayed in Lourmarin and visited Vaison, Seguret, Gigondas, Banon, Aix (yes, we drove into Aix and parked with no problem), Roussillon, Isle sur la Sorgue, Bonnieux, Gordes, Cassis, St Remy, Uzes, Pont du Gard. Driving around and seeing the scenery and vineyards is fantastic (take a GPS). If you want two towns, I'd vote for Vaison (lively Tuesday market) and Uzes (Wednesday and Saturday markets).

In September, some of the towns have festivals associated with the return of livestock from their summer pastures in the Alps.

We were in St. Remy during the Spring version (heading to the Alps) of this. There was a street fair, a "running of the sheep" procession, and a cookout. It was really marvelous, and you might want to plan your stay accordingly.

I agree that Arles is a great home base for the southern choice -- and we even did it without a GPS. The old town is a good walking size, with good shopping, nearby restaurants and great Roman sites.

Thanks to the other posters above for smaller towns in the Luberon or the north -- I've been wanting just this kind of information for our next trip.

A decade ago, things were a real mess!...

Tourist were going the wrong way down one-way streets, circling around aimlessly for hours, and sometimes even driving right past Arles without a clue.

Thank goodness the 21st century is here and we can rely on GPS instead of learning how to read maps or, even worse, stopping to ask for directions.