Seeking help for Provence stay

Hi Amy,

We stayed in Avignon (vs. Arles) in May and loved it. We had a car and 4 days to see the area. It was great to have the freedom, and the GPS and A/C!

We loved Avignon (stayed at The Hotel Europe), Arles, Pont du Gard (wonderful, wonderful, wonderful), and the beautiful, twisty-turny drives.

We didn't take any specific tours, but did follow recommendations in Rick's Provence & Riviera book.

Also, Avignon has a TGV station, so getting back to Paris from there should be pretty painless.

Bon voyage!

When is your trip? That might be a deciding factor, especially for public transportation. Weekends are much trickier. I agree that the RS Provence book was just about the only source necessary for my own trip last summer that included five nights in Arles and two in Avignon- no rental car. This was July. (The France book does not have as detailed information for the area.)I found Arles to be quite convenient for both bus and train, since they share a station. We were able to take the bus up to Les Baux (incredible) and also St. Remy from the Arles station. You might also like to go to Isle sur la Sorgue from Avignon. The bus and train stations in Avignon are also next to each other, but Avignon's is sort of seedy and underground. It is about 20 minutes by train or 30-40 minutes by bus between Arles and Avignon. I often recommend Viatours and also at the TI in Avignon there are tons of options for getting out to Pont du Guard, etc. The TGV station is outside the city center of Avignon..

Thanks for the replies! I will be going in May and will be there over the weekend--arriving Friday and leaving Monday. Really want to see Point du Gaurd, a village (Gordes?), and the Papal Palace. On the weekend, does it make more sense for me to just rent a car? Are the roads scary? Is there a lot of traffic? How are the speeds? Is there a lot of stress about worrying about the car? I'll definitely pick up the Provence book to go with the Paris and France books I already have :). Now I think I'll have the complete RS France set--plus I netflix'd his episodes on France (which is how I decided to go to Provence and not Loire.

Thanks again for all of your help. For some reason, the Provence part is much trickier than the Paris and Normandy part--not sure why.

Amy

Given your priorities and time frame, a car is essential (Kent's solid advice notwithstanding). You could organize your sightseeing to only need a car for one day, if that makes a difference.

Have you considered basing yourself in Gordes or other hilltop village? You'd need a car the whole time, but you'd be there at dusk, at night, after the daytrippers leave.

For cities, I prefer Arles to Avignon because of general ambiance, but Avignon arguably has the best mass-transit connections (by a hair--easy to get to Avignon from Arles).

Or depending on when in May you are going, find a town like St. Remy that observes Transhumance with a sort of running-of-the-sheep festival and base yourself there.

Best would be to add a day (or more) to your time there--there is so much to see. (And such a great time of year for a visit!) If you can rejigger your ticket to fly home from Marseilles rather than Paris, you'll be better off.

I found that bus (and to an extent train) service is somewhat to very reduced on Saturday and can be non-existent on Sundays- which means you would either need to rent a car or use tour services to maximize your limited time in this area over a weekend. (If it's not too late, Adam's excellent advice about departure from Marseilles would help, because you are not that far from there, via train, already. Otherwise you take a shuttle bus about 20 minutes to the TGV station, which feels like a mini airport!)
If Pont du Gard and the bridge (it was fabulous!) and palace are tops on your list, it would make sense to base in Avignon and then take a tour to get to some of the villages and scenery. (I have used Viatour several times.) In Avignon they picked me up at the hotel (near the palace) and I did the all- day lavender countryside tour that included a brief stop at Gourdes.

If you have Sunday (or is it Saturday?), you really should go to the market in Isle sur la Sorgue (easy by train)