With her camera and laptop close at hand, Carolyne Kauser-Abbott traded in her business suits for the world of freelance writing and social media consulting. Carolyne is the founder of the digital magazine Perfectly Provence. Focused exclusively on Provence, this website is an essential online resource, a digital magazine for …

The Gift of a Town Perched on a hillside with its back to the Mistral wind, Ansouis is a gem of a village in the Luberon that definitely earns its status as one of the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. With its tiny laneways, houses built into ancient ramparts, …

In Portugal, the culinary rumour is that there are 365 (or more) ways to cook salt-cod (bacalhau) – one for every day of the year. Cod is called morue in French. It is quite common to find this fish on menus, and it is often the “centre” of attention in the traditional Provencal aioli (recipe here). Gilles recipe for brandade a purée of salt cod, olive oil and other ingredients is below.

Travel Guides for Provence Remember when we carried around hefty paperbacks to guide our travels? In the 1980s, long before smartphones, tourists faithfully checked these guidebooks for reviews on hotels, restaurants and must-see sights. Backpackers conscious of space and weight often discarded the pages for a city or region once …

Porquerolles is the largest of the 3 Iles d’Or (Islands of Gold), easily accessible from the coast. We did the short (20 min) crossing from La Tour Fondu, near Hyères, roughly a 90-minute drive from Aix-en-Provence, depending on traffic. I hadn’t visited Porquerolles for many years and was surprised at …

Contributor blog post by Caroline Longstaffe: Recently someone who only had four days to spend in Provence asked me if I had to choose between a visit to Aix-en-Provence or Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, which would it be. Preferably I’d find the time for both but as stunning a city as Aix is, …

For many, Peter Mayle’s best-selling novel A Year in Provence was their introduction to the Provencal countryside. Images of the Côte d’Azur have long covered the pages of travel magazines. Still, it was Mayle’s descriptions of bumbling through a home renovation in the arrière-pays (translation: backcountry or hinterland) that shifted our …

For someone who had never spent much time in Marseille, now I’m loving it! I jumped at the chance to join a cooking class in Marseille with Gilles Conchy of Provence Gourmet. Marseille is a city of wide, busy streets and tight alleys. High-end fashions and ethnic robes. Elegant eateries …

Contributor blog post by Aixcentric: There seems to have been a deluge of work by Picasso recently, in Marseille, in Aix, in Les Baux, in Cannes, but the small exhibition at Aix’s Pavillon Vendome, ‘Villers Picasso – Coup de Soleil’ really is worth investigating. André Villers was just 22 and …

Plenty of villages in the Luberon Valley lay claim to les plus beaux villages de France (the most beautiful villages in France), and many of those proudly display Villages Fleuris (flowering villages) emblems on local street signs. Enchanted by weather-worn scenes of charming hilltop hamlets and gently numbed by a glass of …