Lourmarin

I have to say I really feel like a lucky girl. Hard to believe less than two months ago I was exploring the Cote d’Azure with French-Kissed and on our train ride home through Provence the ground and covered in snow. I am fortunate enough to have been back last weekend and find the seasons have completely changed. This time I was in sundresses and swimsuits. My darling boyfriend has a family home in the region of Luberon, and whenever we get the urge to get out of town we head south for the weekend, which is only a three hour high speed train ride to paradise. Just down the road is the little town of Lourmarin which I fall deeper in love with every time I go visit.

Everything here is so pure, pristine, and sweet in all of its aged and authentic charm.

I swear it’s extremely difficult to get a less than delicious meal in the region.

This is the town school…

This is one of the several boutique hotels in town.

The produce is amazing…

…which is one of the main reasons the food is the best I have eaten in the whole world in the Luberon.

I love how nothing here fancy or over done. I feel so at ease in the world here. Knowing every weekend there will be too short, I slow down and take the time to live fully in each moment.

After my first several trips, we are still finding new things to do. This time we visited the cemetery in Lourmarin. Call me creepy but I love visiting old cemeteries.

French Algerian author and philosopher Albert Camus is buried in the cemetery here. Camus is one of my favorite authors. Being in the Luberon you can see how it must have inspired him. Once I moved beyond the absurdism and existentialism in his work, I really feel his message is more about not letting life distract us from what is incredible about the moment now. There is too much we can’t know, but the simplest things are often the most real and  most beautiful, and thus perhaps the most important. The colors in a pretty sunset, feeling the breeze on your skin and the sound as it rustles through the trees, the smells of the flowers, watching the street lights turn on at twilight, etc. In the Luberon I take the time to appreciate these things. I read his book The Stranger in high school, and as his vivid descriptions of the simple magic in life became so much more important than the plot line as a whole this was the message I took from it. I have also read several other works from Camus but The Stranger is my favorite.

Camus died very young at the age of forty seven in a car accident not far from Lourmarin. His wife is buried next to him.

Another who died young…

I have so many pictures from just one weekend in Provence that I will be sharing them with you in a series of posts this week.