La vie en rosé

Surprisingly early on we started taking about travel – places he’d been, places I’d been, places we’d like to visit.

I asked if he’d ever been to Dubrovnik. It’s been on my bucket list since 1991 when the city was under Serbian bombardment and I heard the mayor (or some official) interviewed on CBC Radio, asking where the hell the west was. The city, he said, was a UNESCO World Heritage site. Would the west be twiddling its thumbs if this was happening to Florence? Good question. It put Dubrovnik on my mind.

No, he’d never been there. Right, it was later decided, we should go in 2025.

Some research followed. It seems I’m not the only one who has Dubrovnik on my mind. Not only is it now, like Venice, overrun with cruise ship passengers, but after the city was used as one of the locations in Game of Thrones, the streets are also packed with diehard fans of the show. Hmm. Not a place for a summer visit. Spring perhaps. Or autumn.

At some point he said something he’d really like to do is just go somewhere and live there for a while, get a feel for what that was like. That comment came back to me and I thought, yeah, that would be cool. Was that Dubrovnik? Or somewhere else?

And it occurred to me that neither of us is getting any younger. Fortunately there are currently no new hips or knees required, but who knows how long that will last? We should, I told him, have an adventure while we can. We should go and live somewhere lovely in the south of France for two months. He loved the idea, but there were some furry practicalities. Who would take care of his dogs for two months? Who would take care of Maisie? Turned out his sister would take care of his dogs and my friend Krys would come from Toronto to take care of Maisie – but only for a month. Okay, a month it is.

But where? Where in the south of France?

Spent some time over the holiday season googling loveliest villages in Languedoc and Provence. There were certainly a lot of contenders. I’d even been to some of them back in 1994 when Mike and spent some time staying in the house Krys and her husband then owned in Vias. I did not want to go back to one of those places. I wanted our destination to be somewhere new to both of us.

A question arose. Would a village somewhere be enough for a month? Should we instead consider a city like Avignon or Aix or Arles, places that might have a cinema or a jazz club? Decided to consult with Krys, who knows the area far better. One of the places she suggested was Cassis, a village on the Mediterranean. Hmm. Hadn’t really thought of that. Would he like to be near the sea? It wasn’t important to me. I was more interested in stunning scenery. Before I even asked, it occurred to me that he only has to look out his window to see a sea. (Yes, unlike me, he does have a waterfront property on the island.) Turns out, no, being beside the Med was not at all important.

And then a memory hit me of sitting on a terrace on the top of a hill in a beautiful medieval village, sipping rosé and looking out over a stunning landscape. Cordes! (Yes, it’s a place I’ve visited before, but not with Mike.)

Or, to give it its now full name, Cordes-Sur-Ciel.

No, it wasn’t on top of the clouds when I was there. This was the view.

I sent him a message, asking if he fancied something otherworldly. I included this link.

The answer was yes, yes, yes!

We’re spending April in Cordes!

To be continued.