Retraversant à Fontaine-de-Vaucluse

As I walk down the hill from Gordes the next morning, I have a strange feeling. It’s déjà vu. I’ve been here before. And then I remember. I was coming the other way from Fontaine-de-Vaucluse to Gordes with two girls from Hanover, Germany I’d met. It was their idea to rent bicycles from the hostel, which sounded great, but the reality was different. Growing up in the middle of Alaska, I was just able to ride a bike. I had no idea how to work different gears and how to navigate up and down hills. The German people I was riding with had no reference point for my difficulties. In most of Europe, everyone grows up riding bicycles. Eventually, it was just practical, not personal. They left me to my struggle and I made it, somehow, to Gordes and sat somewhere along the side of the hill in the trees to cool off. I found Marita and Sabine’s bikes and there was a note for me tied to one of them letting me know where they were. 

It was the sign, I realize, that triggered my memory. D100. Gordes. Les Cédres. Is it possible that it is the same one from thirty years ago? I suppose that’s unlikely, but who knows.

There are many possible ways to get to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse and I decide to follow where signs and intuition lead. The walk will be between twelve and ten kilometers. I’m still not feeling 100%, but the best thing to do when not feeling well is to walk.

The day is gray and quiet. Mercifully, it was overcast the day of that grueling bike ride, too, and that might also be part of what triggered my memory. Perhaps also the way that the valley opens up with its vineyards.

The hills begin to ring with gray rock formations and I find a beautiful little wooded road called Chemin des Groubelles. What or who is a groubelle? I would love to turn down that path, but not today.

Today, I near the fountain of the closed valley: Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. Rocks, hills, caves gape above me. It is so still that it seems I’m the last person left on earth as I approach the town. It’s lunchtime in France, I realize, which means no one is on the road.

And there is the shining turquoise ribbon of the River Sorgue surrounded by trees of all heights, many still green, some yellow and red with fall. There’s a big parking lot stretching in front of it and I walk through the mostly empty leaf-strewn concrete to sit on a bench overlooking the river.  

Ah, this is where we were! Marita, Sabine and I. No need for conversation as we watched the water move. It was fall thirty years ago, too, and we were wearing sweaters and putting leaves in the water to follow them with our eyes as they slid down the liquid path and I wondered if that is what our lives are like and if so, where the river is taking us, where it will take us. They were such poetic thoughts for a young traveler seeking to be a part of something good in the world. 

It’s nearing the end of the sacred lunch period and I need something to eat, so I walk to the nearest open restaurant and they are kind to a hungry wandering traveler as it begins to rain. I’m able to sit in their beautiful glassed restaurant where there are some families are finishing their meals and a few couples come in while I’m eating, so I feel better about being late. It is warm and soothing in the glass room on a gray day. The waiter’s French sounds strange to me. Almost like he has a Dutch accent in his French. Maybe he does. Or maybe I’m starting to hear the difference in voices. In any case, I have a difficult time understanding him and have to respond mostly based on what I expect him to say or ask. 

I feel better after the meal and ready for rest. There is a promising hotel I looked up the day before called Hôtel du Poete. Looking again on Google Map, it appears to be right next to where I sat along La Sorgue river with Marita and Sabina thirty years ago. How strange!

I walk to the hotel, which is no easy feat in the twist of buildings congested together along the river. It’s no simple matter to find the right road, but when I do, it’s quiet, tree-lined, secluded, and the hotel is completely tucked in with the river.

The lobby is lamp-lit with red toned walls, filled with flowers and places to sit, and glass doors leading to a garden that you can begin to glimpse from inside. It makes me want to sit down and read in the lovely, large room, especially on a rainy day. The gentleman at the front desk greets me warmly and although the price is on the higher side, about 120 Euros per night, it is too welcoming to say no. I reserve a room for two nights.

There are many rooms he could have given me. The hotel prides itself on its interesting rooms. He gives me one overlooking the exact spot where Marita, Sabine and I sat together watching the leaf go down the river thirty years ago. How do these things happen?

I go back downstairs to look around and ask the man about the history of the hotel. There was no hotel on the river thirty years ago. It’s fascinating to think that we were sitting there along the river having poetic thoughts and twenty or so years later, a hotel was built called Hôtel du Poete. 

They named it Hôtel du Poete because a famous poet discovered Fontaine-de-Vaucluse and fell in love with the place in way not unlike my experience as a young woman. He wrote many of his great works in a house overlooking La Sorgue where he wrestled with his love for a woman he saw in Avignon, a love that could not be because she was married. A man whose name means stone arch in Latin and who many consider to be the father of the Renaissance, although there is a long list of claimants to that throne. It was time for me to get to know him. 

Petrarch. 

Next France for Two Months: Diving Deep in the Closed Valley

This is #13 in a series of stories: France for Two Months. Follow the links below to read the other parts of the series starting with the first:
1.   Santa Fe Depot Departure
2.   Return to the Great Lady
3.   Shakespeare and Company Bookstore
4.   Paris Stroll
5.   Paris – des heures exquises
6.   Train to Thonon-les-Bains
7.   Château de Ripaille
8.   Getting up with the Birds: Lac Léman to Lyon to Lille
9.   Navigating to Avignon
10. In the Walled City of Avignon
11. Inside the Rich Ochre of Roussillon
12. Up the Steep Calades to Gordes