Loving Le Vigan

Loving Le Vigan, France, is simple. Visit for a day or two. Wander and unwind. Have a lovely meal. Here are 10 reasons to visit.

I get lost. A lot. For example, in Avignon LuAnne and I wandered the streets for approximately 2 hours before she tore off in search of our hotel to prevent a peeing emergency. That left me alone.

Why didn’t I tear off after her? Cause she’s wily, that one. Fast. And Avignon is full of maze-like, trippy streets. And — shhh, don’t tell anyone — I sort of like being lost.

Unless I’m driving in traffic in a foreign country enamored with multilane roundabouts.

Which is another way of saying I eventually made it back to our hotel, then drove to Nimes the next day with LuAnne as my navigator. That’s the last time we let that happen — me driving, LuAnne navigating. Talk about a one-two punch of Point A to Point Where-The-Hell-Am-I stupidity. I don’t know how we ever made it to Nimes or how we ever made it out. It’s a miracle we’re not still there.

In Nimes, we worked through our road stress by learning about bullfighting and purchasing new outfits, then headed to Le Vigan (pop. 4011) in the Languedoc-Roussillon region the next day.

Loving Le Vigan is easy. Here’s why —

1. It’s gorgeous. The entire area. We could have stayed weeks and not run out of towns and trails and bridges and churches and ruins and hillsides and markets to explore.
2. The * hostel in Le Vigan is awesome. For real.
3. Loads of area vineyards offer tastings.
4. The local market sells sippy cups of Club des Sommeliers wine for €1.75 each.
5. Le Vigan held two “24 Hours for Tibet” marches. Seriously cool, right?
6. One shop had this sign on the door: “On vacation until 30 October.” Uh huh.
7. The chef at Le Jardin should be famous. He’s nothing short of amazing.
8. I met a lovely photographer called Michel, with whom I talked literature and art.
9. LuAnne found her pet of the day, a dog we called Henry that followed us about.
10. Le Vigan is gorgeous. So gorgeous that it deserves two mentions.

We loved Le Vigan so much that we stayed only one day and one night. You heard me right. See, Sixt rental car agency had to have their car back the next day. Our offers to pay for a rental extension fell on deaf ears in anti-capitalist France. I had Skype conversations with three Sixt employees, all of whom were adamant that the car had to be returned by the preassigned date. So we drove the car to Montpellier and parked it in a lot full of a hundred unrented cars.

What that means is this — we have to go back. Le Vigan, we miss you already.