Ruins & Rosé

We wake up on Sunday morning to Silas asking “mommy, daddy can I come down the stairs?” As annoying as it may be to get out of bed at 6:35am, at least he isn’t trying to down them alone. He’s fully trained to ask us anytime he wants to go down them.

Almost every step is a different width or at a different angle!

The sun is shining today but it’s a little colder - in the 40s - and the wind is blowing like crazy! 30-40mph expected throughout the day. We want to visit the mountain town Les Baux, but figure we should stay off the mountain today due to wind. Instead, we decide to stay in Saint Remy and visit the famous ancient Roman ruins/archaeological site in town - Glanum. We finish our breakfast, bundle up and head out the door.

We get to the site as they open - 10am - just in time for Clementine’s first nap to be in the carrier. We park across the street from the site where there were 2 very in tact ancient structures: a funerary monument and a triumphal arch. Known as “Les antiques” to locals, they are 2 of the best”preserved Roman monuments in all of France. These structures marked the entrance to the ancient city originally, but are now several hundred yards away from what has been excavated so far.

“Les Antiques”

The wind is blowing pretty hard as we cross the street to the welcome center so we warm up a bit there before we venture out again. Brennan and Silas are both questioning why we are out in the elements to look at some “old rocks” 😂 I live for this stuff though. I think that’s why I can’t walk past a ruin or a museum without wanting to stop. In America, “old” means a century or two. Here it means entire civilizations, millennia of human history! Just hard to fathom and very humbling to experience things like ancient Roman infrastructure (like arches still standing), granite columns with intricate carvings, running water through aqueducts, all built without technology…just math, intellect and pure muscle (slave muscle usually).

In welcome center, they have 3D renderings of what the town used to look like - how do they even know this?! Apparently they have excavated only about 10% of the original city from the ground. Here is a snapshot from the educational booklet I had to buy:

Claude can explain this city’s history more succinctly than I can, see below:

Glanum, a Greco-Roman city flourished here from around the 6th century BC. Founded by the Celto-Ligurian Salyens and later Hellenized, it grew into a prosperous Roman town complete with a forum, thermal baths, and temples. It was abandoned after Germanic raids in the 3rd century AD and slowly swallowed by earth.

After Glanum was abandoned, the people who resettled the area used stones quarried directly from its ruins to construct the new town — meaning Saint-Rémy itself is physically built from an ancient Roman city. For centuries, nobody knew Glanum existed underground; the only visible remnants were Les Antiques (the mausoleum and arch). It wasn’t until 1921 that archaeologists began excavating and revealing the buried city to the world.

Zoom in to see the intricate stone work!

The thermal baths were so interesting. I learned that basically the city had a spa/rec center area where people would go daily to wash (or have their slaves wash them) and “work out” with friends.

I don’t know why videos aren’t working on this blog (will have to fix on my computer when I get home), but I did get a great video of the water still running down from the Alpilles through the ancient city in aqueducts!

I saw a sign that said “belvederes” and realized that was a real French word, not just a French vodka 😂 I learned that it meant a “fair sight” or “beautiful view” - and that’s just what I got when I followed the signs!

At this point, we are on the upper section of the site an walking into the 40mph wind. It was 50° but felt more like 30°! Silas was miserable and Clementine started to wake up, so we decided to head to the car and find a lunch spot.

Restaurants serving lunch before noon is really not common in Saint Remy and it was only 11:30! But the good part about that is cafes are usually empty at this time, perfect time for us to get a table and settle in with some cafe au lait, before the crowd rushes in after noon.

We head toward the main square in town and grab a table at Grande Cafe Riche. We are all so cold, soup is the only thing that sounds good! Of course the menu is entirely in French, but our waitress does speak English, and Claude translates the menu for us. We end up ordering their ramen dish and they had a “plat enfant” for kids - chicken nuggets and fries! Silas was in heaven. And it was honestly the most food he’s eaten for a meal since we left Texas 😂

By the time we are done eating, there is a small line outside of people waiting to get in. It’s a busy Sunday afternoon in Saint Remy! We head back to the house for nap time but Clementine and Brennan are the only ones who nap. We thought it would be good to keep Silas awake today since we have a sitter coming tonight and he can go to bed early. Brennan has been fighting a viral illness since Wednesday, and we hope this is the last day. It’s really taken a lot of his energy unfortunately.

Silas watches Paw Patrol on the couch next to me as I blog about the previous days. This blog thing is a full time job, I swear! But I know I will move looking back on it one day.

I sent a message to the host, Genevieve, on how to lock the doors (they haven’t been locked since we arrived because we can’t figure them out 😂), when we take the trash to the street and how much the babysitter will charge. Genevieve has been SO KIND, and actually booked our sitter for us. She is a retired midwife and lives next door, so I’m comfortable with the girl she hires even though I’ve never met her. Genevieve walks over to help with the doors in fabulous French style and oversized Prada sunglasses. Her English is broken but I gather that she recently had some type of plastic surgery on her face and she is still recovering - she embodies everything you would imagine about a typical French woman in her 60s. She explains the door handle has to be up before you insert the key (who knew), tells us the trash goes out Monday nights and the sitter will charge €15/hour. WHAT A BARGAIN! As she leaves, I almost ask her “does the sitter speak English” and then think, of course she does. Genevieve knows we don’t speak French so I’m sure she took that into consideration.

When everyone wakes up, we hop in the car and drive to - where else? - another grape farm! It’s a quick drive heading toward the mountains and the view is besutiful. Mas De La Dame has been family-owned for four generations. As we drive up the long winding road to the chateau, we see grapevines and olive trees with the Alpilles as the backdrop.

We are the only people there when we arrive and the woman working spoke very little English, but she was very kind. I tasted 2 whites, 2 rosés and 1 red - all very good! The deeper colored rosé got its coloring from aging in oak barrels.

This is the second domaine we visited and I’m always surprised to see just how many types of grapes they grow. Each colored patch on this map is a different type of grape, and all their wines are blends.

Another interesting fact I learned from the woman was that the famous Nostradamus made a prediction on the very property! Her English was rough but I pieced together that he said the ocean will meet this property one day. Given the ocean is about 30 miles away, it may take a while for this one to come true, but who knows!

I’m also not sure I would’ve understood she said “Nostradamus” unless I had JUST read that he was born in Saint Remy in 1503, so the name was fresh in my head. Just look up how the French say Nostradamus and you will understand 😂

We drive the 10 minutes back to the house and start getting the kids ready for bed. I snap this sunset from our backyard:

The sitter arrives as I’m getting Clementine’s bottle ready. She’s young, maybe late 20s, smells faintly of cigarette smoke (everyone smokes in France) and speaks exactly ZERO English. At this point, it’s too late to cancel our dinner reservation and I wouldn’t cancel on the sitter anyway now that she’s here. She gets her phone out and uses Google Translate as I explain what to do if either kid wakes up, and I know she will be just fine.

I put Clementine down and Brennan put Silas to bed, and we left for our dinner at a local French spot called Aux Envies. The streets of Saint Remy are fairly abandoned on a Sunday night, so we quickly find parking and start walking through the old village. We don’t get far when an older woman comes out of her apartment with her little dog, stops us and is asking for help in French. We ask if she speaks English and she does, and she needs help moving a broken (small) washing machine to the street for the trash. So of course, Bren helps her. What’s funny to me is this is the second woman today who has stopped to ask for Brennan’s help with something - the first was a lady who couldn’t get her gas cap off. Brennan must look like a helpful guy…and he genuinely is!

We hadn’t walked through this part of the village yet and it stood out to me how clean the streets were. This town is truly like a fairytale town - very clean, cute little shops and cafes everywhere, and a deep, rich history.

The restaurant is not busy at all, and has a limited menu with fresh, local ingredients.

We start with some bacon croquettes, leek salad, and a pastrami/potato small plate. The flavors just explode in our mouths - a crunch, a tang, some creaminess and umami all wrapped up together nicely in each dish. For our mains, Brennan gets the veal and I get scallops. Again, just incredible flavors and textures. French food might be my favorite cuisine (when done right).

We take our time eating like the locals do, and before long we’ve been gone for 3 hours. We hadn’t heard from the sitter so we assume all is well and that neither kid has woken up. When we arrived back at the house, she confirms that they slept like angels.

Ruins, rosé, and a really good dinner — honestly, Saint Remy has set the bar unfairly high, and I’m not even a little mad about it.