Saint Remy Is A Spiritual Place

We wake up on our last full day in France to more beautiful weather. Apparently the mistral winds we had over the weekend are always followed by amazing weather days. We all eat breakfast at the house - Clementine eats some fromage blanc (a french yogurt type food), and Silas got a surprise for breakfast that I grabbed the day before at the supermarket…pain au chocolat!

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s market day in Saint Remy! We drive into town and notice the square we always park has every square inch covered by vendors - local makers, resale, fruits and vegetables, everything you can imagine.

We browse around for a bit, then grab a quick bite and coffee at a cafe.

Life is beautiful in Provence🍷

New shades for sister

At 10:30, we drive up to (you guessed it) another “grape farm” for an 11am pre-scheduled tour. It’s a beautiful drive with grapevines and olive groves all around us. Chateau Romanin was a must-visit according to travel websites and it did not disappoint!

Clementine was fast asleep in the carrier as the tour started. The property has a similar history to Les Baux (which is just up the road a few minutes drive) - inhabited first over 2000 years ago. Grapes have been grown here and the wine from this property has been shipped all over Europe since the times of the Romans. There was a 13th century Templar castle built on the property that was oriented according to the passage of the summer and winter solstices, the positions of the Big and Little Dipper, and the planets Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. It has since been destroyed, but you could still see some of the original walls! It’s so crazy to me how people used to build castles right into steep mountains - mostly for built-in protection!

Here’s where it gets really cool. The estate kept true to the original mysticism that surrounded the 13th century castle. In 1992, an architect built a cathedral cellar buried in the mountain that takes into account the earth’s magnetism and exact location under the planets and stars. This is where they age their wines. The guide swears that if you taste a wine aged in this cellar it tastes completely different than if you aged the same juice outside of this cellar.

Photo cred: Silas

The guide explains that long before the Templars arrived, before the Romans shipped wine from this hillside across the Empire, someone had already decided this place was not ordinary, it carried some ancient spiritual energy, and that people could always feel that here on the mountain. My interest is immediately piqued…remember when I mentioned the house we are staying in had a certain spiritual energy? I truly think this whole small area of Provence carries with it an ancestral force, seeping out of the rocks, ruins and roads.

We climb up the centralized corkscrew staircase and step out onto a terrace with a 360° view of the Alpilles. Truly, every winery has stunning views in this region!

The kids are honestly so good during this tour. I think they are getting used to be dragged around everywhere and having to just go with the flow! We taste a few wines and then head back into town for lunch. It’s about 1:15 when we get to town and we are on a time crunch - restaurants close at 2pm! We walk through the old town area and start to panic as places are full or have already stopped seating people.

We finally decide to go back to Grand Café Riche and repeat the same order we had on Sunday there. We head back to the house for naptime and planned to try and visit the Van Gogh cultural center (again) today, but unfortunately no one woke up in time - and I just let everyone sleep…they needed it.

When everyone woke up, the weather had turned a little colder and drearier. We went back to the supermarket to get food for dinner. It was bath and bed time for Clementine and another family movie night with Silas. He picked the Jungle Book to close out our last night in France.

Saint Remy gave us more than we came for. We arrived expecting Provence — the lavender, the croissants, the wine — and we got that, but so much more. There was a spiritual quiet to this place that even our kids seemed to feel. Mornings, we enjoyed coffee and breakfast together with views of butterflies in the meadow behind our house. Evenings, we’d collapse into each other on the couch, exhausted from our slow yet somehow busy day, drowsy and perfectly content. These are the hours I’ll reach for years from now — not the ruins or the menus, but the particular way we learned, in this ancient corner of the world, to simply be together and soak up the joie de vivre.

🇫🇷❤️