France (Trip #5): Jour 1

France is a country of love, of delicacies, of beauty, of romance…Elle est mon pays favorite and I am blessed to have yet another opportunity to visit her.

On Tuesday, November 6, 2018, I boarded a plane in Los Angeles and ten hours later on Wednesday morning, I found myself in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.  After a layover and subsequent flight to Marseille, my husband (Vincent) and I were greeted by Christian, our driver, who transported us to a very beautiful hotel in a très charmant city, Aix-en-Provence—situated in the south of France.

Villa Gallici is the lovely hotel that we pulled up to and would be staying for the night.

Villa Gillaci is a Relaix & Chateaux property and a 5-star luxury hotel with a French-Italian influence and a very Baroque-like (18^thcentury) sentiment. It was voted the 7th best hotel in the world by Conde Nast Traveler.

Here are some more of the stunning decor and statues I captured (below) from the hotel grounds

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                                                I should be playing this!! 😀

Arriving to our room, we were greeted by a very lovely card—addressed “Monsieur & Madame Fiorillo”—yellow roses and some French desserts (including some very tasty macarons), welcoming our stay.

With best intentions to tour the entire grounds and see some of the city, Vince nor I had the energy to do so, given I got—at most—2.5 hours of sleep in 24 hours (yikes!), we retired to the bed to get a couple hours of rest before our dinner at 8 pm (20h, in European time standards).

                                         view from our balcony

Now, to the tasty part! (anyone who knows me well, knows I’m a foodie and—outside of working out, piano, writing and travel—I live to MANGE {eat}!).

 stairs leading from the floor of our room down to the dining area

Our dinner was excellent. We ate in le salon(living room) of the hotel, where dinner is regularly served and the style of the food was “gastronomique” and superb food it was!

The server started out with serving us an amuse-bouche(bite-sized hors d’oeuvre) and then proceeded to surprise us with another amuse-bouche—mozzarella and pumpkin soup (unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of that one). Now normally one may not think of mozzarella and pumpkin going together, especially in a soup, but if shouting could express how good that concoction was, I would have no voice (yep, that’s how good it was).

Moving on to our personally-ordered dishes: after having a prosecco for an apéritif, for l’entrée(my appetizer), I ordered the foie gras de canard(duck foie gras) which was almost like a desert in its quality (it was fairly rich—not in a bad way, and the brown circles on the plate {upper left corner} were drops of chocolate hazelnut). Very scrumptious.

Moving on to le plat principal(main course {upper right corner}), I orderedl’agneau (the lamb), which was accompanied by polenta, a red wine sauce and a collection of savory mushrooms. WOW! (Vince had the sea bream, which I stole a bite of. it was very delicious as well)

Our meal was accompanied by a 2016 Chassagne Montrachet pinot noir which paired excellently with both the lamb and the sea bream.

And finally, for dessert… LE FROMAGE ! (Cheese). I mean, how can you not, in France?

Our waiter served us several selections of fromage de chèvre (goat cheese), a camembert (similar in quality to brie) and an Italian Burrata similar to a camembert, paired with a side salad.

Yes, I died and went to heaven. And with that, I hit the sack.

Bonne nuit mes amis and à bientôt! (Stay tuned for upcoming blogs in the next several days on more adventures in the South of France. Next up…Arles!)

Sincèrement,

Lesley