Month: August 2013

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A travel tips portal about Provence and the Côte d’Azur

Lavender in Provence, France
Lavender (© Alexi TAUZIN – Fotolia.com)

The travel information portal provence-info.de, titled “Provence and Côte d’Azur – Holidays in the South of France”, is a good tip for anyone who wants to find out about the holiday region of Provence and neighbouring regions such as the Languedoc. The website contains a great deal of detailed information with numerous pictures of towns, villages and landscapes, as well as travel tips and notes on traffic rules, shopping, safety and typical recipes. Continue reading “A travel tips portal about Provence and the Côte d’Azur”

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Trekking Magazin 04/2013: France’s wild south, the Ardèche

Trekking Magazin, issue 4-13
Trekking Magazin, issue 4-13

Yesterday we read the new issue 4 (July/August) 2013 of Trekking Magazin, with the Ardèche as its main theme. We liked the article on trekking tours (in plain English: walks) in the Ardèche region very much. It describes hikes in the northern, mountainous part around Aubenas as well as in the southern part of the département around the Ardèche Gorge. Some trails are also suitable for mountain bikers. However, we felt that the cover story could have been a little more detailed and run to more pages. But that is of course also down to our special interest in the wonderful Ardèche region.

Continue reading “Trekking Magazin 04/2013: France’s wild south, the Ardèche”

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Wine routes and wine holidays around the Ardèche region, southern France

Welcome to the Ardèche département: introducing a wine region

Wine bottles
Wine bottles (© Dario Lo Presti – Fotolia.com)

Administratively, France is divided into 101 départements. The Ardèche département has the number 07 and lies in the south-eastern part of the mainland. It belongs to the Rhône-Alpes region. The River Ardèche, which flows through this region, gives the département its name. A wonderful landscape with unique flora and fauna is a welcome reason for many tourists to spend an unforgettable holiday in the Ardèche. Nature lovers with a taste for quiet hours away from mass tourism feel very much at home in this region. Continue reading “Wine routes and wine holidays around the Ardèche region, southern France”

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The Provençal or Occitan language in southern France

Provençal and Occitan are two names, often used synonymously, for a regional language of southern France. Some linguists speak of the Occitan language as the umbrella term and of the Provençal dialect for the variant spoken in Provence. Provençal, or Occitan, is much more closely related to Catalan than to French. The Provençal variant of the language is increasingly becoming a compromise language in contacts between speakers of different Occitan dialects. Historically, Provençal was much more important than French until the fourteenth century, but was completely displaced by the French language by the sixteenth century at the latest. Provençal experienced its first renaissance as a literary language in the 1930s. Continue reading “The Provençal or Occitan language in southern France”