After our first week, we were hooked on the gîte life. I booked a succession of four more homes, using the Gîtes de France Internet site to search, then following up with email or phone calls to the local gîte offices (Internet booking usually must be done at least a week in advance). Without fail, the Gîtes de France staff was efficient, helpful and accommodating.
At the end of our two-week stay, we rose early for an activity I’ve never witnessed in those golden-hued French films: housecleaning. Guests are expected to give their gîte a thorough cleaning before departure – kitchen, bathrooms, floors, pots and pans – the works. We found it took two to three hours with both of us pitching in. For an extra fee it’s possible to avoid this task at some gîtes, but you must make arrangements in advance.
Proprietors will usually ask for a caution, or deposit, when you arrive to cover any potential damage or dirt left behind; we never had a problem recovering it. (I did discover, though, that there is invariably one cracked wine glass hidden at the back of every gîte’s cupboard.)
Looking a bit like “Les Beverly Hillbillies,” we loaded up our little Renault with leftover food, paper towels, laundry detergent and our hardy basil plant. We presented our hosts with flowers, collected a kiss on each cheek from Marilyne, and headed for our next destination – with one last, rousing send-off from Lou-Lou.
Each gîte we visited had its own quirks and charms. Near Cavaillon, our stand-alone house had a solarium where we ate breakfast and soaked up the sun. Carved folk figurines, santons, decorated the mantel and cartoon dolphins frolicked in the bathroom. The proprietors provided an entire binder filled with insiders’ restaurant recommendations and, at departure time, Monsieur Perrin warned us sternly to beware of “those drivers from Paris” during the holiday weekend.
Carcasonne’s countryside brought us to at a gîte high atop a hill, with old stone windmills guarding rows of wine grapes. In the distance, I could spy the old walled city’s imposing turrets. We stoked the fireplace with fat grapevines older than we are and got invited to the owner’s ancestral house for an aperitif with his parents. Monsieur Rigaud the elder gave us a peek at the vast collection of ancient artifacts he’d excavated over the years. “This village is older than Egypt!” he proudly proclaimed.
A cold snap in Bordeaux left us shivering, trying to warm a lofty, old stone house with tiny, electric heaters. Thank goodness for abundant red wine. Gossipy entries left in the gîte’s guest book warned us that the nearby village bakery produced only “about a dozen croissants, and you have to get there early to beat the locals!” but confided that the gîte owner’s vineyard yielded wine that was “excellent…and reasonably priced.”
Finally, the Loire Valley found us inhabiting an old, three-story pigeon tower, the vestige of a chateau destroyed during the Revolution. Its delightful owners already had a welcoming fire blazing in the hearth, and left us with a bucket of “duck chow” to feed the flock that would waddle from the pond with a chorus of quacks the instant we set foot outside. Our only problem was the suicide-bent flies that would mysteriously appear out of nowhere, then promptly die. Reincarnated revolutionaries?
Those dreamy, subtitled movies had lured me to chase a golden vision – and miraculously we found it at our first gîte. But we went on to live new scenarios of our own creation in each quirky, captivating setting. Looking back over our sojourn, I recalled the message we discovered chalked on the blackboard at that very first gîte: “Thanks for a fantastic vacation!” In every case, at every gîte, we couldn’t have agreed more.
© 2002 Gayle Keck
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HudsonValleyFall
By Gayle Keck
The Gîte Life
By Gayle Keck