The Luberon 

Remember the story about my adventures “Lost in the Luberon?” It’s time to get back to to telling the tales because there are blanks in the story I need your help to complete.

In Part One, as you may remember, I confessed I am directionally challenged. That competency must be a left brain thing. Honestly, I can’t read a compass. Maps are a horror. GPS systems confuse me if there’s not a voice attached.
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I try not to think about my shortcoming too much because it would definitely limit my adventurous spirit. That’s why I was willing to take off on a tour of the Luberon with my friend Pat, who was visiting from Wisconsin.

Little did I know, Pat’s sense of direction is no better than mine!

Me: “There’s a sign ahead, Pat. Is that where we’re supposed to turn?
Pat: (silence)
Me: “Pat, do we turn there?”
Pat: (silence)
Me: “Pat, I can’t pull over. What does it say on the map? ”
Pat: “Oh! The map!

Remember that from Part One?

Rather than retell the tale, I’ll say, we succeeded in getting to the first destination of the Luberon trip, Gordes.

A nice lunch and a walk around Gordes got us back in the mood to travel on.

Finding our way around the second half of the day was supposed to be a cinch. From Gordes, our next stops — Roussillon, Menerbes, and Lacoste– were only a few miles apart.

By that time, too, we’d figured out how to find ourselves on the GPS on my iPad. (“Figured out” means we knew which dot on the GPS was us and which dot was our destination. I’m not kidding.)

Nevertheless, the rest of the day went sort of like this: backing up and turning around.

Me: “Pat, we’re supposed to turn off of this road soon, aren’t we?”
Pat: “Yes.”
Me: “Pat, the road is coming up. Do we turn here? ”
Pat: “Well … we could.”
Me: “Could? …. what does that mean?
Pat: (As we pass the road) Well, we could turn … Oh! … I guess we should have turned!”

Road signs like this had us a bit confused, too.

It was at this sign, in fact, that we experienced “divine intervention.” I’m not joking. A female voice, speaking English, told us to take the turn to the left.

Both Pat and I screamed: “where’d that come from?!”

Then we broke out laughing. Belly laughs. Mapquest on my iPad, that had failed us so miserably up to now, suddenly had found its voice.

By this time, we were so confused we didn’t know where we were. One narrow street looked like another.

Each church looked like the other.

Town halls were the same.

Later that day

Much later than we were supposed to check in for the night, we arrived at the bastide in Lacoste. Our hostess couldn’t offer us glasses of wine fast enough.

“How was your day, ” she asked?

“Couldn’t have been better!” we both exclaimed.

Here’s where you, my French friends and travelers, come in. If you recognize a street, church, or anything pictured in this post, please send it to me on the comment line. /

It’s bad enough being directionless. It would be great to actually know where I’ve been