Introduction to the Trip

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to my Provence blog! 

I hope you will enjoy the South of France with me.

     My 2 weeks in France will be half work, half vacation. The first week I am there to help the students I work with get settled into their new town and with their host families. We will be in Aix-en-Provence, which is about 20 minutes from Marseille in the South of France. The students are taking classes in Aix for 6 weeks, but I’ll only be with them for the first week. 

      Once that first week is over, I will be on vacation! My friend Angela is flying out and we’re planning a road trip through the area to see all the of the UNESCO World Heritage sites in the area. As some of you may know, I have a life goal to see ALL the UNESCO World Heritage sites! During our road trip, I’ll get to check 10 off my list.

    UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the sites that they add to their list have been recognized as having cultural, historical, scientific or another type of significance. When a site is added to the World Heritage list, it comes with a certain level of international legal protection. UNESCO has decided that it’s important to the interests of humanity in general. There are 2 main categories of sites: cultural or natural. Some examples of natural UNESCO sites are the Grand Canyon, The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and Mount Etna in Italy. Some example of cultural sites are the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge in the UK, and the Great Wall of China. There are actually some that are considered mixed between the two categories. Usually they are natural landscapes that are also important religious sites for indigenous populations.

There are a total of 1092 UNESCO sites in the world; 845 cultural, 209 natural and 38 considered mixed. So far I’ve seen 50 or so of them in different parts of the world. 

France has 44 total UNESCO sites. I’ve already seen 9 of them from my time in France before and I’ll add the following to my list during my week of vacation:

Each of these are a link to their description on the UNESCO page – the date is when  they were added to the UNESCO list.

1.        Arles, Roman and Romanesque Monuments (1981)
2.         Canal du Midi (1996)
3.         Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc, known as Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, Ardèche (2014)
4.         Episcopal City of Albi (2010)
5.        Historic Centre of Avignon: Papal Palace, Episcopal Ensemble and Avignon Bridge (1995)
6.        Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne (1997)
7.        Pont du Gard (Roman Aqueduct) (1985)
8.        Roman Theatre and its Surroundings and the "Triumphal Arch" of Orange (1981)
9.        Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France (1998)
10.       The Causses and the Cévennes, Mediterranean agro-pastoral Cultural Landscape (2011)

  

And here is our planned route, with the UNESCO logo near each one we will see - Come along with me!!!