Daudet's Windmill

Ribet or St Pierre wind-mill, as it was formally called, was built in 1814 in Provence, France and ground wheat during one century. In 1935, the association "Alphonse Daudet's Friends" , decided to restore it and create a museum dedicated to "Les Lettres de mon Moulin", Daudet's most famous work which is a collection of wryly humorous stories admired by Flaubert, Dickens, and Henry James. It evokes the vital rhythms of Provençal life and Daudet’s youth in the mid–nineteenth century. The building is a symbol of the writer and his work.

Daudet is as important to the French as the windmills of Cervantes' Don Quixote are to the Spanish. The stories won French hearts, and they have now become an essential part of French cultural heritage. The tower windmill is typical of those found throughout southern France. Unlike windmills in northern Europe, those of southern France use a sharply peaked conical cap and blades with sails of equal dimensions on either side of the stock or blade spar.

Sunflowers

Fields of sunflowers are everywhere in the South of France – and not just growing in the ground. Provencal linens, pottery and tile seem to echo the bright blues and yellows that Van Gogh talked about when painting in the region.
The latin name for sunflowers is Helianthus annus – which comes from the greek word helios (sun) and anthus (flower).

The French word for sunflower is tournesol, and is literally a perfect translation. “Turn sun” illustrates the fact that young sunflowers orient themselves towards the sun, which is exactly what they do.
Provence is the land of Van Gogh – who lived in the area and was inspired by the light and the sunflowers as you may know from his famous sunflower series of paintings.

Pizza can be French, too!

The nutty, buttery flavor of semi hard cheeses distinguishes much French pizza from Neapolitan-style pies made only with milky mozzarella. When the cheese is spread over a thin round of dough coated with tomato and herbs and then subjected to the relentless whoosh of heat in a brick oven, the result is a bubbling, molten masterpiece.

In the South of France, especially in Provence (pictured) and along the Côte d'Azur, they understand tomatoes, basil, olive oil and anchovies. The region's proximity to Italy and its influx of Italian immigrants, vacationers and retirees has, over the decades, provided a steady supply of pizza cognoscenti.

The divinely thin crusts constitute the hallmark of the best wood-fired French pizza: crisp but not hard, delicate but not brittle, charred but not burned, flour-powdered but not dry.