When we arrived in Aix-en-Provence, after changing trains several times since we left Barcelona in the morning, it was already dark. We picked up our rent-a-car, woke up the GPS system, and read then re-read the directions sent to us for finding our way to the tennis club where we would meet John’s friend Sharon who was in town for her eldest son’s weekly tennis lesson. Our plan was to meet her at the Country Club of Aix then drive behind her through the Luberon hills to her home just outside the picturesque village of Lourmarin. John had known Sharon since childhood and the chance to spend some time with her family in such a setting, her home for the past fifteen years, we knew, was a special opportunity.

With a few minor glitches (like we couldn’t find the country club so we ended up meeting Sharon and Joseph near the fountain in the center of town), we wended our way, caravan style, to their home, a drive that even at a brisk pace took almost fifty minutes. Finding the small unmarked road that led to their driveway would have been impossible without a guide. John and I were very grateful when we slipped from the night’s blackness into their house for a welcome dinner with Sharon, husband Olivier (who grew up Lourmarin) and sons Joseph and Ellison.

When we woke up in the morning, John and I could look directly out the glass doors of our lower level bedroom and see hills and trees, maybe linden, patches of lavender and wisps of clouds. The morning light that penetrates the air of Provence is somehow different than it is in other places. I guess Van Gogh and Cezanne came here to paint because of the light. It was easy to see that this is a special place.

Time seemed to move slower too. I don’t know if this was because we were weary travelers happy to pour a bowl of cereal around a kitchen table for breakfast instead of downing an espresso at a bakery/café close to a hotel, or if it was because we were out in the country (you couldn’t see a neighbor’s house from most of Sharon’s windows), or because we were in Provence, and, well – that’s just the way time works in Provence. Maybe I just like to think the latter.

Using Sharon and Olivier’s home as a base, we did some exploring during our two-day visit. In Avignon, we toured the Palais de Papes (which served as the home of the popes during the 1300s) and the Pont D’Avignon (the bridge made famous in a classic nursery rhyme). We drove through the cliffside village of Bonnieux and lunched on real French omelets in Gordes, an enchanting village a stone’s throw from the 8th century Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Chaffre. We snapped lots of photos of Roussillon, a little town of practically all orange-ish colored buildings, so decorated with pigments from the nearby ochre quarry. We were nearly knocked over by the Mistral wind, a meteorological phenomena in southern France that, swirling at over 50 miles per hour, can lift a Renault off its tires.

Many images from our two-day visit floods my mind as being quintessentially Provence, but my favorite experience was completely outside of the guidebooks.

Behind their house, Olivier built Sharon a little workshop; a shed of sorts, with a sink and electricity, and shelves for storage. Sharon had taken up decorative glass arts some years ago and equipping her workshop with ovens and molds and hand-torches became an adventure in itself. Searching online for sources of colored glass rods and how-to tips from different masters became an ongoing preoccupation. And in between acquiring new skills and techniques, Sharon made glass beads and vibrantly colored glass panels which she formed for mobiles or other objects. She showed John and me how she worked with rods that filled long plastic tubes which she stored under her worktable. We saw how shards from experiments were saved, possibly to become the body of her next creation.

I was delighted to be welcomed into this space. Careful not to knock over any work in process, I saw how Sharon could escape from time, (although time in Provence might seem to move more slowly than in other places, it is still TIME), and move to a space without time.

Having a room of one’s one, a place to creatively express yourself, and finding inspiration in another’s retreat, is no small thing.