Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur

No, and confusing the two is the most common planning mistake made about this part of France. Provence is a historical province and cultural region of the inland south-east — hill villages, Roman monuments, vineyards, lavender plateaux — which was abolished as an administrative unit when France was reorganised into departments, and which survives as a name for the country rather than as a government. The Côte d’Azur is the coastline at the eastern end, a narrow strip between the mountains and the sea running roughly from Cannes to the Italian border. What contains both is this région, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, which is a modern administrative area created to hold them along with the southern Alps. In practice that matters because the two halves need different transport, look completely different, and are far enough apart that doing both properly needs more nights than most itineraries allow.

Not in this région, no — and this catches out a great many itineraries, including one of the packages this page supports, which offers it as an alternative to a lavender day. The Pont du Gard is a Roman aqueduct bridge at Vers-Pont-du-Gard, in the Gard department, and the Gard belongs to Occitanie, the neighbouring région to the west. It is genuinely close to Avignon and it is a perfectly sensible day out from an inland Provence base; the point is only that it is over a regional border, which is worth knowing if you are counting what a Provence trip actually contains. The Roman monuments that ARE in this région are substantial in their own right: the amphitheatre and Romanesque church at Arles, both UNESCO-inscribed, and the theatre and triumphal arch at Orange.

Gordes and Roussillon if you only have one day, because they are the two that are genuinely different from each other rather than variations on a theme. Gordes is a stone village built in tiers up a cliff edge, pale grey and dramatic from a distance, with the Cistercian abbey of Sénanque in the valley below it. Roussillon, a short drive east, is built from the ochre that was quarried around it and is deep red and orange throughout, with old workings you can walk through. Ménerbes, Bonnieux and Lacoste sit on ridges between the two and are quieter. All of them are in the Luberon, which is a range of hills rather than a place you can stay in, and all of them are a driving proposition — the buses are thin and the villages are on hilltops.

Not in the villages, which is what surprises people — the lavender grows on the open plateaux above and beyond them. The three areas worth planning around are the Valensole plateau in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, which is the one in the photographs; the country around Sault, higher and later; and the terraced field below the abbey of Sénanque near Gordes, which is the famous single view rather than a landscape. It is a farmed crop distilled for oil, not an ornamental display, so the fields are cut once they are ready and the timing shifts with the season, the altitude and the weather. It flowers in high summer, broadly from about late June, and later the higher you go. Nobody can promise a purple field on a particular date, and any itinerary that does is overselling.

No. Monaco is a sovereign principality, an independent country in its own right, and it happens to sit on this coast between Nice and the Italian border completely surrounded by French territory on land. It appears on both of the package itineraries this page supports, usually as a half day from Nice, and the practical experience of going is seamless: Monaco is inside the Schengen area and uses the euro, there is no routine border control, and the local train and bus run straight through. What changes is everything administrative — it is a different state with its own government, laws, police and telephone code, and it is not part of this région or of France. Worth knowing if only so that the day is described accurately rather than as "a trip to another French town".

That is exactly the split, and getting it right saves both money and frustration. The Côte d’Azur has an excellent coastal railway running close to the water from Cannes through Antibes and Nice to the Italian frontier, calling at the smaller resorts on the way, and along that stretch a car is a liability — the corniche roads are slow in season and parking in the coastal towns is genuinely difficult. Inland Provence is the opposite. The Luberon villages sit on hilltops, the lavender plateaux are open country, the Verdon is a mountain road, and public transport to all of them is thin. The arrangement that works is to hire a car for the inland days, base it on Avignon, and give it back before you reach the coast.