I remember being a vacation junkie, once upon a time. Here are the 10 specimen I belonged to.

May be now I’m just older, or I got wiser thanks to faith, and my family. But I sure was crazy for vacations, always trying to find true happiness during the summer. Here is the short list:

The fisherman. Spending hours on a shelf, trying to catch any animal living in the sea. Filling the refrigerator with live worms, getting badly burnt by the sun for the sake of few micro fish.

The scuba diver. Same thing, except for the numerous useless fishing guns and tools, that made me look like an alien and made mothers panic for their children when I emerged from the sea

The lonely sailor. I remember being taken away by the stream on my small rowing boat, with my mother barely succeeding in rescuing me.

The wild guest. I had to join my friends at the seaside, all owning a second residence there, at all costs. I would sleep all over the place. I remember spending some nights in a garage.

The crazy flirter. I remember spending a whole summer without going a single day to the beach. I would just sleep all day long, recovering from nights spent at the disco, hunting girls for the sake of doing it. Quite a nonsense, as it never lead to reciprocal love.

The wheeling maniac. I would spend hours wheeling on anything with two wheels. Fortunately, I never owned a powerful motorbike, or else I could have hurt myself and others.

The hot off the grill sun burger. Always baking in the sun, oily and greasy like a marinated bbq steak.

The long distance swimmer. I just couldn’t resist reaching any small island, shelf or platform not too far from the coast, scaring my poor mother to death. Once, I remember racing to an island with a mate. When I got there, I was so exhausted, I had two sleep two hours before painfully swimming back.

The adventure traveler. Flying to the U.S.A. with no money, desperately looking for summer jobs.

If your our any member of your family present any of the listed symptoms, bed and breakfast, with their warm hospitality and quiet charm, could just be the right therapy, or just… the wrong place to go!

Luca Tamburelli

Green vacations are cool. Green accommodations, bed and breakfast, hotels, blossom on the web. So, if you think that an hotel boasting photovoltaic panels on its roof (producing not more than 10% of the energy it consumes) is worth paying more, you may even find out that it washes your sheet with some eco-friendly products. Wow! Great, but does it really make a difference? On the other hand, you might consider that the most endangered species on the earth is… you and your loved ones, and take into account what can really make a green difference.Look at the wondrous deeds of climate change: California, America’s garden, looking like a barbecue party. Migratory birds migrating too early, or too late. Some have even been reported migrating by train… Apricot jam on trees instead of fruits. Sudden and unexpected frost, heat, waves. Every year, half a million new skin cancers in the USA alone. Go ahead, bake on the beach every single day, it’s your choice. Or else, spend a week in an artistic town, risking to become the victim of the next devastating heat wave.

Therefore, I’d rather choose a vacation that can be sheltered from this crazy weather. Where I can visit a museum if it’s too hot or too rainy for the beach. Or stroll through a green countryside, far from hot cities. A place where I can plan my day according to the weather, that changes so abruptly and can waste it all if there’s no alternative choice.

Luca Tamburelli

It’s been doubling the turnover of restaurants and Hotels for for 10 days, starting 10^th March 08. Better than getting top rankings across the board on Google. It crowded with tourists a famous resort, usually half empty at this time of the year. Professionals have never been so satisfied with their businesses. When Artemis, a 270 feet Dutch cargo, got stuck on the beach at Sables d’Olonne because of a storm, the renowned resort in France’s Vendee had hardly imagined it would turn out to be such a gold mine. When it left, towed away by a tug boat, some restaurant owners couldn’t help uttering their sorrow. "It has been such an attraction for tourists, that we really regret its departure…"

So, what are we to hope, here in Vendee, for the upcoming season, in order to fill our resorts with tourists? A whale on the beach? Too ordinary. A nuclear submarine? Better. Barack Obama on the beach? Even better. Just brainstorming: a giant wave, a shipwreck involving a whiskey container, with drunk fish ready to be cooked, sharks, trucks in the sea, ships on the road, a space shuttle landing on the roof, a jumbo jet on the beach, Bill Gates caught begging in the street…

We can’t help it: a skiing resort that bore a slalom world champion became famous, expensive and profitable. Now, even a cargo on the beach can make it.

So, whenever I choose my vacations, or even things that matter more in my life, I try to ask myself whether I’m choosing on my own, or I’m rather following a crowd enticed by some trend or buzz. Despite that, I still end up making biased choices…

Luca Tamburelli

I don’t think there’s a region in France, that’s got more historical interest than Vendee. I would even say that what happened in Vendee changed Europe’s history.

1893. The French Revolution is changing the European landscape. Freedom, equal rights, brotherhood, is a motto that involves a deep reorganisation of laws and institutions. No more monarchs imposing a divine authority, but a state governed by three powers, sovereign and independent: legislative, executive, and judiciary. Modern democracy owes its very core to this radical revolution. Yet, as it’s always the case with revolutions, men were carried away by their ideas, forgetting sometimes mercy and oppressing other human beings with the same absolutism they claimed to fight. The new Republic asks 300.000 soldiers from Vendee’s roughly 800.000 inhabitants. That stirs anger and rebellion. Moreover, the Republic imposes to priests, that they swear allegiance to the French Constitution. Without going into further detail, the priests refusal is understandable. Freedom of thought and of religion is one of the human right the Revolution wanted to defend. Vendeens get another reason to oppose the Republic. The rebellion becomes a civil war, which turns into a massacre, involving women, children, about 300.000 victims. In the end, Napoleon claims that he would be proud of being Vendeen, builds a church in the middle of Vendee’s capital, La Roche sur Yon, and grants the clergy’s independence.

I like to think that both, Republicans and the Vendeens, have been fighting for the freedom they believed in. Some have shed their blood in what seems martyrdom. Thanks to this sacrifice, the Revolution became, in my opinion, less dogmatic, more human. Perhaps, without Vendee’s sacrifice, the new French Republic would have become, perhaps, more similar to a dictatorship. Perhaps. Indeed, it’s worth taking advantage of a vacation in one of Vendee’s bed and breakfast, to inquire into one or the most dramatic pages of France’s history.

In this regard, besides its many bed and breakfast, Vendee offers:

L’Historial de la Vendée at Lucs-sur-Boulogne, on a 3,500 m² site, a museum displaying by all means, traditional and technological, its amazing history, from prehistoric times to the present day. It even features a children’s museum…

To relive experience 2,000 years of France’s history, Vendee invites you to the fantastic forest of Puy du Fou, a vast wooded land of 40 hectares, where you’ll be carried away in a whirlwind of breath-taking shows and entertainment. Each village represents a different era. Immerse yourself in the ambiance of past centuries, dive into the heart of the action and excitement of legendary heroes: relive the games of the Roman circus, the Viking attacks, the jousting tournaments, the musketeer combats, the ancestral art of falconry, the skills of craftsmen and the street theatre…

September, everybody’s back at work. At coffee break, colleagues ask me about my recent vacation. I said it was in France. “Where?” “Oh, somewhere… I guess in the South, but not quite, I’d say rather southish…” I am embarrassed, since my astonishing precision is rewarded by puzzled, ironical looks …Driving back home, I try to figure out how I could forget the very name of the quiet village where I spent a fortnight with some friends, in a small villa lent us by my friend’s brother. Evident: we practiced a lot of windsurf, travelled around, but never met anybody from the place. Which remained anonymous, at least for me, because it had no face, no human being reminding us of it. One can conceive tourism as a way of seeing new places, relaxing, having fun, or recovering some energy. It works. If travelling, one wants to enjoy new landscapes, taste different food, experience other leisure activities.Globalisation has brought the world closer. Oil prices keep increasing, yet internet simplify the task of tour operators and airlines, to the extent that flying is cheaper than ever, thanks to airplanes exploiting their capacity at unprecedented rates.Personally, in this getaway exotic frenzy, I wouldn’t want to miss the most enjoyable aspect of it all: getting a taste of new cultures. I mean, experience the way the natives of the country I visit live their lives. What are their habits, their way of seeing life, having fun? For this reason I like bed and breakfast. There, I always get a chance to know people from the hosting country, oftentimes through the hosting family. Their hospitality is often warm, although, at the beginning, they seem sometimes a little shy. I remember being hosted with my family at a wine producer’s bed and breakfast, in Western France. Day after day, we started sharing more and more pleasant moments. In the end, the total immersion risked to be into something else than the French language…

A vacation in South Vendee: let me share it with you, and thanks for your interest!

The crew: me, lazy but curious middle-aged man, my younger wife Angela (no, not in the sense that I’ve got an older one), and two ever-scrambling brats, four and seven. The experience: pleasant, picturesque, relaxing and exciting at the same time.

Reasons for choosing: I picked up a map of France. I wanted to spot out a place for our vacation, which should have been:

1. not crowded: no traffic jams, easy parking.
2. in the midst of the nature: no pollution, no noise.
3. offering charming cities to visit, both artistically and architecturally.
4. offering leisure for us and for the kids, such as theme parks, leisure parks, and so on.
5. offering museums, castles, historical resorts.
6. with a good choice of beaches.
7. with a large choice of sports: from mountain bike rides to sailing boats to horse riding.
8. possibly, in a lovely countryside, with forests, rambling paths, lakes.
9. not far from airports, nor from motorways and railway connections.
10. last but not least, not too expensive.

We found that South Vendee, between Poitiers, La Rochelle and Fontenay le Compte, exceeded all the above requirements. La Rochelle, Poitiers and Nantes airports are within easy reach. The easiest ferry route is via Caen but the cheapest is via Bologne/Calais. The TGV train extends the possibilities of rail travel from London to Niort, perhaps a half hour drive.

We even experienced wild life, when a beautiful owl hit my windshield, and (unfortunately) died shortly after: never had we touched such a wild creature. The hospitality is warm; we even made friends, a couple of oyster farmers who presented us with so many oysters, that I overate them, getting pretty sick. We could even choose the temperature of the water at the seaside: it measured 31 C (75 Farenheit) in the Aiguillon gulf, but it was around 18 C at La Faute sur mer.

South Vendee remains for us an unforgettable experience. Just surf the numerous web sites portraying this region, and you’ll see what we mean.

Luca and Angela Tamburelli