"Your focus determines your reality" - Fall 2025 Travel Adventures - Update 9/30

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Monday
September 15th 2025
Chateau La Coste

As the morning had a later start, I headed to breakfast while my husband went for a run in the hotel gym. He had debated on running around Aix but decided there were too many streets to cross and people on their way to work.

My breakfast was once again filled with crepes, bread, salted butter and lots of espresso. I added some fruit to the plate today!

At 9:45AM, we headed down to the lobby to meet with our guide and other tour guests to meet our bus driver for the week and drive out to Chateau La Coste which is a vineyard and art estate about 20 minutes away from Aix-en-Provence.

Chateau La Coste is owned by an Irish property developer, Paddy McKillen and developed this estate to be focused on wine, art, and architecture. The main building was designed by Tadao Ando who is known for his integration of architecture and landscape.


The Villa of the Estate


“Crouching Spider” by Louise Bourgeois


“Boxes Full of Air” by Sean Scully

After a short bio-break for the group, we began a short walk around the property. To fully see the property would take half a day so we only went through a small loop while our Tauck guide discussed some of the works.


“Mathematical Model 012: Surface of revolution with constant negative curvature” by Hiroshi Sugimoto



One of the installations was designed by Frank Gehry who designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles as well as many iconic buildings around the world. They do host concerts and performances here during the year.


“Pavillon de Musique” by Frank Gehry

All these sculptures were right next to the vineyards which had recently been harvested.



The next sculpture was similar to the Chicago Bean. Here is where we took our first group photo of the trip.


“Drop” by Tom Shannon

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Down the hill from the drop was a massive piece.


“Mater Earth” by Prune Nourry


“Circle of Riverstones” by Richard Long

On our walk towards the pavilion the next piece was located inside our tour guide started foraging for mushrooms. He talked about how to know if they are edible or not.




“Four Cubes to Contemplate Our Environment” by Tadao Ando



Rubbish



Water


CO2


Future

After this piece, we headed back. The sculpture here wasn't included in the guide so not sure the name or the artist.

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At the end of the walk, we were led back to the Art Center where we would have lunch.




Remains of an old fort



We were served wine and bread before our first course came out. I forgot a photo of the first course which was vegetable soup with goat cheese. I enjoyed this as it was not heavy so perfect to enjoy on this mild day.

Our entrée was salmon with fresh vegetables. Neither my husband nor me are the biggest fans of salmon. It was fine but not something I would have ordered on my own.



Dessert was a raspberry mousse. The presentation did make me laugh a bit though.




The wines of the estate.

On our walk back to the bus, we stopped at one more sculpture. While it looks like Mardi Gras beads – it actually is a piece from Jean-Michel Othoniel who was selected and currently is exhibiting his art throughout Avignon as part of the celebration of Avignon’s 25th anniversary as a European Capital of Culture.



The wine processing building.



We loaded up to our bus and headed back to the hotel.​