Mas des Herbes Blanches Hotel & Spa - Relais & Châteaux

A Relais & Chateaux located a couple of miles from a small village near Gordes, Le Mas exemplifies the 'brand'. Spectacular views across the valley to Rousillon from many rooms and the restaurant; lovely pool, attentive service. There are really only two downsides to the place other than the cost (but you pretty much get what you pay for). The first is the room sizes -- many, including ours( not the least expensive), are very small by American standards, short on drawers/storage space, and can only be accessed via a spiral staircase -- though we had a nice, roomy bathroom and a pleasant patio with another of those wonderful views. The second is that the hotel is 'centrally isolated.' It's a couple of miles from a small village (Joucas) that is itself several miles from Gordes and across the valley from many of the other charming villages folks come to the Luberon to visit. Not a huge problem, but it means you must have a car to get around, and at night the famously narrow, unlit roads of Provence can be exciting -- too exciting for some.

Good Hotel, pleasant stay. We liked everything except: - no kettle in hotel room (we travelled with Baby and needed to prepare formula milk, so we had to ask the room service each time for hot water, however "eau chaude" can mean anything from 20 to 100°C, so we sometimes ended up with still cold water. maybe through living in the UK we are used to having a kettle as standard equipment, which not seems to be the case in france - final bill containt items that were already paid in advance or that we did not use (minibar), however customer service assistant was quick in correcting bill - breakfast buffet was very tightly managed, we normally came between 60 and 90 minutes before the end of the breakfast, and often stuff like yogurt and fruit juice was gone and not refilled, and when asking for it we were told that there was nothing left. quality of food was good, just too little of some things - on some evenings we were called up to 3 times to confirm whether we want to have dinner in the hotel and were urged to book a table. we had dinner once, the food was good, a bit pricey though, most evenings we resorted to restaurants in the nearby villages to experience the local cuisine, as we can have michelin-star food as well from the gourmet kitchen around the corner from our home...otherwise the hotel is nicely situated, staff is very helpful...standard audience seems to be either retired people or families with small kids, hence its very silent, the ideal retreat if you want to relax and just enjoy watching the provence landscape sitting by the swimming pool on the slope of a hill...

This place will not disappoint you!! It is beautiful, in a wondeful location of the Vaucluse & the service is exceptional. We cannot wai to return. SPECTACULAR!!!