Monday: St. Paul de Vence

22 years ago - #Provence

I used to think that Santorini was the ideal honeymoon location: I'm now convinced that the ideal spot is St. Paul de Vence. It's a small walled city that is inland from the rest of the Cote D'Azur coastal resorts, high on a hill. The streets are winding and confusing, but the only thing to do is wander around and look at shops. It was primarily art galleries, but we also found some cloth shops, candy shops, spice shops, and a fantastic shop that had all sorts of homemade liqueurs. We sampled and bought fig, blueberry, and red peach liqueurs.

Approaching St. Paul de Vence
Approaching St. Paul de Vence

We spent a half hour walking to the Fondation Maeght and discovered that it had just closed for lunch. We looked at the artwork on the grounds, decided it looked too much like a 1960's suburban synagogue, and walked back to St. Paul de Vence for lunch. We did a little more touring of the town, including a stop for crepes, and then headed back to the city.

Liquors Extraordinaire
Liquors Extraordinaire

The entrance into St. Paul de Vence
The entrance into St. Paul de Vence

Crepes Outside
Crepes Outside

For dinner, we went to L'Auberge de Acropolis, which is a very local restaurant off the beaten path. No one in the restaurant spoke anything but French. The owner was very frustrated that he could not communicate with us, as he was extremely sociable with everyone else. We had a very good food translation section in one of our guidebooks, so we knew more or less what we were ordering. There was a man eating alone next to us that also only spoke French, trying to make pleasant conversation. We told him we were from New York City. At one point it sounding like he said "Boosh" (as in G. W.) and made hand signals that led us to believe that he was offering condolences for the World Trade Center attack. He gave as some of his grappas, an extremely potent grape liqueur, and we toasted his hospitality, using most of David's twelve words of French vocabulary. The owner's lovable german shepherd sat in the corner and came over once for some affection. Or was it to lick the food off my hand?

This post is part of a series called...
Travel to the South of France
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Today, there was more touring of Provence. We started off going to Cavaillon to see a cathedral and a synagogue. The cathedral and cloister were beautiful and the synagogue was a highlight.
I can't say that we had the best flight to Nice. We couldn't get seats together on the flight out, but a woman was kind enough to switch with us. We didn't sleep much at all on the flight over, so by the time we got to Heathrow, we were pretty tired. And then our flight kept getting delayed, we got stuck on the runway, and we sat next to this crazy woman that kept shifting every five seconds and was crying (literally) about not being able to sit at the window.
I barely remember waking up enough to join David for breakfast. I went back to the hotel room, took a little post-breakfast nap, a long bath, and then decided to greet the day. I took a walk through Old Nice again, going a little closer to the coast. I ended up at Promenade des Anglais and walked through the open market.