"Everything in France is a pretext for a good dinner" -Jean Anouilh: St. Paul de Vence, Cote D'Azur

After Avignon, we headed east to the hills above Nice, to the charming medieval town of St. Paul de Vence. Many famous artists have visited and lived there and nearby (Chagall, Matisse, Picasso, Leger among many others). It turns out we weren't the only people with the idea to visit; St. Paul is the 2nd most visited town in France, after Mont St. Michel.

Note: Remember that you can click on any image to make it bigger; you'll get a slideshow of all the images. Hit escape to get back to the blog. (And the commentary!)

We had dinner our first night at the famous Colombe D'Or, where art hangs in every corner, donated, in most cases, by the famous artists who have stayed and lived at the hotel.

This giant wall scultpture by Leger sits in the courtyard where we dined.

Sculpture by Alexander Calder by the pool.

The menu was hand-written by the owner in the 50's; it hasn't changed since. (Except, of course, for the prices.)

Our good host Luc recommended the Colombe D'or's famous appetizer dish -- which consists of a massive basket of raw veggies (above), and a mere 15 small plates to go with it. Sardines, Celery dip, eggplant, chickpeas, herring (two kinds), sardines, you name it. If you can actually name 'em all in the comments, we'll fly you there to eat.
This appetizer dish was our meal, and we didn't come close to finishing it. It's cool to get a doggie bag for 15 plates, right? Here, not so much.
Oh, we also got the prosciutto and melon: ham slices like fine silk and a full, gorgeous cantaloupe.

Chagall did a lot of paintings in this area, and especially of St. Paul. Here they've set up a reproduction of one with St. Paul in the background.

St. Paul's first stone was laid in the 1300's. Roaming the narrow walking-only streets was wild. Lots of beautiful flowers, bougainvillea and crazy steps!

Here is Seth pondering a jump into the fountain to escape the heat. Actually the water in fountains like this all over town was totally drinkable. Potable, as they say. How about THAT for green technology?

Our amazing host, Luc Tombeur at the awesome coffee shop in St. Paul (yes, there was only one!) We loved this guy. Luc is the unofficial mayor of St. Paul, who knows everyone in town & introduced us to most of them. Most importantly, he introduced us to the Belgian cookie spread Speculoos, which might even be better than Nutella. He made us feel like locals and showed us more than a few of the native traditions. Note: We was our connection for getting into the Colombe D'Or.

Taking a break in St. Paul, high above the hills. Maybe our favorite pic of the vacation.

Seth gets to know Pastis. He's not too tough for an aperitif.
Seth: "What's an aperitif?" I swear there's a pic like this where I'm actually smiling!

Peeking out from our apartment window. Luc is super-fond of Bonsai trees! We kept the AC on a lot of the time.

St. Paul's small cemetary, where Chagall is buried. I have a thing for cemeteries. Seth finds this a little odd.

Chagall's grave. He lived to be 98!

Driving on the Grande Cornishe high above the coast, we discovered more quaint medieval towns. This is Eze.

La Turbie, with a Roman "trophy" put in place by Augustus.

One afternoon, we headed to the mountains for some hiking, seeing lots of hillside medieval towns along the way. And sure, it would have been easy to hike around these towns, but who wants to hike these when there is perfectly good hiking at a gorge, 4 hours away?

You can see what Seth thought of that idea. Those small cars got a little tight for him.

The lovely hillside town of Grenoliers. Here the main city thoroughfare was blocked when we tried to get through. Two guys had their truck parked in the middle of the road and were putting up a scaffold to paint. When asked what we should do, they happily told us the road was now closed, and directed us to a road what went clear around the outside of the town. (In mixed French, English and Spanish.)