What a trip this has been! From the cities in the very north of France, through Normandy along the English Channel and two weeks in Brittany, down The Atlantic coast to the beach at Biarritz, up into the center of the country and then the Alps. Finally now we’re down on the Mediterranean, the French Riviera. The vacation of a lifetime, except I’ve probably had a few of those in this lifetime.

I first encountered the Mediterranean nearly 50 years ago when I sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar in 1974. I loved it then and I love it now. There is just nothing like the color of the sea on a bright sunny day and then you add to it the great cultures and cuisines and landscapes you find everywhere. It’s pretty heavenly and kind of begs the question: why doesn’t everyone live on the Mediterranean?

From our lovely boutique hotel in St Paul de Vence it was only maybe a 20 minute drive to the Nice airport where we dropped off the car before catching a train up the coast to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. (The French, if you hadn’t noticed, are apparently seriously fond of dashes….) Once we got here it was mostly just beach time.

One highlight was the walkway from our hotel into town. It was maybe a 20-minute walk but on a pedestrian path right along the coast. Mostly shaded, walking past a couple pretty impressive mansions, but always with the stunning view of the Mediterranean and the many yachts that congregate near a port. The other highlight was that our hotel had a small private beach with loungers and umbrellas that made for some very relaxing afternoons.

The only downside to the stop was that we really struggled to find good food, about the only activity that could compete with the beach. There was some good food at our hotel but one, it was at best hit or miss, and two, it’s kind of boring to just eat at your hotel. We went to one little family-owned restaurant that’s been open for nearly 40 years, a place called Captaine Cook, and while the food was OK it was in a spot with no breeze or air moving and at 85 degrees that was just too hot. Another place practically rushed us through, though again the ambience was nothing to keep us lingering anyway. On our last night we finally found a good restaurant right on the port, but otherwise the pickings were slim. On the up side though our hotel made genuinely good martinis so that was always worth looking forward to.

From Moustiers we drove a couple very stressful hours southward — almost to the Mediterranean — to reach the postcard-perfect hilltop town of St-Paul de Vence. This was once a normal medieval village perched on a hill with beautiful views to the sea. But then it was discovered by Pablo Picasso, and endless streams of artists and celebrities have passed through since.

About that drive: For the first half or so we were on mountain roads so ridiculously narrow that it seemed two cars could not possibly get past each other. Yet cars kept coming from the other direction, instilling dread as we would slow down to try to squeeze past them without scraping the car on our left or slipping off the shoulder-less cliff on our right.

But once we got out of the mountains we started to sense the magic of the Mediterranean below. We connected onto the highway that runs along the Côte d’Azur, watching the iconic place names go by: St. Tropez, Grasse, Nice, Cannes. But before settling on the coast itself we turned inland from Nice a few miles for this stop at St-Paul de Vence.

Here we spent three wonderful nights at Toile Blanche, a beautiful boutique hotel just outside town. This place got everything right — amazing contemporary design, beautiful gardens, good food, wonderful service. This was a close to perfect stop.

I was concerned beforehand that the place was a bit removed from town — nearly a half-hour walk. And I knew we would never want to use the car once we were settled in. And yet my concerns failed to account for the fact that the walk into town was also a seriously steep uphill climb. So after two journeys into town and back we found ourselves pretty content to just stay in the beautiful hotel. In fact, I was genuinely sad to leave this little slice of heaven.

We spent two nights just outside the tiny village of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, one of seemingly innumerable, impossibly beautiful old towns strewn across France. The only reason one would stop here – for two nights no less – is to see the Verdon Gorge, described in Lonely Planet as “the Grand Canyon of Europe.” Now to be fair I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, but if the Verdon Gorge is comparable I’m not putting the Grand Canyon on any late-in-life bucket list.

First, our hotel and the town. We stayed at a somewhat rustic but very nice hotel that was maybe a 15- or 20-minute walk out of town. We chose the hotel because it’s owned by Alain Ducasse, one of the great star chefs in the world, and where he has a small Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s all but impossible to get in but if you’re staying at the hotel they make a reservation for you. Both the hotel grounds and the meal were very nice.

A funny story about the hotel though. We talked with the receptionist about making reservations for our other meals at some of the local restaurants and he said that the local restaurants won’t take reservations from the hotel. Not because they resent the competition or anything like that, but because the guests at the hotel come for Michelin-quality meals and then complain about the “ordinary” local food. Apparently it’s a big enough issue that they prefer just not to have those guests (i.e., us). So we kept our lodgings secret.

And about that 15-minute walk into town. Part of it was on a lovely, very quiet paved country lane. Then you got to the steep climb up into town. Moustiers was built way up there for security, I’m sure, but it was quite a hike. Very cute once you got up there but quite the climb. Bad enough for me but even worse for Mark and his knees, and for him coming down was even worse.

Now, about that gorge. We picked up a rental car in Grenoble and drove down, stopping at the beautiful little town of Sisteron for lunch. Getting to the hotel in the early afternoon we went up to the town, looked around, had dinner, and all that. The next day we drove 15 minutes or so to the place where you rent water crafts to go into the gorge. We discovered, though, that all the good boats, those with tarps, that is, were already taken and it was just too hot and sunny to go out without protection. This is another of those experiences that would have been better with some advance planning.

That was OK, though, since we could still come back early the next morning after checking out of the hotel and try it again before continuing down toward the coast. At lunch we thought, “Hey, maybe in the late afternoon people will have moved on so let’s go try it then.” Ha! While late afternoon is “chill” time for us, the scene was more crowded than ever. So we’ll try it again in the morning.

This time we got there just 15 minutes after things opened up and getting a boat was no problem. And in the early morning chill and with the sun behind the cliffs having a tarp cover was no issue. We would have liked an electric boat – small and very quiet, nothing big or fast – but those were already reserved in toto for the day. Again, would have been good to plan ahead. Still we got a nice little paddle boat and rode away in the cool early morning weather. There were only a few other tourists out and it was … pleasant.

When you pass from the lake where you rent boats (or kayaks or paddle boards) under a bridge you’re quickly in the gorge and it’s nice. Big cliffs, beautiful water. But the cliffs aren’t that high and they start to shrink in pretty short order. You paddle for maybe 40 minutes to the end of the route – buoys mark the no go zone – and you turn around and go back. On the return route it was clear that there were a LOT more people now and it was getting hotter and I was getting tired from the paddling. I mean, it was nice, but not some blow-your-mind kind of experience. Now I really do want to see the Grand Canyon, if for no other reason than to have a good comparison.

Now we head down towards the Mediterranean, still with a car, with just a little over a week still in France.