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Experienced and first-time travelers alike rely on Fodor's Gold Guides for rich, reliable coverage the world over. Smart travel tips and important contact info make planning your trip a breeze, and detailed coverage of sights, accommodations, and restaurants give you the info you need to make your experience enriching and hassle-free. If you only have room for one guide, this is the one for you. The best guide to Provence & the Cote d'Azur, packed with essentials Walking tours of Avignon, Aix, Cannes, and Nice Hikes slong stunning seaside trails, boat trips to isolated calanques, country drives through Haute Provence Great itineraries, with visits to cliff-top castles, Mediterranean beaches, ancient amphitheaters, medieval towns Clubs and casinos, dance, theater, and opera festivals Where to shop for boutis, santons, and brocante Where to stay and eat, no matter what your budget Chateaux, villas, inns, farmhouses, seaside hotels, and gites Fashionable bistros, bustling brasseries, renowned seafood restaurants, and sunny terraces for outdoor dining Fresh, thorough, practical -- off and on the beaten path Costs, hours, descriptions, and tips by the thousands All reviews based on visits by savvy writer-residents 23 pages of maps -- and dozens of great features Important contacts, smart travel tips Fodor's Choice What's Where Pleasures & Pastimes Festivals Background essays Glossary and menu guide Complete index

On the Road with Fodor's About Our Writers:Each year the Gold Guides are written and updated by more than 500 resident writers
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The Gold Guide Smart Travel Tips A to Z:An easy-to-use section divided alphabetically by topic
Under each listing you'll find tips and information that will help you accomplish what you need to in Provence & the Côte d'Azur
You'll also find addresses and telephone numbers of organizations and companies that offer destination-related services and detailed information and publications
Destination: Provence & the Côte d'Azur:Helps get you in the mood for your trip
"Stone, Sun, and Sea: Provence Primordial New and Noteworthy:Cues you in on trends and happenings
What's Where:Gets you oriented
Pleasures and Pastimes:Describes the activities and sights that make Provence & the Côte d'Azur unique
Great Itineraries:Provides a range of options, geared to the length of your stay, that help ensure that you get the most out of your visit
Fodor's Choice:Showcases our top picks from special restaurants and one-of-a-kind accommodations to out-of-the-ordinary sights and activities
Let them inspire you! Festivals and Seasonal Events:Alerts you to special events you'll want to seek out
Les Alpilles, Arles, and the Camargue The Pont du Gard, Nîmes, the Rhône Delta, and the Languedoc Frontier
The Vaucluse Avignon, the Luberon, and Mont Ventoux Aix, Marseille, and the Central Coast Aubagne, Cassis, and the Iles d'Hyères
The Western Côte d'Azur St-Tropez to Cannes, the Haute Var, and the Gorges du Verdon Nice and the Eastern Côte d'Azur Antibes, Monaco, and the Arrière-Pays Portraits of Provence the Côte d'Azur Provence the Côte d'Azur at a Glance
A Chronology "Postcards from Summer," by Peter Mayle Books and Videos French Vocabulary Menu Guide
Index
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This partial excerpt, from the Pleasures and Pastimes section, gives you a taste of what Provence & the Côte d'Azur have to offer and the sights and scenes that make them a great place to visit.

Antiquities

Though France is full of ancient treasures, an extraordinary concentration of them are here along the Mediterranean coast, where dragon's head galleys sailed in from Phoécea, Greece, Rome, and Africa.

Art

Artists have been drawn to the south of France for generations, awed by its luminous colors and crystal-clear light. Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, and van Gogh led the way, followed over the years by Léger, Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, and Cocteau. Cézanne had the good fortune to be born in Aix, and he returned to it, and to his beloved country home nearby, throughout his life.

The artists left behind them a superb legacy of works, utterly individual but all consistently bathed in Mediterranean color and light. That's why a visit to this region can be as culturally rich as a month in Paris and just as intimately allied to the setting that inspired the work.

If you love art, don't miss out on the Carte Musée Côte d'Azur, a museum pass that grants you unlimited access to some 58 museums from Cannes to the Italian border.

Beaches

The beaches of the French Riviera have long been reviled for their famous galets, round white stones the size of your fist heaped along the shoreline, just where the sand should be. But there are some natural sand beaches on the southern French coast -- especially between St-Tropez and Cannes. Provence's coastline alternates sandy pockets with rocky inlets called criques and calanques where you perch on black rocks and ease yourself into the turquoise water.

Châteaux and Villas

The length of the coastline, the hills behind, and the banks of the Rhône River bristle with blunt, thick-stoned fortresses that kept aggressors out -- not to mention the dozens of inland perched villages, each crowned with the remains of its feudal ramparts.

On the Côte d'Azur, the extravagances of the Belle époque left a legacy of fabulous villas of every shape, size, and cultural reference, from Moroccan to Spanish to Greek to Japanese.

Churches, Abbeys, and Painted Chapels

This isn't Gothic cathedral country, but a treasure trove of smaller church gems offer a moving, more intimate alternative. Provence is peppered with tiny Romanesque churches, as pure and austere in form as a cathedral is flamboyant.

All the aesthetic force of chapels in mountain villages are focused on their frescoes. These famous painted chapels of the coastal mountains have every inch of their inner surface decorated with images of saints, angels, demons, and the life of Christ.

Dining

The sound of a bottle of rosé swirling in a bucket of ice, the sizzle of a fennel-grilled fish when you drizzle a green trail of olive oil over the flesh, the dappling green shade splashed with fuchsia patches of bougainvillea and scarlet trails of geraniums -- these are the sensual delights of a long garden lunch in the south of France.  You see it in the faces of the diners around you, who slip into sherbet-color linens and slouch gracefully, gratefully, in a wrought-iron garden chair: lassitude, contentment, andvolupté (sensuality).

In summer, shops and museums may shut down until 3 or 4, as much to accommodate lazy lunchers as for the crowds taking sun on the beach. But a late lunch works nicely with a late breakfast -- and that's another southern luxury.

Flora

Although the hot-house crescent of the Côte d'Azur blooms extravagantly with palm trees, lemon trees, bananas, and jungle flowers, the rest of Provence has a flora all its own -- austere, hardy, and aromatic.  Boxwood and holly and dwarf scrub oak cover the hillsides. Rosemary and lavender send out leaves that are matchstick thin and wrap themselves in woody bark dense with aromatic resin. Bushy mimosas send out feathery, fernlike leaves and thick showers of the finest of yellow flowers.

But the cypress is the symbol of Provence, its tall evergreen spears flanking mansion and mas and symbolizing hospitality. Tradition has it that one cypress symbolizes the proffering of a glass of water to passersby; two means water and a meal; and three means a night's sleep in the barn.

Pastis and Pétanque

The café is a way of life in Provence, a shady outdoor living room where friends gather like family and share the ritual of the long, cool drink of pastis, the discussion of the weather (hot), and an amble over to the pétanque (lawn bowling) court.

Perched Villages

In the Middle Ages, pirates and brigands, Saracens and acquisitive lords drove village life to put its wagons, as it were, in a circle -- and well above the fray. Thus the whole of Provence and its coast sprouted dense stone villages perchés (perched villages) from the hilltops, Babel-like towers of canted cubes and blunt cylinders in shades of dove-gray and honey-gold. Built with the stone beneath them, they seem to grow out of the rock, organic and somehow alive.

Shopping

Some of the eagle's-nest hilltop villages have their predatory claws unfurled these days, with every house a storefront overflowing with doodads and geegaws in Provençal themes.

These items are the bastard children of legitimate crafts and products that are marvelously and intrinsically Provençal. Far from the beaten tourist paths, in the fashionable towns and discreet backstreets of cities, you'll find some of the loveliest products in France.

Wine

Although Provence has a few fine wines -- notably the lower Rhône greats like Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Beaumes-de-Venise and a few excellent whites from Cassis, Bandol, and Palette -- the majority of wine drunk here is unpretentious, sunny stuff, with the most by far being rosé.

Remember that in these parts the word vin (wine) twangs through the nose like a broken banjo string and sounds more like vaing. Santé (to your health)!

Excerpted from Provence and the Cote d'Azur: The Complete Guide to the Hilltop Villages and Mediterranean Coastline by Fodor's Travel Publications, Inc. Staff
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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Fodor's Provence & Cote D'Azur, 4th Edition

Fodor's Provence & Cote D'Azur, 4th Edition

0679001565

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