In the last week we have made three day trips, trying to cram as much as possible into our Niçois life before it ends. It can't last much longer, can it, at this age? Last Friday we drove down into Provence to Lorgues, which seems to me the center of the Provence wine country, found that a terrific restaurant we know there was closed, and had (by French standards) a lousy lunch elsewhere, Afterwards we drove on a few miles to the Chateau St. Julien d'Aille, which produces my favorite rosé: a place of handsome old buildings, though the facilities within represent the latest there is in winemaking, and there bought a case to take home. Provence wines, and especially its rosés used to be denigrated but today this is the up and coming wine region of France, still relatively cheap but more and more famous and prized. The rows and rows of vines all around us were deprived of their grapes six or more weeks ago but still had their leaves which were turning all kinds of colors, a kind of New England autumn, not walls and walls of color but fields and fields that sometimes looked on fire. The hillsides were mostly pines, with here and there lonely trees that had turned bright yellow.
The next day we drove 20 miles from Nice up to Luceram along the gorges, the river churning below us as the road climbed. Again the gorgeous colors, the greens and bright yellows, and very occasionally a tree that had turned red, and then the mountains closed in on us. Luceram is an old perched village. The church is high up and filled with paintings, many by Louis Brea, that date back more than 500 years. Climbing up to it, mostly on stone staircases cut into the rock, we kept stepping into gorgeous little squares with flowers on the balconies and in front of the doorways. Brea did nearly all his work In or near Nice and is therefore relatively unknown. To me he was as good as Fra Angelico or Filippo Lippi or any of those 15th century Italians.
And then on Thanksgiving Eve we drove across into Italy to Badalucco for lunch with friends at Ca Meo, a former mill, and the river below was pouring past heavier and louder than I've ever seen it. The restaurant is vaulted rooms, fireplaces burning. The usual 3 hour lunch, 12 or 15 courses, most of them based on the mushroom the Italians call porcini, and the French call seppes. A wonderful local, no-name wine to drink. And after it, the lovely drive back along the gorges and mountains and autumn colors to the coast and home.
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And so it goes, life on the Cote d'Azur. There must be people who would weep with frustration reading this. Places they'll never get to. But for us it has been normal all these years. Though perhaps not for much longer, I guess.