But I think France should continue to exist.
G ate 335 in Dublin airport is not the prettiest stop before the French Riviera, but it’s what our pattern of travel in the past had made affordable for us in the present. The building outside of the modern and navigable airport feels more like a bus terminal strangely stranded at a construction site. A new plane was brought to us, one named after an Irish saint.
That petrol-smelling bus stop is where my wife and I began our long-promised and long-delayed anniversary trip. It was supposed to be for our tenth anniversary, but Covid intervened. Then it was to be our 15th, but our children weren’t settled properly at the time. Finally, this June, before celebrating 16 years, we finally managed to arrange care for the children. A house in one of the more obscure but beautiful towns between Toulon and Saint-Tropez awaited us. It’s called Carqueiranne.
The people. I had been warned since eighth grade not to expect any welcomes in France. They hate English speakers, and they especially hate our vandal attempts to speak their language, so I was told. I prepared what I thought was the meekest possible way of introducing myself: “Je m’excuse; je suis américain. Et mon français est incompétent.” Reader, this worked like a charm on every single person it was tried. In fact, none of the people in the South of France acted in the imperious way I was told they would, or shouted at me in perfect English. Many blushingly confessed their own “incompetence” in the Bard’s tongue. Also, besides some German tourists, I was surprised that everyone else was French. I’m a great consumer of Douglas Murray columns and books. I’m quite familiar with the statistics. But, in our travels and day trips in the “Sud,” there was no sign at all that France had been transformed by immigration. None. This speaks either to the concentration of immigrants in Paris or to the most efficient forms of economic segregation imaginable. Several locals however confirmed that, indeed, adult men of all ages wake up and obtain their baguette for the day on their morning walk. We started to do likewise.
The towns. Carqueiranne is a lovely sleepy beach town. We luxuriated in our home’s pool, overlooking the Med. Le Boucherie, the first restaurant we went to in France, did not disappoint, offering incredible, nearly raw cuts of beef from the finest farms in the Benelux. We traveled to Moustier-Sainte-Marie, a medieval town carved intimately around a waterfall. Guests at some restaurants can sit on a balcony and reach into the water. Days later we made an itinerary: Aix-en-Provence, Gordes, Avignon, and Saint-Rémy. In short order: Aix-en-Provence instantly made me want to live there for at least one summer. We toddled into Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur, which has a baptistry dating back to the sixth century. It also has loads of paintings, one of which depicts Thomas putting his hands into the wounds of Christ. I stood before it, surrounded by a group of Japanese tourists, and I promptly had an embarrassing religious experience, suddenly and inconveniently convicted by sin and inwardly repenting. Someone took a photograph of me. Large American Sobs at Strange Image.
We walked out, and the air filled with the provincial scent of lavender, leading us to the flower market, which led to a fish market (less immediately appealing), and from there to an open market with cheeses and scarves and other little luxury baubles. I so badly wanted to settle in for a summer; make my kids learn French, half-stumble with my wife through the square in the evening, blushing from the wine. We bought hats.
That was just in the morning. Lunch in Gordes, another miracle medieval town that would not get zoning approval today. Then we zipped in our rented Mini Cooper to Avignon to see the Palais des Papes. The French captivity of the papacy seemed to make sense when you saw it. Protection behind the King of Arles. None of that Roman scraping. Finally, in our ambition, we sought out Saint-Rémy, which was cooled by fountains that flowed outward in little rivulets through the streets.
On our last excursion, we had lunch in Saint-Tropez. Honestly, it was not different from other luxe resort towns in the world, full of expensive boutiques. But an old-fashioned grand hotel was serving lunch and fabulous cocktails by the docks, and we watched billions of dollars of private wealth bob in the nearby water while we drank variations of gin fizz.
The Food. You can probably guess. On the days we spent in our rented house, we made elaborate spreads of cheese, bread, butter, cured meats, fruit. We ate at little brasseries and a Michelin-starred restaurant. We were twice — twice! — denied by waiters when ordering charcuterie platters because these were “too big” for a couple. We felt as though we were eating like pigs and breaking all the rules. So many banquettes! And desserts! But this was European food, so we in fact lost a startling amount of weight, and my sciatica disappeared entirely. We came home having renewed something in our marriage and absolutely willing to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. do anything he wants to the American food supply.
Overall grade: A+. It’s controversial, but France should continue to exist and remain French.