Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Province, Day 3: Cannes & Valbonne

On the way to have breakfast with our friends we stopped at the recommended boulangerie in Plan de Grasse and bought croissants, pains au chocolate, pastries, and lots of wonderful bread. We drove up to the mas and soon were settled in the patio off the kitchen, drinking coffee and tea from the traditional Provençal bowls and delighting in the homemade jams and marmalades.

Our friend, a psychologist, had to work that morning, but her husband offered to guide us down to the covered market in Cannes, where he needed to do the week's shopping for produce and cheeses. We got to Cannes fairly quickly (easier driving than in Antibes) and parked in an underground lot about half a block from the indoor market. It was huge?vendors offering vegetables, meats, fish, all sorts of cheeses, flowers and plants, and lovely fresh fruit. We wondered why we had never heard of that market before and concluded that it was more for locals than for tourists. I spotted some handsome melons and bought them for breakfast the following day and then picked up some Epoisse cheese for dinner.

The market was a fine place for people-watching, and I noticed that unlike at our home-town farmers' market parents did not drag their children along while shopping.

After visiting the market we drove along the Croisette up to Le Suquet, the old town. The weather was hot, and both the French and many foreign visitors were out enjoying the sunshine. Then we decided to return home via Juan-les-Pins and Cap d'Antibes, a beautiful drive on that balmy day. As our friend navigated the streets of Antibes for us we wished we had had him along on previous visits to that charming town?getting through it usually took us a good hour, but this time we made it in 20 minutes.

On the way back home we made a brief detour to show our traveling companion the scientific campus of Sophia Antipolis, set in the hills near Mougins, where our friend works (his office boasts a view out toward the Mediterranean); the laboratories, hotels, and even a small shopping center are tucked away the pines.

On returning to the mas we discovered that lunch had been laid out on the long table in the garden, with a view across to the hills and the town of Grasse. We feasted on local and Italian ham, fresh melon slices, cheeses, more wonderful bread, roasted red peppers, tagliatelle au pistou?it was like eating in a Peter Mayle book.

After lunch we piled into two cars and drove over the twisty, narrow back roads of the hills leading to the village of Valbonne, where we visited a ceramics exhibit in which a colleage of our French friends had several pieces on display. Afterwards we spent some time in the church, built in as an abbey in 1199 by the Chalais Order, liking its austerity but not the Victorian refurbishments on one side of the nave.

A wedding had taken place in the church a bit earlier, and the bridal party and guests were making their way up the cobblestoned street toward the main square of the village. We followed in their wake, admiring the brightly painted houses on streets intersecting out own, until we reached the square, surrounded by 15th-17th century arcades. After refreshing drinks (Bob had his favorite Pastis) at an outdoors café we looked at shops, including one offering beautiful olive-wood objects, and several of the village's art galleries.

That evening we had a lovely dinner in the dining room of our adopted French family. The meal had one surprise element: the main course, prepared and then frozen a month earlier, turned out to be a fig tarte instead of a lamb tourte?the dish had been taken from the freezer by mistake and, since it was baked with its foil covering on top, the error undiscovered until too late to start all over again. But we dined well on fresh salad greens dressed with a perfect vinaigrette, rice with a tomato coulis, more wonderful bread, and six or seven cheeses, all washed down with a bottle of red Bandol. We had the fig tart for dessert, with ice cream.

We presented the family with the gifts we had brought from California: brownie mix, huge bars of Belgian chocolate from Trader Joe's, origami paper (for a while difficult to find in that region of France), pancake mix, and other items reminiscent of their year-long stay as our neighbors. For the 16-year-old we also brought a can of root beer, which he, alone among his family, had learned to love while in the U.S. Since we had room for only that one can we also brought a kit for making root beer, in the sure knowledge that he would soon start his own small factory. For the cat, Bilbo, we brought catnip, nearly impossible to find in France. He was mildly interested, preferring earlier offerings of toys stuffed with catnip to the real thing.

We returned to our hotel without getting lost once and felt very proud.