Small village/town near Cote d'Azur/Verdon Gorge for 3 days
 

I'm looking for a nice place to stay for 3 nights to use as a base for a few day trips to visit a couple of the coastal areas as well as the Verdon Gorge. We will be spending a week in the area flying into Marseille and out of Nice and hiring a car for most of that time.

We have booked the first 2 nights in Cassis and will be visiting the Calanques. The final 2 nights will be spent in or very close to Nice and we will have dropped the car off at this point. We will probably visit Eze and also do a walk from Cap d'Ail along the coast to Monaco and get the train/bus back.

So, we have 3 nights to play with in the middle of this. We don't want to stay anywhere that is busy and would prefer a more rural location that provides fairly easy access for day trips. The Gigaro coastal path (Sentier du Littoral) near St Tropez is a possibility and we would definitely like to spend a day exploring the Verdon Gorge.

Can anyone recommend a place to stay? Also given that we would like to 'get away from it all' would we be better off basing ourselves closer to the Verdon Gorge and doing a day trip down to Saint Tropez way instead of the other way around? We will be getting plenty of coastal time in Cassis and Nice.

Thanks

The Gorge is nowhere near a coast. It takes quite awhile to simply drive around the gorge, so you need to consider that too.

We stayed in St. Saturnin les Apts and loved the small village. We easily drove to the Gorge and back as a day trip. the Luberon is a wonderful place to see a different part of Provence, with small friendly villages and great markets and beautiful scenery. I highly recommend the Colorado Provençal in Rustrel for an amazing walk among the ochre colored formations, much nicer than Rouissilon and far less crowded.