Morning light...St Paul de Vence

The sun comes up across the ridegetop on the other side of the valley beneath St. Paul de Vence and the elegantly fabulous hotel La Colombe d'Or. Here, in the picture above, the Devil Dog watches  the sunrise through the windows of the open sitting room on the third floor veranda overlooking the pool and the multicolored roof tiles, steam rising from a chimney vent in the golden glow of the morning sun.

So we wander into town at dawns early light, passing the high walls of the ramparts of the ancient medieval Roman hilltop town of St Paul de Vence, here at their razors edge,  while the morning sun blazes behind its portholes.
And the village is deserted, morning sounds of quietude filling the ambient abundance. Along the walls and back alleys and then down the long central narrow street that is the arterial flow of St Paul de Vence. Towards the end of that street we see the view looking past  the Hotel St.Paul, the alley twisting to an end point, an apex, then a ridgetop cemetery and the valley below.

Hotel St. Paul....a Relais Aux Chateau retreat

La Colombe d'Or is not the only luxury hotel in St Paul de Vence.  At one end of the village is the lovely and sumptuous Hotel St.Paul, a superb luxury hotel with amazing views, a fabulous Michellin starred restaurant, and a terrific romantic getaway. In fact, on the Devil Dogs honeymoon, long before he was a travel writer, he and his lovely wife came to St. Paul de Vence as part of our month long sojourn from Paris to Rome and couldn't get in to La Colombe d'Or (it was booked solid), so we stayed at Hotel St. Paul for two nights. I'm happy to report that it is still just as lovely as it was 14 years ago, the restaurant is still superb, and in the summer, dinner on the open patio is a virtually religous experience, especially when they wheel out the fromage cart amidst the twinkling lights and the cool summer wind, our mind set on delight, our sense on overdrive, all enhanced by a fine bottle of wine.