Chinon

I didn't really shoot Rick with this cannon. I shot him with my camera!

What is important here is that behind him you see the vineyards. Ahhh, the wines of Chinon! This region presented on wine bottles as Appellation Chinon Controlée has wines of a unique sort. The taste of limestone and gravel in the soil provide a base for these elegant yet casual and relatively inexpensive wines. The rivers lend moisture. The climate is mild.

The Cabernet Franc grape is most widely grown, but the red wine here is lighter so to me it's more like a pinot noir. The bottle of rosé I enjoyed with Rick was "smooth," so odd for a rosé and yet it was the best I ever tasted. The region is also known for Chenin Blanc, a light but complex white wine. These are my favorite French wines.

terroir-france.com

gastronomos.fr

Michelin

Nice

We flew down to Nice to visit the small museums and beaches and the perched village of St. Paul de Vence. Oh yes, and we went to Monte Carlo for a day.

We rented a huge car. Small cars are preferred here because of the narrow roads, but Rick went into the office and he speaks no French (French people prefer francophones) and they gave him the biggest car! Lesson: always send the francophone into the rental car office.

We took a stroll down the Avenue des Anglais, the waterfront sidewalk where Victorian ladies once paraded with their parasols, in front of the Hotel Negresco, the fancy hotel in Nice that looks like a birthday cake. We walked on the stones, which the French call the beach. We put a few in our pockets for souvenirs. We had dinner at the big outdoor waterfront area where the huge flower market of Nice used to be. Now this area is set with long tables and everyone and anyone can sit down and enjoy a nice seafood dinner. The prices were good. We did this most of the nights we were in Nice.

Musée Matisse

Henri Matisse loved Nice. He said he loved the light. It was here that he painted many interiors and flattened nudes called odalisques, also simplified plants and leaves in outline. His museum in Nice is the 17th-century Villa des Arènes de Cimiez. Its most famous painting is The Creole Dancer (1951). It also contains many dance related sketches from the 1930's and sketches for the chapel he made famous in the hills outside Nice. Henri Matisse died in Nice in 1954.

Matisse-Nice.org

Fromers

henrimatisse.org