Provençal Aïoli

A strange, soaring elation always grips me as I drive along the winding coastal road from St. Raphael and first catch sight of the pink-shaded towers of St. Tropez across the glittering bay. There are certain places in the world for each of us – magic places where we immediately feel at home at first meeting – as if somehow, sometime, we had been there before. St. Tropez holds this magic for me.

Sheer good luck – unearned and unadorned – is as satisfying as it is exciting. Newton sitting under an apple tree, for instance; or the owner of the left-bank café, Les Deux Magots, awaking one morning to find his comer the most famous rendezvous in France.