World Travel and Tourist Destinations

The timeless South of France has the mysterious capability of bringing back memories that have long since been lost. A trip to Saint Paul de Vence in Provence brought me back to my childhood, even if just for an afternoon.

25 degrees in March. How things have changed in just two years. Two years ago, I was trudging through feet of snowdrifts in Massachusetts on my way to yet another day of high school math. Today, I’m in the south of France. Today, I’m in Saint Paul de Vence.

I don’t miss typical March weather. I’m hypnotized by quintessential Mediterranean bright yellows and blues, winding stone streets, small-town church steeples. There is something so very French about this town; I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the laundry lines hanging from the windows, or the way that even in the South where the people tend towards paresseux without becoming completely lazy (although a sieste is an important part of every day), you can’t ignore the French pride, by now I know it well, in everything that people do and say.

Shop owners and artisans watch as you examine their wares, certain that there are no flaws and almost daring you to find one, and I remember, once more, why I fell in love with this country almost ten years ago.

And yet, although Paris may have been my first love, there is something about the South that encourages dreaming. I’m not quite sure what it is, but in small towns like Saint Paul de Vence, up in the mountains where one can find refuge from all the people, time becomes less regimented. Memories and reality float amongst each other without any concern for the rules that apply to the concrete and the abstract. As I climb the street that winds up through the town, I pass a store that is under renovation: it may feel like summer here but it’s not tourist season yet.

I smell fresh paint and am propelled back in time. I’m six, seven, eight, nine years old; the age doesn’t matter because the memory repeats itself. Moving again and again, new apartments over and over until I can walk down the Manhattan streets and point out the numbered awnings, like a game. Moving was the game to my parents. That new paint, that new apartment smell has always felt more like home to me than any actual place. I breathe it in and keep walking, hanging in limbo somewhere between now and then, the past and the present.

I admire the pissaladière, the Niçois pizza shiny with olive oil and sweet caramelized onions in the glass windows in front of the stores, but I don’t buy any: lunch of crawfish with aioli and whole sea bass, scales and tails flayed expertly in front of me at the Colombe d’Or are still only a vague memory. The Colombe d’Or never disappoints.

I walk further up the road that winds to the top, to the spectacular view. I look out over the cliff, and as far as I can see, everything is green. A patchwork of all of the greens possible. Even the giant Crayola boxes wouldn’t have enough colors, I think to myself, still caught up in the past, a time before that magical tenth birthday when you finally reach double digits.

I turn to walk back down the winding path and stop by a small church. It is the church of Saint Anthony, a saint I claimed as my own when I was very small and who would follow me long after as I, disorganized as ever, would do my father proud and invoke the patron Saint of the lost to help me find my flash drive. I push open the doors into the small church, just a few pews, a modest altar and a few candles with a donation box. I listen as my coins clink to the bottom and cross myself to pray, as I was taught.

Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please look around. Something is lost, and cannot be found. How ironic, I think to myself as I recite the childish prayer. Nothing was lost here, but I did, for an afternoon, find a small piece of my childhood, memories so few and far between in the hustle and bustle of daily life. Here it was, all this time, hiding in the south of France.

Authored By Emily Monaco, USA

Tags: france travel, Saint Anthony, south of France, Travel

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