Provence!

"This is parfait", I said to Sandy as we ate our breakfast figs on our terrace this morning. (I have taken to prententiously injecting French words into my conversation at random moments). It is perfect, though, I think. I had to laugh when we first walked on to the terrace, because it was like a cliche of a Provencal view: swimming pool, tiled roof, trees, moutainous hills in the background. I felt like I was in an episode of some show on the Living Channel.

We have been in Provence less than 24 hours. Already (well, actually about 12 hours ago) we are asking ourselves why we didn't just come straight here and forget about everywhere else we've been (not to mention the 20 million pesos we've spent so far). "This is why we came," said Sandy as we sat on the terrace of our hotel last night, drinking in the view of the garden, the warm evening air and the moreish Provencal wine.

We are at the Hotel Pigonnet, which our taxi driver said - and I now agree with him - is the best place to stay in Aix-en-Provence. Think of your typical movie set in Provence, or any book you've ever read that's set here. This is the place you've imagined while you've been reading. It's a converted mansion set in the most dreamy garden I have ever been in. We decided that if you had not been to Four Winds, Matakana, you might imagine something like this when you think of heaven. (We talked to the gardener this afternoon, or rather Sandy talked and then called me in as interpreter to ask more detailed questions about what was in the garden and how long it had been here. I can tell he really loves it here; it's not the kind of style that would work back home at our place, but the care and design thought that's gone into the garden have made it stunning).

Inside, the hotel is decorated in that perfect, cliched, Provencal style. The kind of thing that looks (in my opinion) really pretentious and try-hard when it's in a villa in Remuera, but is right at home, of course, in its natural setting. I have taken about three thousand photos of everything so far. Our room has floral fabric on the walls in tones of pink and white, with a co-ordinating cover on the bed and something similar but different again in the hangings over the top of the bed. I can't even begin to describe the decor in the salons downstairs; suffice it to say I know several people who would just about wet themselves with excitement over it all.

Last night we wandered around the town and had a couple of glasses of Rose in one of the squares (finally a bargain - 2 Euros a glass!). The first thing we saw upon entering the town was a sort of raly going on; a large grand piano on wheels was being towed by a troupe of dancers, who paused every few minutes to go through their routine. It was a rally to publicise the concept of using a car less and public transport more. Tres bien, we thought.

We watched the people hanging out: students, families, tourists. A couple of little boys spent an hour chasing bubbles blown by their mother. I remembered that was a thing we used to do as kids, before people had gameboys.

For dinner we came back to the hotel and ate here on the movie-set terrace; the Prix Fixe menu of local dishes. We had, it's safe to say, the best meal of our trip so far. In fact we had the extremely unusual conversation: a disagreement over whose dish was actually the nicest. In the end it came down to 2 points to one, with Sandy the winner. His Chevre chaud salade - goat's cheese enclosed in pastry and cooked with pinenuts and walnuts and a tangy dressing - was superb, and the best one of these we have tried anywhere (it seems to be common on French menus). I will be attempting to recreate it at the first opportunity. The disagreement was over the main course; I thought my chicken breast with herbs and butter stuffed under the skin and a sauce of cepes and other delicious mushrooms was fabulous; Sandy thought his grilled cod-like fish on a robust mix of peppers, raisins, onions, tomatoes and pinenuts should be declared the winner. Dessert was the decider: my pear clafoutis, while delicious, was more like a friand than what I know as a clafoutis, which is more pudding-like. Sandy chose rix au lait, which is rice pudding to you and me, flavoured with orange, rum and raisins and served with strawberry sorbet. It was gorgeous. After dinner we wandered around the garden and congratulated ourselves on how clever we were to choose this place.

Aix-en-Provence is a large student and market town, which makes it quite lively and interesting. Sandy particularly likes the large number of young girls in shorts and mini skirts, while I must say I am impressed by the disproportionate number of shoe shops there seem to be here. Apart from these shallow but obvious appeals, it is a very typical Provencal town with narrow lanes of tall buildings giving way to sunny squares where people gather and celebrate how good it is to be alive. This morning was market day so there were flowers, fruit, vegetables and fish on display in two of the main squares. We ate pizza for lunch from a wood-fired oven at a tiny restaurant where they gave us ice cubes with our Rose. I really do admire the French approach to lunch. They take it seriously; they close up their shops and toddle off to a local cafe where they sit, enjoy nice company, a little wine and something good to eat. No-one seems to be in a tearing hurry to get back to work. It's got to be healthy.... all that wine and cheese and yet hardly a fatty among them.

I think their attitude towards sun worship could use an upgrade, though. I had a sit by the pool this afternoon and was confronted with not one but two pairs of small, saggy, mahogany-coloured tits on display (attached to wrinkly mahogany-coloured bodies). I felt very pale but also quite smooth and youthful. I felt like whipping mine out just to remind these women what they probably used to look like, but refrained for reasons of sun-smartness.