Day 162: Father’s Day in Beautiful, Fancy Chateau Saint-Martin
Not too shabby a place to spend Fathers Day!
The day started with a beautiful breakfast buffet overlooking the Cote d’Azur. It’s almost embarrassing how nice this place is.
Despite it being a Sunday — Father’s Day! — in a place like this, we still did school back in our room — Willa and I on the balcony, James and Teddy in the room.
While Willa did math, I drew her
Willa’s getting really into her times tables — we’ve worked up to the fives. She had a good day at school, which isn’t always the case.
By lunchtime we took a taxi back into old Vence — not to be confused with old St. Paul de Vence which is stunningly picturesque and medieval and a few miles away. We wandered the streets and enjoyed the fact that most people seemed like locals. Perhaps a result of its proximity to a much more popular such walled city nearby that’s super touristy.
We found a table outside in a cobblestoned square near a few Roman fountains, and shared moules marinieres avec frites, pasta with ratatouille and salade de chevre chaud. Willa confirmed her love of mussels, James was introduced to his.
I decided that my “thing” when I get home will be to master a few key Provencal French dishes.
James has not been very well behaved since Corisca and we don’t know why. Maybe he’s tired? Ugggh, it puts a real damper on the days when he’s whiney and intentionally pushing our buttons. And of course we fall into the same traps/cycles of frustration.
We have vowed to break the cycle and try better approaches….
While waiting for an Uber home the kids had fun drinking out of the Roman fountains…
Back at the hotel we put the kids in the Kids Club with their two little Upper East Side buddies, and they had a blast for three hours straight playing tag, making things out of playdough and playing with the hotel’s resident bunny, Martin.
Meanwhile, Teddy and I read on loungers in the grass near the pool. I’m very close to finishing my Spain book about bullfighting, “Or I’ll Dress You In Mourning.” Teddy dozed.
The kids swam with their buddies in the pool a little later, then — since both kids were getting sitters that night — we arranged for the four kids to eat by the pool with their babysitters and then go to bed.
While this got underway, I went back to the room to call my dad to wish him a happy Fathers Days, and we headed up to Le Saint-Martin, the Michelin-starred restaurant on the terrace overlooking the hills below.
One of the more spectacular locales for a restaurant ever.
I ate a crab starter and pork main, Teddy had asparagus starter and seabass main. It was all delicious — but of course incredibly fussy and French.
I was reminded of my time living in stuffy Deauville, where many of my buddies were in the service industry in the fancy hotels there. They took the work very seriously — being a proper server in France is considered high art — but they were also regular joes who drank beers on their nights off. We inspected the young stuffed-shirts serving us and wondered what they did when they weren’t working.
We finished the meal with a shared dessert of berries and ice cream.
On our way out we exchanged numbers with Heather and Philippe, promising to hang when we’re back in NYC.
A super fun way to celebrate/cap our last night in France.
(Btw James was asleep when we came back to the room. Around 2:45 am I heard him shouting at Willa: “Has it been a couple of hours??” I think because the sitter must have told him we’d be back in a couple of hours and he didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep and that we were right there with him – it was funny).
