"Slow down and enjoy" Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur by etfromnc

I only spent a couple days in Provence, on the way home from Bosnia in the summer of 2008, but that was more than enough to convince me that Provence well deserves its high praise and that this is another area where I must find more time for exploration.
You may be more familiar with this area as Cote d'Azur or the French Riviera, although Provence includes much more than the beautiful coast and crystal blue waters from which it gets its most prominent nicknames. Its most famous cities are Nice, Cannes, and Marseilles. Each of these cities have many tourist attractions, thus many tourists. If you want beaches for sun and people-watching either Nice or Cannes will more than meet your needs but I did notice that the beaches at Cannes are much more amenable to walking barefoot or lying directly on the ground, as the beaches of Nice are much more rocky as compared to the finer sand at Cannes.
There’s nothing "natural" about the neatly tended rows of lavender, but the vivid purple hills of Provence are rightly legendary. Every summer, flowering lavender sets the hills of southern France alight with colour. One of the most famous views is at the Abbaye Notre Dame du Sénanque, but the Routes de la Lavande site (www.routes-lavande.com) can point you to a range of ways to see violet.