Èze You Is or Èze You Ain’t My Baby?: Southern France, Day 3

Yes, you figured it out – blog post titles are just word association games. Yesterday, we accidentally stumbled our way into Èze while escaping the gravity well that surrounds the black hole of Monaco. (I have relatively uncomplicated feelings about Monaco at this point.) Today, we went to the tiny village on purpose and believe you me, intention makes all the difference. Well, intention and a really expensive goat-themed lunch. Let’s dig in.

Èze is a characteristic example of the medieval villages that dot hills all over France. It was originally a fortified (or at least somewhat-walled) town that would have served as the seat of some noble or other and protected the commoners who supported the keep. I hedge on the fortification because we saw something called “the Moors’ Gate” which, according to the sign, is how the Moors entered Èze and proceeded to occupy it for 70 years. If leaving the back door open is what it takes to have your castle overrun I’m not sure you have any claim on the title “fortified”. What this means for the modern visitor is that you are wending your way up narrower and narrower “roads” until you get as far as cars are even allowed, and then you hoof it straight up a ways further.

“Fun” aside: when we picked up our rental car, it turned out that I had selected, back in the day, for the more robust “intermediate” vehicle size. I can’t remember the details any more but I’m 95% this was a price thing – for whatever reason their inventory of small cars had been low so we got a better deal on a bigger car. This runs contrary to our usual rental strategy in Europe, however. Confronted with this at the counter, I dug into it a bit and started talking to the counter person about getting into a smaller vehicle. It seemed to be posing a problem and, accommodating soul that I am, I waved it off. “Surely it’ll be fine” I actually had the asinine nerve to say out loud. And so, there we were in a fairly robust Peugeot SUV, navigating windy goat tracks with about 4 inches to spare on either side at times.

That said, they did not have the road to the top blocked off as they do in so many of these situations. That’s because situated at the summit is the Château de la Chèvre d’or, and your pigeon French is not failing you, it’s the house of the golden goat. As you may or may not be aware, cutesy names like this are often used to belay the fancy-pants rich people playground that you are about to enter. We were just there for lunch, but hoo boy. The accommodations we could get a peek at were bonkers, and they all feature spectacular views of the Mediterranean. In any case, these sorts of people don’t want to leave their Aston Martins and their Ferraris down in the car park with the hoi polloi and so they don’t. Seriously, if you’re a really good Tetris player and want to work in the sun more, apply to be a valet car parker at the Golden Goat, their job seems bonkers. That said, they do it with nary a complaint and our rental only looked… ok, ridiculously out of place. It’s still a lot of fun.

Lunch itself in Les Remparts was … I mean, it’s exactly what you want it to be in both the sublime and ridiculous extremes. The menus were on custom digital tablets. You didn’t get a sniff of a drink for less than 15eu. The first three pages of the menu were champagne, by the glass or by the bottle. The food on offer was mildly leaning towards ridiculousness. On the other hand, the mildly-ridiculous food was in-$(*&#-credibly good. The service was impeccable. And all this is going on with a view of true splendor. It’s essentially a sheer drop from the patio to the Med. The fancy boats of Monaco (still otherwise a hellhole) perambulate across the waters. As far as a course correction goes for yesterday’s borderline-unpleasant birthday celebration, this was a pretty good go.

Oh hey! Also, I learned how to drink the boozes! This will sound ridiculous to people who already knew it, but it turns out what I had never pieced together is that the tip of my tongue is what is reacting so negatively to the icky booze flavors. If I just kinds skip that bit of my tongue, I can share a glass of wine or champagne or whatever without making the “I don’t want any spinach!” face that I usually get. So that was neat. Perfect time to test it, too, on a violently-expensive glass of champagne.

When we weren’t pretending to be fancy peoples, we strolled through Èze proper – windy foot paths leading up to the remains of a keep, where old cells and hovels have been converted into crafts boutiques. Because of course. Still, it was more charming craft fair and less brazen tourist crap, making it was genuinely interesting to poke around and see what was what. There was a leatherworker there who was clearly enchanted with the American Southwest; which, sure, but it’s an odd place to find a beaded belt concession with accompanying turquoise necklaces.