We ended up at Les Baux-de-Provence, interestingly enough the former feudal home of the Grimaldi family that now runs Monaco. Our hotel (left), the Mas d'Aigret, was everything you'd expect from Provence - a little stone farmhouse with blue shutters and a garden full of lavender and olive trees. The hotel is snuggled up against a rock wall (some of the rooms are actually partly carved out of the rock) just down the road from Les Baux's primary attraction, the ruins of a hilltop medieval castle.

For centuries, the castle was the stronghold of an independent and war-like family that believed itself descended from Balthazar, the Magi (their traditional battle cry translates roughly as "Kill 'em all, Balthazar"). Eventually they pissed off the wrong man, the infamous Cardinal Richelieu, who blew up their fortress and sent them a bill for the dynamite. Today, the citizens of the tiny village below the fortress make a killing selling overpriced potpourri, herbes de Provence, soap and other little knick-knacky things to the busloads of tourists who converge on the place.