Since the nineteen-twenties, the hotel has provided a haven to all manner of guests, many of them artists eager to exchange canvases with the forward-thinking patron for room and board. As a belated wedding gift, Shahin had booked a duplex in the Colombe d’Or, an unfussy, family-run hotel perched at the base of the ancient ramparts. From Nice, the terminus, we took a car twenty minutes inland through nondescript suburban sprawl that opens onto the pristine medieval hilltop village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Standing in the narrow hallway, hands against the glass, your whole body lets you know that you are in the South. Suddenly, the sky fills with pastels that turn to gold and shatter on the sea. But it is worth it for the stretch, early in the morning, when day breaks over Marseille and the train shifts from its southern descent and veers east along the corridor linking Toulon, Saint-Raphaël, and Cannes. The bunks on these couchettes_ _are not comfortable, nor is the trip even a bargain against the high-speed option, which gets you there in less than half the time. Last May, my wife, Valentine, and I and our friend Shahin took an overnight train from Paris to the Cote d’Azur. Photograph by Sophie Bassouls / Sygma / Corbis
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