Saint Tropez had been on the list since we saw it in Emily in Paris. There is a very specific version of it that lives in the imagination — blue water, terracotta rooftops, superyachts in the harbour, that particular quality of southern light. We arrived and found all of it waiting exactly where we'd left it in our heads.

We stayed close to Pampelonne beach and went straight to Nikki Beach. The cocktails were excellent. The afternoon was long and warm and unhurried. We spent the rest of the day not doing very much, which is precisely what Saint Tropez is for.

The next morning we walked the Côte d'Azur coast before heading onwards toward Grasse — and found peacocks. Actual peacocks, wandering the coastal path as though they'd always lived there. Entirely possible that they have.

The drive from Saint Tropez to Grasse through the Provence countryside was one of the most beautiful stretches of road on the whole trip. Rolling hills, green and gold, the heat of late August still holding in the air. It felt like a different France — quieter, older, less hurried about everything.

Grasse earns its title. The streets smell of something — floral, faint, impossible to name precisely. There is a street hung entirely with pink umbrellas where the air changes as you walk through it, perfume released at intervals like a kindness the city performs for its visitors. It sounds like a marketing gimmick. It is, in fact, wonderful.

We visited the Fragonard perfume museum and watched how perfume is actually made — distillation, blending, the extraordinary precision of reducing acres of flowers to a few concentrated drops. How something that smells like summer in Provence can be broken down into exact quantities of exact things remains a small miracle. A few hours in Grasse is exactly the right amount of time. We left smelling significantly better than we arrived.

Antibes was Utsav's favourite city of the whole trip. And if I had to pick one place from this entire trip — one city to go back to, one evening to replay — it would be right up there. It has something that is very difficult to describe and very easy to feel: the sense that a place has been beautiful for a very long time and has no particular interest in performing about it.

We arrived in the early evening. The light was doing what it does in the south of France in late summer — landing sideways, turning everything amber and gold. We walked the ramparts, the ancient city walls that run right along the sea. The water below was turquoise and completely clear. We had dinner. We called it a night slowly, reluctantly.

The next morning: the Picasso Museum. Picasso spent a significant period of his life in Antibes — the Château Grimaldi that houses the museum was his studio for a time. Standing in front of a Picasso with the Mediterranean visible through the window behind it felt like an entirely reasonable way to spend a morning. Outside the museum, a large perforated white sculpture made of letters stands against the sea wall. We spent longer with it than planned. Some things just hold you.

Monaco is technically a different country — the world's second smallest, a city-state on a dramatic rock with the Mediterranean on one side and the Alps rising behind it. You drive from Nice and cross the border in under half an hour. We did something here that we will not stop telling people about for a very long time.

We drove a vintage car on the Monaco Grand Prix circuit. Not a simulation, not a video game — an actual open-top vintage racing car, number 16, on the actual streets of Monaco that Formula 1 cars use every year. The hairpin. The tunnel. The harbour chicane. The whole thing. It is, objectively, one of the best things we have ever done on any trip anywhere.

After that: the Casino de Monte-Carlo — the one from every film set in Monaco, ornate and improbable and entirely real. A note: bring your passport. You need it to enter casinos in Europe. We went in, felt appropriately out of place and also completely at home. Ferraris and Bentleys were parked outside. Dinner at the Hotel de Paris Monte-Carlo, right on Casino Square, was the correct ending to the day.

Monaco at night is something else entirely. The harbour lit up below, the Prince's Palace glowing gold on the rock, the yachts and their reflections filling the water. Small country. Very large impression.

Eze has a reputation, and it lives up to it completely. The village sits perched at the top of a rocky peak, 429 metres above the Mediterranean — medieval, stone-built, walled, with narrow paths winding upward between old houses that have flowers spilling from every ledge. Yes, it is very touristy. Every second person has a camera out. There are souvenir shops. None of that matters.

The walk up is genuinely steep — uneven stone steps, no shortcuts, not for everyone. But the village itself is the reward before you even reach the top. The lanes are exactly as beautiful as every photograph suggests — because every photograph, for once, is actually telling the truth.

And then you reach the top. The view from the ruined château garden at the summit is one of the finest on this entire coast. The Mediterranean stretched out below in every shade of blue. The coastline curving toward Monaco on one side, Nice on the other. A French flag. Cacti. The feeling that you are standing at the top of something very old and very beautiful, and that it knows it.

Menton doesn't make it onto most day trip itineraries from Nice. It's not the obvious choice — not the way Monaco is, or Eze. But I'd seen a few people mention it, quietly, in passing, and something about it stayed with me. Having the car meant we had the flexibility to add it after Eze, and so we did.

And then we turned a corner and it just — stopped us. Yellow buildings. Orange buildings. Peach and terracotta and ochre, stacked up from the harbour in layers, a baroque church presiding over all of it from above. Mountains dark with cloud behind. The sea impossibly turquoise in front. The kind of place that looks like it was designed to be beautiful, but has clearly been this way for hundreds of years without caring whether anyone noticed.

We walked the old town — the narrow yellow streets, the steep staircases, the Basilique Saint-Michel-Archange with its extraordinary baroque façade. We found a table by the beach and had lunch and watched the boats. We did not want to leave. The drive back to Nice felt slightly sad, the way it does when you've found somewhere you weren't expecting to love.

Of all the places on this trip — Cannes, Monaco, Saint Tropez, all of it — Menton is the one I keep coming back to in my head. My absolute favourite. Utsav's was Antibes, and I understand that completely. But Menton is mine. The one I didn't see coming, which is always the one that stays.

Nice was our home for the whole trip — the city we landed in, the city we returned to each evening after Monaco, after Eze, after Menton, and the city we eventually left from. It was a beautiful place to keep coming back to. The Promenade des Anglais is one of those stretches of coastline that completely earns its fame: palm trees, the Mediterranean, the light doing extraordinary things at almost every hour of the day.

Nice has a relaxed confidence about it — a city that has been wonderful for a very long time and doesn't feel the need to announce it. We walked the Promenade, ate well, and let it settle around us each night before the next day's adventure.

We were flying to Corsica — a different kind of holiday entirely, more beach than sightseeing, more slow than rapid. The Côte d'Azur chapter was closing behind us. We were ready, and more than a little sad about it.