France

Paris is best entered slowly: a room above a courtyard in the third arrondissement, a table booked for nine, and no plan before noon. We keep a short list of houses that still feel like houses — twelve rooms, a lift the size of a wardrobe, a concierge who remembers your coffee.

Then south, where the light changes at Valence. In the Luberon we use a restored bastide with nine rooms, a kitchen garden and a pool that faces nothing but vines. Provence rewards the unhurried: the Tuesday market at Goult, the ochre path at Roussillon before the coaches arrive, a long lunch that ends at five.