The Nice carnival feels like a cleaned-up version of New Orleans Mardi gras where costumed children throw confetti and the parade route traces the Mediterranean sea.

In 1890 an overworked Vincent Van Gough escaped to Anvers-Sur-Oise. After several months in a rented chamber of the Ravoux Inn he took his own life. He lies beside brother Theo in a graveyard beyond the sprawl of yellow wheat.

Nestled among ski resorts in the lower Alps, the Alpha reserve is home to three wolf packs. Visit the park during feeding time when the wolves cautiously reveal themselves.

Parisians use the Tuileries like their backyard for barefoot picnics and lazy afternoon sunbaths. Monet´s water lilies reside in the garden at the Orangerie and the Jeu de Paume nearly always has an interesting photography exposition on.

November has been an unusual month on the Cote d’Azur, first as the G20 summit temporarily closed Cannes, then as storms ravaged the coast. On a stretch of beach piled so heavily with debris that it resembles a beaver dam, a village of driftwood forts has been erected.

Decree that an object is art, display it as such, and that is what it becomes. France’s emerging avant-garde artists of 1960 sought to renew art with abstraction and themes of destruction and spontaneity surfaced.