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French Riviera Style: La Bastide Gourmande

Where: 660 route des Cagnes,, La Colle sur Loup, France, 6480

The Cannes Film Festival is still a ways off (it starts on May 16) but a reader's recent tip about the French Riviera got us daydreaming about escaping to Cote d'Azure. This week we'll be talking about some of the hotels worthy of checking into. As always, we wanna know what you think, not just what Uma, Rod Stewart, P.Diddy and Paris Hilton think, of the hotels here. So send us your thoughts and questions or comment below the story, telling us what's right, what's wrong and what's just French.

Budget Travel always does a pretty good job of finding out of the way, less crowded and less expensive lodgings in popular cities or as they call 'em "secret" hotels.

For the French Riviera, BT says that the La Bastide Gourmande in La-Colle-Sur-Loup is a perfect compromise for those who want to be near the beach but can't handle the crowds, which is in a sense, everyone on this earth.

[T]he friendly hotel offers clean, colorful rooms; a good restaurant; and a lovely pool with a great view of the classic Proven?al countryside. There's even a boulodrome, should you feel inclined to indulge in a game of petanque.

Hmmm...that second sentence does not make any sense for those who don't parlez vous frances. But it seems that petanque is a French version of lawn bowling.

As for the lodgings, there's eight smallish rooms each with a different theme like "Africa", "New York", "Indonesia", "Red Poppies" and even "Disney" (for the kids.) You can view the pictures of the hotel rooms here--as you can tell the New York room is cold, harsh and minimalistic, not in a hip design way either.

Also included is a pool and a garden, all for just around $72-$84 a night.

The downside so far? Creepy cicadas are "guaranteed" to be buzzing throughout the summer. For the record, once you have lived through a cicada invasion, you learn that there is no such thing as a cicada "chirp." It's more like an annoying, constant, scary-sounding bzzzz. That and they leave their carcasses all over your stuff.

Related Stories:
· La Bastide Gourmande reviews (for those who speak French) [TripAdvisor]
· Secret Hotels of the French Riviera [Budget Travel Online]