HotelChatter

Tags: French Riviera Hotel Reviews / Treehouse Hotels / → All Tags

French Riviera Style: A Treehouse in St Paul de Vence

Where: 2436 chemin du Malvan, St-Paul-de-Vence, France, 06570

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 continue 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.

A few months ago we'd already started dreaming about spending a few nights up in the trees of the Cote d'Azur in the Orion B&B Hotel. This week CNN dug a little deeper into the roots (sorry) of the Orion Treehouse.

Turns out the brainchild of this luxury treehouse accommodation is a Belgian woman named Diane Van den Berge who bought a farmland property on the Cote d'Azur and then wondered what to do with it:

Soon after buying the property she began leafing through design magazines and stumbled across a guesthouse in India where people stayed in treehouses. She knew she'd found an idea to develop her own place ... The next challenge was to find someone who could build such a structure. She thought she would need to seek help abroad, but through Internet research found a suitable builder 200 kilometers away in France.

Four treehouses have been built since 2004 and she's thinking of putting in a fifth. Apart from the baths, massage showers and internet you'll find in the treehouses, the properties are arranged around a self-cleaning, natural swimming pool, copied from one Diane found in Switzerland. Prices start at 180 Euro ($240) including breakfast for a double--it's definitely another affordable alternative to have a stay on the Cote d'Azur without being in the middle of touristy Cannes or Nice.

Related Stories:
· Orion B&B reviews [TripAdvisor]
· Cubicle Dreamin': A Night in a Treehouse [HotelChatter]
· Branching Out With Luxury Treehouses [CNN]