We plucked Provence’s high stone villages like rich olives, savoring each in its turn, appreciating its flavor and character. Each day was a new tasting.

My husband, kids and I were spending two sun-filled July weeks in a rental apartment in Menton, a Riviera beauty spot famed for its fragrant lemon trees. A half-hour drive east from Nice, Menton sits near the Italian border.

Most mornings, we’d wake to sun, sea and the sound of shorebirds and head off in our rental car for a half-day outing to one or two of the old villages that dot the Maritime Alps above Menton.

Laundry flaps in the breeze in Gorbio, set high on a rocky precipice.

The distances were small, usually no more than 15 miles, but we kept an unhurried pace on the high, twisting roads and absorbed the views of mountains and Mediterranean that greeted us at every bend.

Each brief, beautiful road trip delivered us to another tiny stone town. We explored them slowly, on foot, allowing each to reveal some of its essence in its own way and time.

In Roquebrune, the woodcarver chiseled, calf-deep in shavings, while passersby climbed the narrow, medieval street and peered into his tiny atelier. Dana, my smallest sprite, conversed with Roquebrune’s cats. They slunk from the warren of passageways, and, as they rubbed themselves against the rock walls of ancient houses, she bent to their level to talk.

In the village square, music from a folklore festival pulsed from speakers hanging in the trees, and the DJ threw candy to a crowd of dancing kids. My Adam didn’t catch any, and he stood in the frenzy and cried. A Roquebrune boy took Adam’s hand and shared what he’d caught. International entente au caramel.

In Ste. Agnes, workmen in cornflower-blue overalls were rebuilding the chateau ruins on the town’s highest precipice. When they tired, they’d leaned on their shovels and looked out over the world that fell away below. They looked south to sparkling Menton, on the sea, then east, following the Mediterranean’s broad arc toward Italy.

A local artist was showing his vibrant work in Ste. Agnes’ cultural center. Kids on a field trip, backpacks bobbing and fingers pointing, crowded the gallery. The village was filled with art lovers who’d come for the exhibition, and the cheese shop enjoyed a brisk, late-morning rush.

We sat on centuries-old cobbles and ate yogurt and bread in Gorbio’s sun-splashed medieval heart. Laundry flapped on clotheslines strung about the town’s high-altitude neighborhoods. Cats played in the arcaded passageways, and Dana chased them up the short flights of ancient steps cut into Gorbio’s alleys, under arches and eaves, past tiny shops and into skinny rock tunnels that wind through the town.