Our last day in Nizas, this little town in the rollings hills of the Herault. It isn’t paradise, but it’s somewhere in the vicinity. Or so it seems to a couple of visitors from the desert.

The color green everywhere, The Grape (above) cultivated all around us, astonishingly good meals at unknown restaurants (like the innovative Amphitryon, in major metropolitan Pezenas), a loaf of bread as a gastronomical wonder.

Will any of us come back to Nizas?

I would like to. But perhaps 999 of the other 1,000 villages in this part of France deserve equal attention.

Perhaps all of them have a marvelously renovated rental home right next to the 200-year-old church, and a charming market which takes your orders for bread and croissants the night before, and a meat truck that rolls through on Thursdays and announces itself with random French marching music, and exactly one “telefonique cabine” in the town square, and a statue of Artemis in the middle of the fountains, and two town drunks careering around the narrow streets, and the handsome little cemetery just outside the city limits.

It’s a charming place, a bit out of whack on the time/space continuum. (Some days it seems like 1990; other days it seems like 1890, if you can overlook the Peugeots.)

Not particularly expensive. Small enough to feel homey, not so tiny to feel oppressive. Close enough to walk to a half-dozen other villages if you like, but only 10 minutes from Pezenas and 25 from Beziers and 30 from Montpellier (the big city) — and four hours via TGV from Paris.

It was a great place to spend nine days. Walking into the vineyards, sitting on the terrace, looking at little apartments for sale in nearby towns like Caux and Fontes and Roujan.

I will miss you, Nizas. I have a hunch I will be back. I don’t know how or when, but I think I will be. And I wonder if the roadwork on the 30 highway will be finished by then.