Biot: Where Life Still Feels Local

The useful part

I could walk into Biot, which meant that it wasn't somewhere we went for a special occasion. In the evenings, there was Café Brun, a little bar and restaurant where friends would sometimes take out their acoustic guitars and play. Just people sitting together, having a drink, listening to music and enjoying the evening.

How it works

• The restaurant is still there today, with an art gallery underneath it, and it has retained that rather wonderful Biot quality of being good without needing to be expensive or fashionable.
• It is well known, but it has never felt as though it was trying too hard to be.
• A Village With a Life of Its Own Biot is often mentioned alongside Valbonne, partly because they are so close and partly because both are beautiful hill villages surrounded by the landscape of the Côte d'Azur.
• You hear different accents, see familiar faces, and there is a sense that people aren't simply passing through.

Example or evidence

• Biot is smaller and, to my mind, has a slightly more intimate feel.

Details worth keeping

Others become part of your life without you really noticing. Then there was Les Arcades, where my family used to go for dinner. It has also retained a stronger sense of traditional French village life.