What is there to like about this catalogue of Provençal quirks, most of which are inconvenient and seem to have been devised with the express purpose of taking up as much of your time as possible? An errand that might take half an hour in other, more streamlined societies can easily occupy an entire morning. Appointments are postponed or forgotten.

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The French have a talent for restaurants of all sizes, and a special genius for huge spaces. La Coupole, for instance, which opened in 1927 as “the largest dining room in Paris,” manages despite its vastness to retain a human scale. The Café Marly, although smaller, is still, by most restaurant standards, enormous. But it has been designed so that

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