It's a view even Queen Victoria would have enjoyed.
Indeed, it is one she did enjoy, if you take away the cars and any other modern refinements introduced since she spent parts of each spring there in 1897, 1898 and 1899. I do not believe anyone has suggested these sojourns hastened her death in 1901.
Then, it was L'Excelsior Régina Palace, a grand hotel in the belle époque style. Since the 1930s it has been, without being too vulgar about it, a block of flats.
And in the one from which the photograph was taken, on a wet, misty day that made the Mediterranean a distant and not always visible feature, live our friends.
He is a cardiologist, she stunningly French-Vietnamese and one of Mme Salut's former colleagues in the film industry.
But beyond the busy professional life Patrice Melia leads, there are important things going on. He plays music and he paints. Once or twice, he has also taken fast cars out on the Paul Ricard circuit in Castellet but that is the pursuit I find least interesting.
The art - I have seen it and, with an amateur's eye, declare it to be outstanding - will go on display for the first time on the island of Porquerolles, opposite Hyères and Toulon, in June. We shall be there.
And the music?
Patrice is a batteur manqué. He really should have been a drummer in a band. In fact, as a student he was. Perhaps he should have chucked the medical studies and stuck to music.
It is so clearly his first love, after family. It wasn't that long ago that he and Caroline, his wife, booked the most fleeting of visits to London to meet up with us and catch Mario Biondi and his band at Ronnie Scott's, stageside seats negotiated long in advance by M Salut.
At home, with no Queen Victoria to bang on the ceiling or walls to complain about the noise, he practises on his beloved drum kit. The stereo mixing system enables him to play along with others; I persuaded him to put on a couple of tracks from that celebrated early John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers album, with a supremely confident young Eric Clapton on lead guitar and - for the first time - vocals, plus a few pieces by Albert King. Patrice drummed along admirably with it all. It's done through earphones but I suspect there are still enough percussive thumps and thuds to give a neighbour some idea of what is going on.
And he's found some like-minded souls, mostly of a certain age and having proper jobs, with whom to form a band. There have been lots of rehearsals and they're nearly ready to start some semi-serious gigging.
They still lack a name. Or did lack one until I went for lunch and came up with an idea. Now we shall see whether, if they follow my suggestion, Second Wave - better, I felt, than Deuxième Vague - can begin to make the waters of the Med ripple a little.
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