If you don’t at first recognize the byline on the front of Sunday’s WaPo Travel section, you will by graph nine. This is when Steven V. Roberts mentions his wife, Cokie, as in NPR’s Senior News Analyst Cokie Roberts. They are authors of the newly released book, Haggadah.

But this story isn’t about their book, but rather their delightful jaunt to to southern France. In St. Jean, they rented a restored 17th Century house by a church called Maison Rose. Cost: $3,000 for the week. The town is described as a “storybook village.” Staying in a home makes the couple feel like town residents as opposed to tourists. Maison Rose is worth it if you can stand the continuous (all night long) church bells, which eventually, Roberts writes, fade into the beauty of the scenery. The trip includes long lazy meals full of wine and succulent veal.

The story jumps not once but twice, but stick with it. You might want to purchase a plane ticket by the end. The persuasion is in the details. Roberts had us at “France.”