9th June
We left Montpellier a little later this morning, 9 am….it
was good to get an extra hours sleep. We travelled towards Provence, some 2
hours away from Montpellier. We had a
stop for a couple of hours in Provence, a nice little area where there were
markets on due to the Long weekend Holiday in France. The town has lots of
narrow cobblestoned streets, but we didn’t get lost negotiating these. The Town Square had a fresh fruit and vegie
market and the array of things for sale was very interesting, especially the
sun dried tomatoes and the spices.
From Provence we travelled through Cannes, famous/well known
for the Film Festival held there each year.
Lots of nice Hotels and ornate buildings in keeping with the hype which
seem to go with the Film Festival /and the Movie Stars. We then moved on to Nice.
Now here is a very attractive place…and it sure is Nice. Right on the water with lots of people
sunbaking and/or also swimming in the lovely coloured water. We caught a little train which took us all
around the new and old towns and then climbed up high on a hill where the views
of Nice were quite spectacular. We’re glad we went in the train, it would have
taken us ages to climb up the steep hill on foot and in the heat of the day
(34) we would have been pooped. Although
the waters looked very inviting, there would be no way we could lay on those
stony beaches…or walk on them. Ouch!!
We finally arrived in Monaco around 5 pm. The bun rush to book into the Hotel was
interesting, but, we finally got booked in.
This Hotel is the first one we have had to show our passports and give a
credit card copy…and fill in a form, consequently a slow process. To even enter
the City, we had to pay a fee. That’s a new one! Turns out that you have to pay
10 euro to go into the old part of the Casino too, nothing in the new area
we’re told. Most of the people from the
tour have gone to dinner tonight and then on to the Casino. This Hotel we are in ( a 4 star posh one)
backs on to the Ocean and there are a couple of swimming pools and a fenced off
area for swimming. The water was quite
nice…no, we didn’t swim, although it was hot enough to try it, we just walked
in it a little. The ‘sand’ is crushed
pebbles so not so nice on the feet. Of course, being with a tour group, we do
not have the rooms overlooking the water, but…the rooms are all nice, we
overlook the main road. The other
Aussies, Pauline and John, asked us to go into town with them, by local bus,
but we were too tired and had things like washing to catch up on, so we stayed
in the Hotel. Tomorrow we are going on a tour in the morning, have free time in
the afternoon and then around 5 pm we will take a trip up to Eze and then have
dinner up there as part of a tour. We
had planned to do this on our own by local bus, but this hotel is further out
of the town than we thought and it would be a bit of hassle to try and do it
ourselves. It’s easier to let the tour
company do all the running around for us. ‘Looking forward to seeing Eze.
June 10th
Today we had a bonus tour in lieu of not
stopping in Nimes as planned a couple of days ago. We left the Hotel, after a very varied and
lovely breakfast, and travelled back through Nice to reach St Paul de Vence. This place is a little town perched atop a
high hill and it sure looked interesting and cute from the road. We weren’t disappointed. It was a lovely little town. Again there were numerous steep, narrow
streets, but these were even more narrow than we have seen before . These streets/lanes are lined with small
shops selling anything and everything.
Lots of paintings and sculptures, pretty expensive stuff, but a lot of unusual
stuff too, all of it nice. We paid a visit to the Grave site of a well known
artist, then had time to walk all around the town at our own pace. Dave finally
got his marzipan today. He tried yesterday but the girl was too slow and
uninterested, so after a 10 minute wait, we ended up leaving the shop with no
marzipan. The heat today was around 30 at midday, so most of us, including the
tour guide, were glad to get back to the bus and be on our way back to the
Hotel. Views on the way back overlooking
the Ocean are just lovely. The size of
nearly all the boats/ships moored in the
tiny harbour in the middle of town have to be seen to be believed. There is
certainly some money here. All the ‘posh’ cars like Masserati’s and Ferrari’s
are cruising around town….There must be some car rally or something on here as
there have been a few cars with “Streetgasm 2000” emblazoned on them sitting
out the front of the Hotel for a couple of days. Most of these cars seem to be
Porsche’s.
We are off to EZE tonight for a look around this reportedly attractive
town and then go out to Dinner. That should be nice. Dave seems to have picked
up a cold so is a little miserable at the moment. A few people have picked it
up over the past few days. We had a
fellow whom was pretty bad with a cold earlier on, so maybe they have caught it
from him…who knows. I believe the weather will cool down somewhat over the next
day or two as we approach the mountains around Grenoble and Lyon in the French
Alps.
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