Stop 8 - Grenoble

Our dinner last night in Eze was very nice. The town itself is quite pretty with the old town, a little village, high on the hill overlooking the town. The views from the bus as we travelled from Monte Carlo were just great.  The houses and Hotels are built on every available square inch of the place. Antonio took us right up the top road and the views of the Harbour and the houses from up there even more spectacular.

We left Monte Carlo around 8 am today and travelled towards Grenoble.  Our first stop was to be in Grasse at a perfume factory.  We did eventually get there but not before we were caught up in a traffic jam for ages.  The trains and the taxi’s went on strike yesterday and the roads were choked with traffic. The taxis were amongst this traffic and they were deliberately going slow and holding up things a lot.  We finally found a detour which was really designed for just cars, but….you do what you have to after travelling about 1 km in nearly an hour.  We arrived at the perfume factory and had a tour through the facilities, quite interesting to see how they do everything.  Then of course, the hard sell and the trying out of fragrances. Even though it was supposed to be factory prices, we felt the perfumes were quite expensive really. We were all given a little basket with some of the places wares in it.  That was nice.

We then continued on our way travelling the Napoleon Road, up into the French Alps.  The roads were very narrow and curvy and all this added to the time it took to get anywhere.  Numerous hairpins had us holding our breath as cars just continued coming instead of holding back a bit, but, we got through in the end. Antonio took 2 wrong roads which meant he had to back up in small spaces in all the traffic.  That was interesting!

We stopped for lunch in a very small rather run down village, Castellane.  This place’s claim to fame is a tiny Church which is built on a very high rocky hill. From here we kept travelling through the Alps with it’s amazing mountain formations and great scenery. There were a few snow capped mountains which had everyone reaching for their cameras. We stopped for another break in a town called Sisteron.  Here the streets were lined with numerous lovely hanging baskets. Very attractive.  This town had an old Citadel high on a craggy mountain overlooking the town. Quite a sight!

Our trip today was only 345 km, but with the hold ups and the ‘interesting’ roads, we were not to our destination, Grenoble, until around 7:15 pm.  This meant a rush for dinner and then to get organised for today’s trip which takes us to Lyon and Dijon.