French Riviera Tour

28 October 2018 French Riviera Tour

Apparently it hasn’t rained during the day along the Cote d’Azur for all of October, until this weekend. So instead of the cliche postcard sunny vistas I offer you the equally beautiful but grey and moody version.

Fist we looked back upon Nice from up high from the East and visited a perfumery. We followed an English speaking guide with six others representing the Phillipines, the USA, China and Russia.

Our next major stop was further East at The Rock of Monaco, upon which the Palace is built. We wandered around for an hour and a half, through gardens and rain with a brief stop for a liquid lunch since we had over-indulged at breakfast.

Lunch

Our guide then drove us down into Monte Carlo where we followed some of the Monaco Grand Prix route before we were let loose again for a closer look at casinos, hotels and gardens.

We returned to Nice to collect two lovely Americans (from New Jersey and all I could think of was the line from Hamilton, “Everything is legal in New Jersey”). Then we headed West. We stopped for an hour at Antibes where Emma and I sat in the old town’s square for a spot of people watching. Many were walking dogs but one man was walking a fluffy white cat on a leash. When the cat saw some of the dogs she went splat on the ground and would not budge. Her pet man had to pick her up and carry her across the square while she wriggled and squirmed and then he placed her back down again. She then refused to go the way he intended and again he had to carry her. Quite the entertainment really. Unfortunately no photos though.

Another hour was spent walking around Cannes. A lot of wannabe models were posing by the waterfront and on the red carpet up the stairs to the main location of the Cannes Film Festival. We did not compete with them. The beach had lines of large sand bags, destroyed in some places, not matching any coastal management method I know from teaching Year 10 Geography. My theory is that the hotels had installed them to protect their beach front bars and what remained of sand around their piers. I did read though that sand that would fill 32 Olympic swimming pools was brought in for the Film Festival this year. 

Carousel 

Back at the hotel we had sandwiches and fries for dinner in our room.