Cote d'Azur

Bonjour,

These are just some odds and ends photos from along the Cote d’Azur that I found interesting. 

 1.     This is the old village of Eze.  It has had people living here since perhaps 2000 BC.  It’s got great views and is popular with tourists, honeymooners, and Walt Disney.  It is similar to many places we saw along the coast, even including Nice.  It sits at about 1400 feet up.  I suppose in ancient times, people had to be on top of the mountain for protection from their enemies.  But how much trouble was it getting water for daily use.  How hard was it to go up and down every time you needed anything…

2.     We passed this house (right side on hill top) between Villefranche and Eze.  Our local guide said that this was the second most expensive house in the world.  I don’t know how he knew that or how much it cost but he said it sits in the middle of 20 acres.  He said the guy that owns it is the guy behind MasterCard.  It has a beautiful view though this was not the day to show off the house or view as it was rather hazy.

3.     We never passed the Mediterranean Sea or a very long stretch of river that I didn’t see someone fishing.  In Nice, they covered over the river and put a park on top of it.  One day, I told Vicky that we should walk to the end of the structure and see what the river looks like when it reaches the sea.  We did that.  Standing atop the bridge as the river flowed out and into the sea in Nice, I looked down and took this photo.  No wonder there were always people fishing.

4.     I took this photo from Villa de Rothschild.  According to our local guide, this villa, which is just up the coast, is where the Rolling Stones recorded the Sticky Fingers album.  The guide said that they were here because at the time, they were trying to dodge taxes in England.  Villefranche, an ancient town, is in the background.  

5.     The coastal roads and the mountain roads in this part of France were winding and often times steep as well.  We kept seeing this road sign and wondering exactly what it meant.  QUIZ: what does this road sign indicate?

Answer:  In the curve section of road up ahead, the car on the right (Black car) has the right of way – and the car oncoming (Red car) must give way.  Often times, the oncoming car would be black and the car on our side would be red.

Voila,

Bill

Villa de Rothschild

Bonjour,

Baroness Beatrice de Rothschild of the Rothschild banking family built this villa between 1905 and 1912.  It’s located on a spit of land at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat right on a bluff above the coast.  The gardens were designed to look like a ship, from all her travels.  It was designed by Aaron Messiah and the baroness had the villa filled with antique furniture, Old Master paintings, rare porcelain, sculptures, and much, much more.  She died in 1934 and donated her villa which is now open to the public.

 1.     From the outside, it looked very nice, but not so striking as the inside and the gardens.

2.     This is the waiting room.  If you could look closer, you could see the marble pillars and all the luxury built into every inch of the place, along with the art work.

3.     This is well out into the garden, but not the very back.  This is looking back at the villa. 

4.     This is much closer to the villa and in this section of the garden, each side mirrored the other side, which is very French.

5.     This view is the other direction from the last photo.  The water was performing to classical music.

Voila,

Bill

Monte Carlo

Bonjour,

Monte Carlo is one of Monaco’s ten wards.  Monte Carlo means “Mount Charles” since it’s located on a prominent escarpment.  Based on the size of Monaco at about three quarters of a square mile, all ten wards are crammed together, so you really can’t distinguish them.  They are all part of a very small and crowded city-state.  Monaco and Monte Carlo must be a very safe place because policemen were everywhere.  In the past times, Monaco was a tax haven.  But today, it’s money comes from Finance (we were told).

 1.     Monte Carlo is in this photo.  Up above the harbor, you can see the twin towers on the Monte Carlo Casino.

2.     Here’s the front of the Monte Carlo Casino.  We went inside but it was ten dollars to get into the actual casino.  But our son told me that ten bucks only gets you into a display area casino.  I went to the door and he was right.  He found out that you had to put down $1,000 Euros to get into the ‘real casino’ – the one that you see in the movies.  Needless to say, I didn’t even give them the ten bucks.  But it is a very striking building both inside and out.

3.     This is just to the left of the prior photo.  The casino is in back.  Many of the people eating along the street appeared to be in the ‘high roller’ category.

4.     This is just to the right of the casino.  This is the Hotel de Paris, established 1864.  We decided to have a look inside, but the three guys in the lower left corner decided that we didn’t deserve to see the inside.  It didn’t bother me much but it lowered my opinion of Monaco.

5.     This is the Monte Carlo Casino again.  It has a big lawn area in front with lots of flowers and art.  For a crowded area, this section of Monte Carlo had lots of plants and grass.

 Voila,

Bill

Monaco

Bonjour,

Monaco is the second smallest country in the world (behind the Vatican) with only .78 square miles.  Monaco is also either the most densely populated or the second most densely populated country in the world (depending on the web page I visited), yet it only has some 37,000 people.  Monaco is surrounded by France and the Mediterranean.  On our drive into Monaco, the road was so crowded that I could have walked the last mile or two faster than we drove it.  Our visit to Monaco was about a half day but that was plenty for me.  During our visit, the Rolex Master tennis tournament was under way and they were also setting up for the Monaco Grand Prix, their Formula One race.  We also saw a lot of major construction projects.

 1.     The first photo gives you a good sense of my first comments: that Monaco is very small and very crowded.  On the left, you can see a small part of “the Rock of Monaco” which was the old city of Monaco from earliest times.

2.     The second photo was taken from atop the rock of Monaco in the old city.  The Monaco Harbor is a central feature of Monaco.  If you look along the waterfront, you can see that they are setting up the grandstands for the Grand Prix race.  We drove the course and it is only .2 miles long.  Our local guide said the race was not for speed as much as for technical driving ability. 

3.     This is the House of the Prince of Monaco.  Quite frankly, I was a bit disappointed in it.  We didn’t take a tour but we saw many more striking buildings in France.

4.     This is one of the streets in Monaco City, atop the Rock of Monaco.

5.     What would you do if an industrial truck driver in Monaco did something to really tick you off?

I would just tip his truck over.  I was thinking about it in this photo.  These must be for hauling goods down those very steep and narrow streets.

Voila,

Bill 

Olive Mill

Bonjour,

We drove from Cannes to Antibes along the coast and then veered inland and up into the “pre-Alps” or foothills.  We stopped at a small village names Opio.  There, we visited Moulin d’Opio, a small family olive mill.  Olives have been milled here since 1426 and the same family has owned this mill since 1848.  We toured the mill and saw parts of both the much older processes and some of the new modern processes.

 Then we stopped into their tasting room.  We tasted six or seven oils, some tapenade on crackers, many different olives, and some Vin Rose.  Olive oil tasting is very similar to wine tasting and the olive oil labeling practices are very similar to wine labeling practices, naming varietals and growing regions.

 1.     This is the mill that we visited.  You can see the old water mill wheel in the upper right which is the actual mill area.

2.     This was our tour guide and you can see some of the equipment.  I always wondered why olive mills used the big heavy rocks to crush the olives.  She said it was because they also must crush the olive pits since much of the flavor and nutrients in olive oil comes from the pits.

3.     You can see that most of their milling equipment and processes have been updated and modernized.

4.     I’m getting my next tasting of olive oil.  We were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to distinguish the different tastes.

5.     They had lots of information boards and I particularly liked this one that gave the whole process, from blossom to olive.

 Voila,

Bill

Cannes

Bonjour,

Cannes (pronounced like Can) is also on the Cote d’Azur or Blue Coast – or French Riviera to most tourists.  Cannes has lots of companies and business along with tourism and all, but our local guide said it is most noted for its annual film festival.  She said the city has 70,000 inhabitants but that number triples during the film festival.  She said the festival is a miserable time for the locals.  She also said that when the film festival started, it was a really simple event and they gave an award to every film that entered.  The event has grown of course, but the streets are no wider and no more parking is available, etc.  We walked about and even without the film festival, the streets and sidewalks were very crowded.  The area also has lots of very nice hotels and restaurants.  This was a relatively short visit for us, just a couple of hours.

 1.     This building is part of the film festival and of course, the red carpet was already out.

2.     This building is just to the left of the building in the first photo.  This is where the famous people walk up into the theater.

3.     This is a short distance away from the first two buildings, looking the other way – across the street.

4.     This is the film festival buildings and grounds from the back side or sea side.

5.     The yachts on the left and right side (behind the pier) are barely a sprinkling as compared to when the film festival is happening.  At first I was surprised, but when you think about it, what better way to get there without having to fight all the traffic on the roads and no place to park.

 Voila,

Bill

Saint Rita

Bonjour,

For those of you who don’t know, we have three children.  Our middle child is our daughter, Rita.  We had been talking a lot about Rita, who less than nine months before had made us grandparents for the first time with twin boys, when we visited a church at the end of the Nice Harbor.  This was where the early sailors visited before leaving on their long voyages.  And as we walked around inside the church, we came upon the statue of Sainte Rita.  Who knew?  Sainte Rita is evidently the patron saint of desperate causes – which can’t possibly be my grandsons….  You can see this statue in the first photo.

 Back in Old Town Nice and just wandering a bit before we left Nice to continue our trip, we came upon Saint Rita’s Chapel which you can see in the second photo.  As you can see in the rest of the photos, they had Saint Rita everything in the chapel….  All those years of Catholic school and I never heard of Saint Rita.   Isn’t travel great?

Voila,

Bill

Nice Meals

Bonjour,

We very much enjoyed the food in France.  That was not a surprise to us, but we did have some food surprises along the way.  I will be addressing those, but none of them occurred in Nice.

 The first three dishes that you see were from the "Le Frog Restaurant" in Old Town Nice.  We had a great waiter and a fun dinner along with our friends Gary and Debra Lang.

 1.     This is Vicky’s beef gnocchi which was a very good dish indeed.

2.     This was my ribeye steak.  It was okay but all that sauce was unnecessary.  I liked the interesting shaped cauliflower and the rolled up carrots/zucchini side.

3.     This was my Swiss chard pie which was my dessert.  It was quite good and I suppose that I’ve now found a new use for the chard in my garden.

4.     This was in a street side brassiere.  It was bruschetta with my red wine and Vicky’s red beer.  It was very good with enough cheese for a large cheese pizza.

5.     Lunch our last day in Nice was at a small Old Town boulangerie, which you can see in the window.  To the right, they were making their dough.  Vicky has Swiss chard pie, only this time it was not sweet.   I had a small pizza.  Both were really very good.

 Voila,

Bill

Nice Miscellaneous

Bonjour,

It might seem very early for me to start sending out a “miscellaneous” email.  But France is a major country and many folks have been there.  I like to look for differences from home in places I visit and it didn’t take very long for me to find some interesting things to consider in Nice.

 1.     I knew about all the cheese and wine in France, but I never heard about all the ice cream.  It makes some sense that a country with all that cheese would probably also have lots of ice cream.  At any rate, what was even more interesting than all the ice cream was the really interesting flavors of ice cream.  Hopefully, you can read the flavor names, like thyme, rosemary, tomato basil, mojito, lavender, olive, violet, rose, etc.

2.     I tend to poke fun at some of the interesting and odd vehicles in third world countries that we visit.  But France had more than their share of these vehicles.  In France, it seemed to be due to the narrow, crowded roads and lack of space.  This interesting vehicle had three people with it.  They had a microwave oven inside the back and they were handing out hot and fresh chocolate chip cookies...which were very good!

3.     This person appeared to be homeless.  I hesitated to take his photo – and didn’t until I was well past him and he wasn’t looking.  What I found so interesting was that he was reading a novel that was about three inches thick.  I don’t believe that I have seen a homeless person in our country reading a novel.

4.     This shop was in Old Town Nice.  An elderly lady owned the shop and she made many of the baskets.  She was working on a wicker chair seat-covering when we were in the shop.  She was very nice and we had a good long chat with her.

5.     How fresh are the potatoes in markets in Nice?  So fresh that they hadn’t even brushed off the moist dirt on some of the potatoes in this basket.

 Voila,

Bill

Nice

Bonjour,

We were in Nice for four days.  Parts of those days were spent on trips outside of the city to other towns and locations in the area.  The weather was great in Nice and it was a great place to start our trip.  Nice is an old city and has a long heritage.  It was a city for the Greeks, then the Romans, the French, the Italians, then the French again.  Nice is really close to the Italian border and this area was part of Italy several times in its past history.  Italian people have been living in Nice for centuries and still live there today.  It’s a very multi-cultural city.  British aristocrats began building houses there in the late 18th century, for the climate.  At some time in its past, the Russians kept their naval fleet in Nice, so Russian aristocrats built houses here, both for business and the climate.  Nice sits on the Mediterranean Sea and of course has a Mediterranean climate, just like our own here in California.  Almost all of the plants in Nice were very familiar to us.

1.     You can see an overview of Nice in the first photo.  This was taken from Castle Hill, which is along the bottom of the photo.  You can see Old Town between Castle Hill, the Mediterranean, and the river as it forms a triangle between those three.  The river has been covered over so you can’t see it in the photo.

2.     The port of Nice is on the other side of Castle Hill.  This is the view of the port from Castle Hill in the second photo.

3.     Right behind the old city wall and along the sea is part of old town with its old buildings, street side cafes and an open air market.  Castle Hill is in the background.

4.     This is the view from our hotel.  You can see that they have paved over the river and installed water art, children's playgrounds, and lawn areas.  The buildings on the other side are in Old Town Nice.  The river still flows underneath and out to the Mediterranean.

5.     Public art is a huge part of Nice and all of France.  This rather interesting and extremely large piece of art was at the Modern Art Museum.

 Voila,

Bill

Are you ready to go to France?

Bonjour, (Hello)

Vicky and I just got back from a vacation to France (April 2015).  We had 18 days of fun starting in Nice on the Cote d’Azur in southeast France on the Mediterranean coast and worked our way up to Paris.  Along the way, we had our share of adventures.  I had considered not sending out emails of this trip since I know that many of you have already been to France.  But several people on my travel list encouraged me to do it so they could re-live some of their own experiences in France.  And of course, I know that many other people on my travel list have not been to France.  So I’ll try and strike a balance for both groups.

We traveled by boat on the Rhone River and by bus the rest of the time.  Only one week of the trip was on the boat and we were in both Nice and Paris for multiple  days.

I’ve included some photos to give you a tiny glimpse of what’s to come on our trip.

1.     We had barely arrived in Nice (pronounced like Niece) when Vicky dipped her toes into the Mediterranean.  Of course her toes got a bit sore walking on the rocks – which they have instead of sand on the beach.

2.     We paid a visit to a “bull farm” while in France.  It was very interesting and included being served “bull” for lunch.

3.     Our friends Debra and Gary Lang joined us on this trip.  Debra has a friend living in France and we went off our tour for two days to visit with Debra’s friends which was the trip highlight.

4.     We considered leaving our tie-dyed shirts behind this trip, but then, well we couldn’t resist.  But WHERE to wear them?  How about Monet’s garden?

5.     By the time we got to Paris, we were ready for Paris.  The real question was, was Paris ready for us?

 Voila, (pronounced like: vWAH LA), means “there you have it” or “there you go”…  This was something that our guide said often to end what she was telling us.

Bill