Aniko was the first one to arrive, on the night train from Strasbourg, on Friday morning. Philippe was supposed to arrive at about 4 o'clock by car from Toulouse. So although we did suspect he's estimation might be a bit too optimistic, we decided to not do anything overly ambitious that day, so as to be back in time for his arrival. For this reason we decided to visit Menton, which is only 30 minutes by train from Nice (of course, as we might've guessed, Philippe didn't arrive until after 10
o'clock in the end ;-).
Menton was quite lively for a change (I mean this quite literally because Menton must have one of the biggest populations of pensioners in France) because of the "Fete des Citrons", yep, you've got it, the lemon festival. Basically they've built these big statues and buildings out of lemons & oranges. Of course we refused to pay the outrageous entry fee of 8 euros! But I still managed so sneak a picture of the Lemon Buddha.
We were supposed to cook "Moules et Frites" that night but sort of got the cooking instructions slightly wrong (or maybe it's because they were Irish mussels, and upset about their rugby defeat by France a few days before), and to cut a long story short the moules ended up in the rubbish and we ended up in a restaurant.
On Saturday, we decided to take Philippe's car down the Valle du Loup, to Greolieres. On the way there we stopped by St. Paul de Vence, which is (this won't surprise you if you actually read my blog ;-) a very nice perched old village in a very nice location. This one is nice enough to also attract massive crowds of tourists - considering how many there were at this time of the year - I dread to imagine what it must be like in the summer.
But in all honesty it's a very pretty village.
After this we carried on, and did a bit of walking as well, finishing with a well-deserved, if light, picnic lunch. Then after the lunch, me and Philippe conquered the nearby imposing summit.
Having filled our stomachs and had our daily dose of exercise, we carried on along the winding mountain roads towards Greolieres. Greolieres is another nice mountain village, which has the particularly endearing characteristic of being the place where our friend Olivier Durand grew up. I must say that having seen the place (all peaceful and quiet), I'm surprised Ollie turned out the way he did ;-) And below, the house where he grew up!
Not wanting to risk these scenic yet treacherous roads in the dark, we decided it was time to head back towards Nice. Fortunately, we did have time to stop at yet another pretty perched village in a stunning mountain setting, this time in Gourdon. I suppose you could say that in terms of prettiness, it would be placed somewhere between St. Paul and Greolieres, and also in terms of number of tourists. The views from the village were amazing, it has to be said. As you can see from the photo below, it was also very windy and cold.
We had big plans to go out and paint the town red (I think that's how the expression goes?) in the evening, but were pretty nackered after our escapades, so had a quiet meal at the house, and after having a quick look at the Nice Carneval procession, we went to watch the France-Wales rugby game in a typical Irish pub (by this I don't mean a "typical pub in Ireland", rather, I mean a "typical Irish pub abroad"). Well, main thing is, the Guinness tasted good :-)
The French beat Wales 32-21 after a convincing performance.
On Sunday we jumped on the commuter train and went to Monaco. Monaco was clean and busy as ever. We were rather efficient - we managed to see the changing of the guards at the palace (a somewhat less impressive affair than the Buckingham Palace equivalent, I must say), the cathedral, Monte-Carlo and the Casino, as well as the Japanese garden, all in a couple of hours. We were kind of on a tight schedule since Philippe was a bit eager not to leave too late (perhaps the memory of his 12 hour drive on Friday was still fresh in his mind).
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