Les Turtiainen font des Raquettes

The Finnish ski holidays are in full swing, so my brother’s three daughters (one, Julia, whom I am proud to have as my god-daughter) decided to come over to the south of France for a week. Kind of funny actually (or sad, depending on how you look at it), that the snow situation seems to be better in the south of France (well, in the mountains, anyway) than back in Finland this year – didn’t expect that when I moved here a year ago!

The plan for today was to go up t Greolieres-les-Neiges (where we went a couple of weeks ago) for some snow sports. 
 






We decided to rent some Raquettes (snow shoes) and take a walk in the forest. So off we went, as it turned out into the mist (in spite of the weather forecast promising a sunny afternoon, the mist persisted, unfortunately)… But everybody had a great time – I felt like a kid again, running around the slopes like an out-of-breath elk (some of the French folks I ran past looked at me with a mixture of fear and amusement).

After a simple but filling lunch and some vin chaud (mandatory after such strenuous activity), we decided to return the raquettes as the mist refused to disappear. Instead we opted for some less strenuous touristy activity – visiting some of the nearby perched villages.

The first stop was at Gourdon, in the Vallee du Loup. Gourdon is probably the most dramatically located village on the Riviera, perched on a cliff, overlooking the valley. The views are quite simply amazing (a pity about the fog, then…). Unfortunately it’s also very touristy – although the girls didn’t seemed to mind as they visited the shops selling everything from liquorish in various flavours to Provencal pottery.


After Gourdon, we headed back down to the valley to Bar-sur-Loup, another typical and very picturesque village. It’s also refreshingly unmarked by tourism as of yet, and seems like a pretty typical, quiet and traditional village (traditional indeed – we watched the locals playing some petanque – only the pastis was missing ;-). A nice finish to a very pleasant day (especially considering we weren’t very lucky with the weather…).

More photos here.