By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea

October 7, 2010

Yesterday, we drove up and over the hills to get to the sea.  In a little less than two and a half hours, we were in the small seaside city of Cassis.  The sun and the turquoise Mediterranean Sea were so different from the verdant hills of Dordogne and the more hardscrabble land of Provence.  We went from long sleeves to wishing I was sleeveless in just a morning's drive. 


We took the scenic route going there, which lead us up and down the hills of the lower Provence.  I am beginning to view these hill towns as much the same as each other.  They are all perched (some precariously) on a hill top or hill side.  They are all spectacular to see from both a far and a near distance.  They all have ancient twisty roads that go through the center of town and all traffic has to follow these roads to get through town.  These are numbered roads on the map.  The car struggles to climb the switchbacks on the way up and flies down the other side on the way down.  Some towns are laid out better and more attractively, some are more utilitarian in their design -- or designed by happenstance.
Here's a picture of a typical hill town.

                                              

It dawned on me yesterday that in Europe, the towns are situated on the tops of hills so that the townspeople can watch who's approaching on the flats. They put their agriculture on the land below.  There may or may not have been a river way down below to aid in transport. In America, since we were never concerned about being sacked, we didn't need to put our towns on hills and circle them with walls.  We founded our towns in the valleys where they were more protected from the weather and usually near rivers, so that we had access to transportation.  The farmland went up the hill as far as possible.  Nobody ever bothered with the hilltops that were hard to access.  Still today most of the hilltops are forests.  This system works great if you don't have to worry about your neighbor down stream deciding to set up their catapults outside your door.


The Mediterranean here is a beautiful blue-green color.  The "beach" is right at the end (or beginning depending upon your point of view) of town.  There is no sand here, only "pre-sand"; pebbles that have not yet been turned into finer pebbles and eventually to tiny grains of sand.  I think of it as a beach-in-training. 

In spite of the fact that we are fast approaching Mid-October, there were people on the beach and in the water.  I was tempted to put my feet in to try the water, but I had on long pants and the thought of spending the rest of the day in wet, salty pant's legs didn't thrill me.  I bet that the water was wonderfully warm, especially at the edge.  I felt way over-dressed for the weather.  Women whose only destination was the Mediterranean (not driving around like us), were dressed in typical summer dresses with strappy sandals.  The temperature must have been in the high 70's or low 80's.  Away from the beach/marina area, it didn't seem quite so warm and people wore more of a variety of clothing.


The marina area was a man-made basin of very large stones from the area, forming both the walls of the marina and the pavement surrounding the marina.  Restaurants and cafes of all price ranges form a half-moon around the marina, offering a splendid view of the activities.  While having lunch, we watched a group of kids in one-man sailboats being towed out to the sea, in a line one after the other.  They looked like they were about to have a lesson.  The water itself was a bit choppy yesterday.


Here are some pictures of Cassis.

After lunch, we stopped at the tourist information to pick up a map of town.  For someone like me who is used to the orderly routine of numbered streets in Manhattan and logically laid out streets in the suburbs, these old streets and alleyways present a bit of a challenge in finding my direction.  Sometimes, I just rely on the sun to get my bearings; usually that doesn't work.  So, a map is essential.


We decided that we would do one touristy thing -- either take the little open train (like at an amusement park) around the area or take a boat out to see the fjords here which are called calanques.  The boat trip lasted a little less than an hour.  When we boarded, there were several people there already, so we took a seat at the bow and waited a few minutes to get going.  Within three minutes, the bow of the boat cleared out completely.  The water was so choppy that the spritz from the waves was more like a drenching.  And, the boat pitched quite a bit from side to side, making moving to around a bit difficult.  The result was that people all lost their sense of propriety and were laughing with each other over the bumpy trip.  As you are crashing into your seatmate, what else could you do?

Here are pictures of our boatride:

                                       pictures




The calanques were definitely worth seeing.  We opted for the three-calanque trip, as opposed to the seven-calanque trip.  Three was enough, but I did enjoy seeing them.  They were pretty impressive, coming in jagged fashion directly into the sea.  The waters between the juts were calm except for the trail of boats circling in and out one immediately after another.  It was a miniature of what I think of the Alaska cruises as being like -- lots of boats all trying to show the same thing.


By the time we got back on shore, we had time to window shop a little, stopped for gelato and postcards and then climbed up the hill to our "parking gratuis"' spot.  It seemed like a mile away, but that is probably because the hills are so tiresome to climb.  In reality, we probably parked about a half mile away from the center of town.    Just about every parking spot in town was taken, of course, so we were lucky to get a place to park -- free.  Just about 500 feet below us, cars had to pay at the Pay and Display box.  I would not have been so happy to climb the hill and still have to pay.  Climbing the hill and parking free was okay.  Miraculously, I didn't see any tour busses roll into town.  It is absolutely amazing to see what tiny roads the bus drivers can negotiate.  You would think that a passenger car would have a hard time with some of these alleys, yet the bus drivers make it with agility.  Kudos to them for their skill.  I hope that they didn't learn the hard way.


We took the superhighway back to our apartment, even though Larry would have liked another view of the scenery by going over the hills.  I don't mind taking the scenic route in the morning when I'm fresh, but by late afternoon when I'm beginning to tire of driving, I'm not so happy to retrace our hilly route.  I'd much rather do as the locals do and take the highway, even though it's a toll road.  The ride back was only 15-20 minutes shorter, but much easier on the driver.


We got back to our apartment around 7:30 and had a wonderful dinner of duck breast, long-simmered red cabbage (which I cooked the day before) and rice.  Alas, we did not stop at a patisserie, so there was no dessert for dinner.

Saturday in Provence

October 9, 2010


Today, Saturday, we were a bit tired from our road trips this week.  We stayed in our gite this morning, writing our blog/logs and enjoying another cup of coffee.


We went to a nearby town, Bonnieux, for lunch across from the old train station.  It has probably been many decades since there was a train going through; in fact, the train track has been turned into a bike path.  Lunch was very good.  This was our first real meal out in this area.  We have been cooking or getting take-out for the rest of the time.


Larry has decided that we should be on a $100/day (that's dollars, NOT Euros!), so we often get something simple.  In the Dordogne (Perigord) we ate lunch out almost every day.  The kitchen that we had at our disposal was not inspiring, to say the least, and the restaurants were abundant and reasonable.  Here, we have a very well equipped kitchen -- though extremely tiny.  None the less, we have been taking advantage of nearby grocery stores in each direction.  Also, I seem to be putting  back on some of the 20 lbs that I lost in the three months prior to our trip.  All of this wine and wonderful cheeses, bread and sausages have had an effect.  Not to mention that we normally have dessert every night, something that we do not do at home.  Of course, we don't have wonderful French patisseries at home, either.


After lunch we stopped at a winery almost across the street from the restaurant.  This is grape crushing season.  The winery is a co-op, and local farmers had brought their grapes to be crushed and processed.  Larry took some great pictures of the process.  We bought some wine, of course.

Here are his pictures:

                       

After lunch and the winery stop, we drove to the town of Rousillon which is famous for its ochre.  The houses in Roussillon are all painted with various colors of ocre that come from the surrounding hills.  The result is very reminiscent of Van Gogh's depiction of Provence.  In fact, that coloration is what I have longed to see here in Provence, and have mostly been disappointed in not seeing it.  Most houses here are of unpainted stone, mostly limestone.  Having said that, Roussillon was not a great attention-getter.  The town, even in October, had more tourists than townsfolk.  It did have a "meter maid", however who checked all the Pay and Display tickets in the car windshields.


Maybe the tour of the factory would have been interesting, but neither of us felt the need to go through it, for 6 Euros a piece.  We read the material at the lookout post and got the idea of how the ochre was processed.  At its height in mid-1900's, the town processed 40 tons a year, and now they only process 2 tons a year.  There was no explanation of what happened.  The colors of ochre are really beautiful, not just golden and rust, but all variations from very dark to pale cream and a range of blues.  They make a lovely color palette.

Here are pictures of the red hills of Roussillon:

The big triumph of the day was that we found a clothing store in Apt to buy tee shirts and I found a shoe store to buy sandals, both for next week when we will be in the Riviera.  For some reason, neither of us thought that it would be so warm here, and on the Riviera even warmer.  We were unprepared for summer again.  After all, it's getting towards mid-October already.  Still, the temperature has been around 23-25 centigrade -- mid to upper 70's and bright sunlight.  We are definitely not complaining about the weather, but we felt ridiculous buying tee shirts when we each have at least 50-60 at home.  And, my shoe collection takes up considerable space, so another pair of sandals is not what I needed.

I'm sure that next week, we will be very glad that we bought our warm weather clothes.  Meanwhile, back in Perigord, they are putting on the layers and buttoning up.

All Roads Lead to Rome

October 8, 2010


Thursday morning we decided to explore Goult, the town where we are staying.  We finally found the tourist information and got a map of the "sites" in town.  We started somewhat in the middle of the walking tour, as for some unknown reason, the actual start of the tour began in a place where you would never start. 


To start at the "start" required a bit of backtracking.  So, into the middle we went.  First up was the town washing station.  This was not kept up by anyone and leaves, etc. were all around.  There was no signage to actually let us know that this was the place.  We figured it out by the shape of the stone basins.  Not impressive, I thought. 


Down the road a very short distance was the town spigot where the stream emptied into a large stone basin structure with a roof over it.  The water was strewn with leaves and had not been cleaned out in some time.  Quite a bit of algae there.  Also not impressive. 


Then we continued with the numbered walk up the hill into the old town behind the town wall, which is just around the corner from our apartment.  Now the town became more interesting.  It has a manor house, small by comparison of other towns, but this is a small town.  We wound our way around the curling streets, always going up.  We saw a nice quiet spot, a public garden, where two people were enjoying a takeout lunch.  Nice spot for lunch.


We continued up again and found the windmill (moulin) which was used until roughly a hundred years ago and looks to be still in good condition.  Quite obviously, it is at the highest part of the town. 

Here's a picture of the moulin:
                   

A 10 minute walk beyond the windmill were the terraces where the people of the town had cultivated their crops on stone-supported terraces.  There were quite of few of them.  They had been reconstructed by volunteers about 15 years ago, and had been planted with typical "crops", primarily olive trees, sage, lavender, rosemary and, mysteriously, irises.  I couldn't figure out the medicinal or food value of irises.  Maybe they were simply for the flowers.  The terraces were not maintained as well as they could have been and seemed a bit over grown.  There were several bories -- small utility buildings made of dry stone.  They were in great shape and could easily be used today for the same purposes for which they were originally constructed.


Here's a typical borie:

It is hard to determine how many people actually live in this town, but it is clearly a real town where people really live.  I got the opposite feeling about some hill towns in the Dordogne where I couldn't imagine anyone living there unless they happen to own a tourist business somewhere in town and want to live close to it.  In those towns, there were lodgings, certainly, but they appeared to be used for gites these days.  In Goult, there certainly are quite a number of gites, but there also seems to be quite a number of non-tourists here --ladies (and gentlemen) of a certain age who appear in the morning with their market baskets.  These women probably do not own a pair of pants; they wear dresses or skirts every day.  They are definitely not tourists. 


We really like Goult, and just love the gite here.  As I described earlier, it is a medieval townhouse just outside of the town wall.  The steps of the house are worn down in the middle from a few hundred years' worth of climbing.


We came back to our apartment and had a takeout lunch from the local patisserie.  I really should be photographing some of our meals, but I never think of it.  When I'm hungry, nothing else matters.
After lunch, we went to one of the few towns that is not located perched on a hill, although we did have to go up and over the very steep hilly town of Bonnieux to get to it.  Lourmarin is flat and peaceful.  There is none of the perceived danger associated with a town desperately clinging to a rock high above the farms.  It was a lazy fall afternoon.  A few locals were out sitting in the middle of a shopping plaza, enjoying the afternoon sun, where they probably could not find an empty seat during the "season".


As with a lot of towns, this town seems to earn it's economic foundation on tourists.  Even on a Thursday afternoon in early fall, the cafes were doing a reasonable business.  The manor house just off the center of town attracts loads of tour busses and independent travellers.  I can only imagine this lovely, gentle little town being positively over run by tourists in the summer. 


In October, the crush has calmed down and the town appears to be taking a well-deserved break.  When we arrived, the town even appeared to be napping.  Since it is no longer tourist season, stores go back to their normal schedules of taking the lunch break for two hours.  Some stores are open during the lunch break and then close from 2-4 pm. 


We are constantly having timing issues.  We spend a couple of hours driving to a place, only to arrive just when they are about to close for one type of break or another.  It can be a bit frustrating to wait out the break.  It also limits the number of places that we can travel to in a day.


I liked Lourmarin a lot.  It would be a great place to stay for a week and use it as a base to travel around.  I think one reason that I liked it is because it is flat.  It seemed more "normal" to me, and less fairy tale.  It had the same medieval construction, the same ancient church in the center, the same large manor house, the same crowded meandering narrow streets in the old town.  But, it also had a sense of being a living town.


Friday, October 8, we took a road trip to see the sights of Nimes and Pont du Gard.  We decided that logistically, it made sense to start with Pont du Gard, then drive to Nimes.; otherwise, we would have to backtrack.  That itinerary made a lot of sense because when we got to Pont du Gard, we were fresh and had not yet worn out our legs.


Pont du Gard is just plain spectacular.  There is no other way to describe it.  The "pont" is the bridge crossing the Gardon River.  It is 160 FT high at it's middle.  It is truly a remarkable feat of Roman engineering.  The entire aqueduct system which brings fresh drinking water from the hills to Nimes stretches over 30 miles.  


I have no idea how long it took to build this bridge and the rest of the aqueduct, of which this is part, but it must have been quite a while.   Of course, when the raw materials are free for the taking and the labor is literally "slave labor",  the cost of building a marvel like this is not that great.  Probably feeding the slaves was the highest cost. 

Here are photos of this awe-inspiring fantastic work of mankind at his best:

                        
Had we known that the parking fee of 15 Euros also included the museum, I would have gone in to understand just how the Romans managed to get all those huge stones in place.  I will do some research when I get internet service again, because I am really interested in how this was done in 19 BC.
We arrived in Nimes around lunch time; so, we quickly found a take out and an available park bench.  Then we were off to the arena.  We chose to see this one because of all of the arenas built by Romans in their new cities in Europe, this is the best preserved.  It is still in use today, after 2000 years.  Concerts and bull fights are the primary attractions there today. 


The self-guided audio tour took about two hours.  I found it very interesting.  The audio guide did a fine job of orienting the visitor to the stadium itself and to the life at the time of the Romans.  I felt like I got a very good crash course on the Romans and the people that they "conquered". 


The Romans conquered new lands by overtaking them with minimal force.  Then, they immediately began a program of treating them very well.  They built arenas for entertainment, built roads, bridges and housing, provided water and other necessities of life.  They did not treat the conquered as "conquered" but as new citizens of Rome.  Their idea was that if they treated these people well, within two to three generations, the people would consider themselves Romans also.  In fact, the townspeople tried very hard to be Romans because they wanted to enjoy the lifestyle and "perks" of being a Roman citizen.  Listen up, fledgling dictators, this is the way to go.


I am very glad that we went to the arena (not coliseum, as we might think; there's only one Coliseum, and that's in Rome, named for a sculpture of Colossus just outside the gate).  However, having seen this one, I don't feel that I need to see any more.  We saw the best, why spend time seeing others in various degrees of destruction.


Here are pictures of another Roman wonder.  If only they had laid off the vino, maybe they could still be building things today.

                              
I liked Nimes quite a bit.  It was like a small version of Paris, with Paris type parks and lovely, graceful buildings which were all short.  This is a cultured city.  The people of Nimes were very well dressed and the city was clean and pretty. 


Here are some pictures of Nimes, especially the Jardin de la Fontaine which was designed by the architect of the gardens at Versaille:
                       

We arrived back in Goult well after dark -- about 8:30.  We were both tired from the day's adventure.  Vacationing is hard work.

St. Tropez

October 13, 2010

Today was our last day with the car, so we took advantage of one more day of wheels and took a trip out of Nice.  We went to St. Tropez.  Yes, Larry and Margaret on the Riviera at St. Tropez!  Who would have ever thought.


We took the highway down since we had already covered most of the coastline on our trip over to Nice.  The highway, like most highways everywhere is fairly boring to drive, but it does have the advantage of speed.  I have never mastered the idea of driving at 130 km/hr.  It just seems too fast to go, plus our 4-cylinder car had a hard time getting up to 100.  I called it the "Little Engine that Could" (I think I can, I think I can, etc).  Okay, that children's book probably hasn't been published since I turned five or so, and no one except Larry understands the "literary reference".


Anyway, we got off the highway to drive along part of the coastline that we had not covered before.  It was fairly flat and formed a huge half-moon around the bay.  On the map, it looks like a tear open in the land, like the peninsula where St. Tropez is located was just ripped away.  But  when driving, it looks much more poetically like a half-moon.  That is as poetic as it gets, for otherwise the towns that line the bay are non-descript, not pleasing to the eye, and reminded both of us of the not so wonderful parts of the Jersey shore.


After quite a lot of driving, we reached our destination and found the town parking lot, at 2.50 Euros/hr.  That seemed a bit stiff to me.  The lowest price "menu" in St.Tropez was about 20 Euros, which is about $25 give or take, plus wine and coffee, just for lunch.  The prices went up from there.  If the places had looked desirable and the food looked really good, we might have spent the money, but all in all, it was overpriced and undervalued.  The restaurants charged a lot of money simply because they could.


This town was apparently a sleepy medieval fishing town until Brigitte Bardot made it famous in a movie about 40 years ago.  The town continues to pay homage to her by putting her image on just about anything that will take it -- posters, mugs, tee-shirts, etc.


We spent quite a bit of time walking around the town, particularly through the old town.  By now old towns have become quite familiar to us in their general appearance and layout.  This one varied only in the prices of the stores.  All of the stores found on 5th or Madison Avenue in Manhattan were here.  Big names, tiny stores -- just big enough to say that they have a store in St Tropez.
Here are some pictures of the town, which is to say the old town.

                                             

The harbor was full of $3M+ yachts, of course.  The moorage fee, Larry read, is $2,000 a day.  The one that I liked the best was grand and shaped somewhat like an old-time ocean liner.  I suppose that that type of yacht is probably terribly out of fashion, but compared to the super sleek and (to my mind) totally charmless modern yachts of today, it was lovely.  It was also the largest boat in the marina and had to be moored outside of the regular slips.  

 

                                             

There was a 1938 wooden boat there that had a distinctively broad-beamed look about it that was being filmed for something.  We guessed that it was maybe for advertising purposes since it didn't appear that the filming had anything to do with any personalities.  Here's a picture of what they were filming:

                             
After a couple of hours, we retrieved our car from the lot and left town.  All I can say about St. Tropez is that we were not impressed.  Maybe it was because it was so very off-season and the skies were a bit gray.  Instead of being filled with super slim, tall model wanna-be's, it was populated by people looking a bit more like us, except speaking German and wearing wool socks with their Birkenstocks.  Not only did I not feel socially intimidated and really inappropriately dressed, I unfortunately felt as comfortable there as anywhere.  So much for the rich and famous.


I was glad that we went there because I would have always wondered what it is like, but now that I have been, I can simply check it off the list and not bother to return.  To my mind, Cassis was much more interesting.  I would go back there again.  Here's Larry at his favorite pastime here in France.

We stopped to get some lunch along the way and found one of the many free parking areas along the coastline, facing the sea.  Here's Larry "enjoying" lunch:

We took the highway for most of the way back and got off at a town called Cagnes to see Renoir's house and gardens.  The old olive trees must have been the ones that he had planted, for their trunks were so knarled and aged.  


For Renoir fans, this was a very special place.  It was amazing to stand in his studio and see his studio as he saw it.  His house does not get nearly as much tourist attention as Monet's Giverny, but it was every bit as interesting (to us anyway).  Non-Renoir fans would do well to skip this, but it was the best part of our day. 


Here is his house and a separate studio used by other artists who visited him.

                                    



Renoir is getting a bit of attention this year with the exhibit of his late work (work mostly completed while living at this house) is on display now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and later to travel.  We went to the exhibit in August when we were back in New Jersey for a few weeks.


As we entered Nice again, we came first to the airport where we turned in the car.  I was greatly relieved that they did not go over it with a microscope and find all of the scrapes incurred when we were navigating through those alleyways in the hill towns.

Mi Piacere Italia

October 12, 2010

We arrived in Nice yesterday to a nice apartment one block from the Promenade at the water.  Pictures of the Promenade in a later post.  I haven't had time to take them yet.  It's an older neighborhood, witth tiny one-way streets, and right in the downtown area with lots of restaurants around.  Although the street side of the building is very noisy at night, our apartment faces on a street with almost no activity, so it is fairly quiet.  Quiet except for tonight when a street crew is slicing open the street or sidewalk for some reason.  Our apartment building is the yellow building:

                               
Nice is a large city right on the coast.  It's as if Paris were moved to Miami Beach.  It is sunny here, though somewhat cool.  There was rain here yesterday when we came and the day before.  I like the architecture here, but I am tiring of hearing a language that I cannot fathom.  Even when I really try, it makes no sense.


Tomorrow, we are returning our car, so today, our first full day in Nice, we went on a road trip to Italy.  The drive there was heart stopping.  I do not do at all well on bridges.  If they are low and wide and seem really sturdy, I'm fine.  When they are skimpy looking, perched on the side of a cliff, or not even attached to a cliff, about a thousand feet high flying through the air, I completely lose my cool and get a case of the frights.  The drive to Italy consisted of only two things:  tunnels through mountains and bridges connecting the tunnels.  This was not an easy drive for  me.  I finally left the autoroute and got off at the first exit in Italy.  I was never so glad to be on land.


Here's a sample of the bridges; and this is not one of the more frightening ones:

                             

After hearing French for three weeks, Italian spoken by the toll taker sounded like music in my ears.  I felt immediately comfortable and relaxed.  We drove through Ventimiglia to Bordighera.  These cities were packed together so that only the sign on the street told us that we had changed towns.  The downtown areas of the towns along here were a bit dumpy, especially after France. 


We chose Bordighera because Monet spent a summer here painting and he made it seem so inviting.  We got out and strolled along the promenade which must have run for at least a mile.  The weather here along the coast of the Mediterranean is strange.  The wind could knock you over.  This was even more so on the promenade in Bordighera.  Although the walk was lovely, and the scenery magnificent, we had such wind that I felt pummeled.


Here are some photos of Bordighera:

From there we drove along the low coastline (not on the high up autoroute) to San Remo, a place that I wanted to see.  It is a lovely place, but quite large. 


San Remo is another seaside city for the wealthy or the pretenders.  We walked a long way along the breakwater that creates the quiet harbor for San Remo.  Along the way, we came across the open air fish market on the quay and had a great view of the city across the harbor.

Here is San Remo:

                   

We decided to drive a little more along the coast before turning back for the day.  I am so glad that we did, because on a whim, I got off the road at the next little town and was pleased to find a wonderful little seaside town that didn't look like an international destination (although the other tourists having coffee at the waterside cafe were speaking something sounding like German). 


None the less, this is not a flashy place.  It's called San Stefano.  It's just a little blip on the map, but a nice place to visit.  We got out and walked around, sat on the rocks and had coffee.  I'd love to spend some time here in the future.

              

We had a wonderful day.  To make it even better, Larry drove back over all those terrifying bridges.  He never even flinched.  Meanwhile, driving in traffic of any kind drives him insane.  It doesn't bother me a bit.  So, as soon as we entered Nice again, and we came to a convenient red light, we switched drivers and I drove through all the city streets without incident or trepidation.  On firm ground, I can drive anywhere.


As a whole, I liked what I saw of the Italian Riviera better than what I've seen of the French Riviera. It just seems a bit less glitzy.


Speaking of glitzy, it looks like we will go to St. Tropez tomorrow, our last day with the car.  That is probably the most glitzy place on the Riviera.  We drove through Cannes on our way, but it didn't strike me as being impossibly chic.  Maybe it would if we were there "in season".


This evening, I'm sitting in a cafe next door to our apartment.  We came specifically to use their wifi, as recommended by our host.  Unfortunately, the only employee in the cafe this evening does not see fit to give us the code to use.  I can see their wifi, but I can't connect to it.  I am terrifically annoyed because not only does our host not provide wifi himself, but the place he recommended won't provide it either.  Perhaps I will investigate some other hotspots here in Nice tomorrow or the next day.

It's Nice in Nice

October 14, 2010

Today, we thought that we were in for a bit of a rest; just wander around town a little and get acquainted.  It didn't turn out that way.  We wandered around, but we really got tired.  In the morning, the first thing that we did was to head to the tourist information.  For some reason, they did not seem very gracious, I thought.  We got our maps, we got the info about the bus stops and we were on our way to the old town, known here as Vieux Nice.


Old Nice is just like the old centers of other cities and towns.  The streets are small, narrow and crowded with restaurant tables and people.  Some of the lanes are so narrow and lined up in such a manner that the sun doesn't really shine there.  Some of them seem to be in perpetual shade.  But, then there are the sunny open squares where there is usually a church, a fountain and room to move about in the off season.  This part of the city reminds me a lot of parts of Italy, especially the campos in Venice.


We had lunch in the most touristy of old town streets, which also serves as the flower market.  The combination of restaurants and flowers all up and down the middle of the wide boulevard seemed rather postcard picturesque.


After a mediocre lunch, we headed to the the oldest part of old town, the remains of the castle on the tiptop of the hill overlooking the sea.  Being of a certain age ourselves, we took the elevator to the top.  Even then, the additional stairs to the very top were a bit tiring.  We took a lot of pictures of the city surrounding the bottom of the hill.  From the crest, we could see the rest of the city plus the beach, the sea and the mountains which are not all that far away.  Very lovely views. 

Here are some of them:

                                                         
The elevator was installed in the tower that had previously been used to bring water up to the top.  It stood a bit away from the rest of the hill.  When the door opened at the top, there was a narrow balcony surrounding the tower.  This is not ideal for me, with my fear of heights.  I made it 180 degrees around to the bridge that connected the tower to the terra firma.  I barely caught my breath when we came upon a small group consisting of a couple of firemen and some teenage boys.  For some reason, the firemen were trussing the kids up, one at a time, and holding the ropes while the kids rappelled down the side of the stone wall. 

I had just got off the dizzying balcony and I thought for sure that the kids were going down the whole depth that I could see from the elevator tower.  Just the thought of it made me queasy.  After watching a few of them go over the side rail, I decided to investigate with the idea of taking photos from a little lower level of them coming over the wall.  I was mighty surprised to find that the path would around to the bottom of their descent, which was probably all of 20 feet!  I had imagined them going down several hundred feet to the bottom of the hill.

Here is one brave kid getting suited up:

                              

The castle complex was completely destroyed by one invader or another, so there is nothing left of the original castle, keep or wall.  Some of the original places are being excavated.  We saw the dig for the church there.  This was part of the structure that seemed to have survived since it's original construction.

                                    

Other space, which was no doubt within the keep, is being used as park space with equipment for kids.  Believe it or not, you can even walk on the grass.  I put my foot down and no sirens went off.  Amazing.  The French are unbelievably ridiculous about their greenspace.  Usually there are special police assigned to keep people off the grass.  Step on the grass at the Tour Eiffel and you will get a ticket.  Here you could walk, run, lie or play with no consequences.  Only dogs were forbidden.  Thank goodness for that because the French have not learned to pick up after Fido.

Even the stairs to the bottom of the hill would have been hard on our legs, so we took the elevator down and wandered some more around the old town, stopping to have creme de glace' in a square along the way.  As we were walking through the old town, we went past some restaurant back doors where the crews were cleaning up.  I could not resist this guy taking a cigarette break in the doorway.

                                




We came back to the apartment much the same way that we went, going through the really nice park space at Espace Messena which had many fountains and flowers.  It was a very nice place to rest our legs before moving on.  And, it was smack in the middle of the city.
Here's the park:


                                                 


I'm beginning to really like this city.  It has nice architecture, some fancy aging hotels that are quite the thing,  lots of open public spaces, and of course, there's the several-mile-long promenade along the Mediterranean, lined with palm trees, that stretches the complete length of the city from the airport to the far reaches of the old city.  What's not to like?  (well, traffic is a bit much)


Just in back of our apartment, we found an internet cafe.   Finally, I will have internet access.  I am truly annoyed that the cafe next door to our apartment advertises wifi on its awning, but the owner doesn't seem willing to share the code.  It annoys me every time I have to walk past the cafe.  If he spoke English, I would have to have a word with him, but I am powerless to say anything (of course, I could say it, but he wouldn't understand).  So, after our trip to Antibes tomorrow, I will visit the internet cafe and post my tardy blog entries all to the tune of 3 Euros/hr.  Considering how much coffee at a cafe can cost, that is probably a bargain.