Thu Oct 22 - Nice

Briefly sunny here in Nice today so we wandered around Place Massena and contemplated taking the train out to Cap Ferrat and hiking out . However, it did not take long for the clouds to roll in and the drizzle to begin again. We've been a bit cursed with the weather since arriving in Nice. So, we went to the Musee Matisse. What luck for Carl, because right next door are the remains of the Roman town Cemenelum. There are for the most part only foundations which survive. The exception in the baths building here. The museum is not big but it was worth the 45 mins we spent there.

Thereafter, we went to see Matisse. This museum has a wide variety of his works, covering 60 years. Perhaps the best part was his works for a chapel he had planned for Vence, just NW of Nice.

One of our blog followers asked how our French language skills were working out. Overall, we've been making many attempts - of course, the French seem to always want to respond in English - but the Rosetta Stone has definetly helped in understanding alot of day to day French. I made one funny mistake when in a drugstore I asked for a hairbrush ( brosse de cheveux) but instead I said brosse de cheveaux (a horse brush) . I'm sure they get those all the time.

This could potentially be our last blog. Tomorrow we take the train back to Paris. We'll stay in a hotel at the airport and fly out next day. It's been a wonderful trip and we're both very sad to leave (hopefully to return one day). Au revoir, all our blog followers. A bientot!

October 21 - Monaco

Well, here's Monaco. 32,ooo people squeezed into a 2km square area - you can actually walk across the country in 56 minutes (how's that for a fascinating fact). There's no personal income tax here - the result is that 80% of the population are rich foreign nationals - and that wealth is very obvious from the size of the yachts and the make of cars everywhere. It is, though, very interesting to be here.




After arriving by train (only 20mn from Nice) we headed to the Royal Grimaldi palace, where Prince Albert resides. (Where he keeps the bimbos is unknown.) Someone had told us the changing of the guard is fascinating to watch at noon everyday but when we arrived a sign was posted saying it was cancelled for today.
The picture here shows the outside of the palace - quite plain, not a very ornate style. It was raining so we moved on St Nicholas Cathedral where Princess Grace was married and later entombed.



Here's the picture of her grave - Gratia Patricia is the name engraved. Below I am lighting a candle in her memory.

Another couple of photos of the harbour.

Some of the architecture in Moneco is stunning - lots of Beaux Arts style. This is is the Prince Rainier Theatre.

Above is the famous Monte Carlo casino. We just peeked inside - this ain't your regular Vegas casino - beautiful opulent rooms for the baccarat and other table games.

Below is a beautiful hotel near the casino - The Hotel de Paris - Queen Victoria stayed here and
other royalty has since then. By now, I was tires hiking up and down the hills so Carl bought me an ice cream and then back to Nice. We are stealing free WiFi from McDonalds by sitting in the bar above it. It saves us 25 euros a day for hotel wifi but they are getting it back on our bar bills...

October 19 & 20 - Nice

Greetings from Nice! We arrived here from Eze yesterday. Perfect weather - sunny and very warm. After checking into the hotel, we wandered around the old part of the city. I would say Nice is probably most remarkable for it's Promenade de Anglais which runs all along the seafront for approx 5 kilometres ( photo on the left). Very tropical in appearance, palm trees everywhere, and the beaches, despite being pebbly are extremely popular. We headed up to the Marc Chagall museum. M. Chagall lived near Nice for many years - for those not familiar with his art, he painted mainly interpretations of biblical stories from the Old Testament along with some amazing stained glass work. I included some shots here from the museum.

Today we decided to do a day trip to Antibes. We had planned on taking the train but had heard from the hotel staff that a train strike was planned for today so we headed for the bus station instead. Slow ride - took over 60 mins for the 20k trip to Antibes.

Certainly, more yachts than we had ever seen in one place- and massive ones in the outer harbour - Antibes is very much a playground for the very rich. And many stores dedicated to outfitting yachts. Carl's pilgrimage to the home of Graham Greene from 1969-1990 (he died a year later near his daughter's in Switzerland) was his highlight. Greene lived in a true menage a trois with Yvonne Cloetta. She with her husband and daughter on the 2nd floor, he on the 4th. They would lunch at Chez Feliz nearby, spend their afternoons togther, then she would fix his dinner and return to her family. (this info courtesy of Carl)

Here is Greene's apartment. I think Greene would have been outraged by the appearance of a faux Aussie bar but hey we Irish (of any number of exiled generations) have endured cultural appropriation for years.

Unfortunately, Chez Felix appears to have just closed. We had hoped to have a licit lunch there.

Picture of an unusual item over on Antibes resident's front door.

We took a couple of hours to visit the Musee Picasso - no photos allowed so can't show you anything - he lived here for one year in 1946 and produced over 150 pieces of art. He learned pottery while here and produced some very astounding pottery, imagine his exagerated women come to life on a pitcher. The museum is in the old Chateau Grimaldi, the original home of the Monaco mafia.

Tomorrow we head for Monaco - plan to visit the Monte Carlo casino and the grave of Princess Grave...stay tuned.

Sunday October 18 - Eze

Here we are in Eze. We arrived on Sat by train - to very warm and sunny weather - what a change from the chilly Le Mistral. We took a taxi up the winding roads to Eze to our hotel, Le Chevre D'Or. Eze is a medieval village perched on a mountain, as you can see from the photos. The views are absolutely spectacular of the Mediterranean coastline. We wandered around the village - very steep climbing but filled with lots of boutiques and art shops. That night we had dinner at The Troubador, a restaurant beside the hotel - wonderful John Dory fish and scallops and a poached pear dessert - the weather suddenly turned chilly and rainy.

That night we slept 11 hours - every day up to that point, we had been getting up early to see all the sights and hadn't realized how tired we were. Anyway, we woke up to the most amazing warm and sunny morning. We had breakfast on the hotel terrace overlooking the Mediterranean - just amazing views - as well as incredible pain chocolate and croissants. The rest of the day we relaxed around the hotel, took photos, read and just plain did nothing - which is not difficult in such a beautiful location as this. Tonight we had dinner in the hotel restaurant, Le Chevre D'Or, a 2 Michelin star restaurant. It was the culinary highlight of our trip. Superb food and service with amazing views of Cap Ferrat and Nice. We had duck liver terrine with truffles, sea scallops, blue lobster from Brittany, selection of cheeses and chocolate Grand Cru - one of the best meals I've ever had. Bono from U2 lives nearby here and apparently this is one of his favourite restaurants.

Here I am by the hotel pool - it had to be a little hotter to get me in there.

Here's the rental car (only kidding)

The gardens around the hotel are beautiful. This one had lovely statues of animals.

Above are the winding roads from Nice to Eze. These roads were used in the Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly - the site of the car accident where poor Grace died is just a couple of kilometres from here.

At the very top of the Eze village hill, there is a fortress ruin and a Jardin Exotique - a garden filled with desert plants - cacti and other flowering hot weather flowers/plants. Lib, as requested, here are 2 photos. You're right, the views are spectacular from there. You can see Consuelo Vanderbilt's former home, Chateau Balsan, in the distance. Not open to the public because it is now privately owned.Tomorrow, we move to Nice for 4 nights - very sad to leave this exquisite place.

Fri Oct 16 - Orange & Chateauneuf-du-Pape

Another cool and windy day here. The upside to the Mistral wind is that it brings beautiful blue skies - a bright shade of blue that I've rarely seen before.This morning we drove north to the city of Orange where we stopped to tour through, guess what....a Roman Theatre in the old town - famous for being the only Roman theatre to have managed to conserve its stage wall almost intact, as you can see from the photo on the left. Today, concerts and operas are performed regularly during the summer.

Have to admit, we never get tired of seeing the Roman antiquities in this area...we hope you feel the same way :-)

We then headed to the town where all that famous wine is grown, Chateauneuf du Pape.
We did a wine tasting at the Alain Jaume winery and Carl bought a magnum of their top Chateauneuf du Pape - apparently it will keep well for another 30 years but there is little chance we'll allow it to stay uncorked for that long!

We headed back to St. Remy de Provence and strolled the streets. I shot a few photos of various shops and buildings - it's such a beautiful town - very quaint and charming. Very quite this time of year but the summer months are a different story.

Tomorrow we leave for Eze - a little sad, because we loved staying here but also looking forward to seeing the Cote d'Azure. We;ll be up early to drive back to Avignon, drop off the car and catch the TGV train to Nice. I checked the weather and it will be 21 degrees there tomorrow - yeahh! Once again, I'm hoping for internet coverage at the hotel there - if not, we may have to go silent for while, but we'll be back.

Thu Oct 15 - Van Gogh & the Romans

A chilly day here in Provence. The crazy Mistral winds have caused a 10 degree decline in temperature, so instead of 22 degrees we now have 12 degrees and very high winds - doesn't stop us, we just need to add more layers of clothing. This morning we visited St. Paul de Mausole, a psychiatric hospital just outside St. Remy where Vincent Van Gogh spent 12 months in 1889-90. The left photo shows the outside of the hospital and a picture below shows his hospital room. While at the hospital he painted over 150 paintings, including Starry Night - a view of St. Remy from his window - all around the hospital you can see many of the views that inspired so many of his works.

Here I am in the cloisters at the hospital. A very peaceful place now but not so in the late 19th c when hundreds of patients were subjected to many unorthodox treatments for mental illness - many of which you can read about here.

Behind the hospital is the Mas de la Pyramide in what used to be a Roman quarry. The top of the granite structure , which is called the Pyramide, (in the photo to the left) used to be level ground - it sits now in olive tree orchard. A farmer who lives in the house by the pyramide gave us a very interesting tour of the area. He spoke no English but we were able to basically understand him and even managed to ask a few questions of him. His family has lived in the house below for over 400 years. He keeps his cars and farm equipment in a cave that the Romans carved out over 2000 years ago - see photo below. All very fascinating.

After our tour we headed to Les Baux de Provence, a village literally built in to the side of a mountain. The winds were so strong we didn't last long and headed on to Arles.

Here is the Roman Arena that sits in the middle of the old city section of Arles. It is still used for events, as you can see from the constructed seating. When you sit inside you can envision the games and gladiator fights that took place here 2000 years ago in front of 20,000 spectators.

Inside the Arena.

We put the camera on a 10 second timer and took our own picture here - proof that we are actually on this trip together!

Also, in Arles, a Roman amphitheatre.

This structure sits just inside the wall of the old city in Arles - not sure what it means or who created it, but it is beautiful.

Here is a photo of one of the many charming buildings in old Arles. After all this touring around today, we walked into St. Remy from the hotel and found a great restaurant, Le Jardin de Frederic where we had a delicious dinner of lamb rack and a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, Vieux Telegraphe - a favourite of Carl's and very reasonably priced.That's all for now. A bientot!