Exploring the French Riviera: Nice, Villefranche, Eze, Monaco

Yesterday evening, I walked with my roommates Nicole and Claire down to the beach (two blocks away) and then along the water for a ways. Claire, being Australian, kept claiming that the water wasn't that cold and we should go swimming, but we never followed through with that plan. (There was no one else in the water.) We climbed a lot of stairs up to the Chateau overlooking the city and watched the sun "set". Actually, the sun sank behind clouds prior to setting so we didn't get a beautiful Mediterranean sunset to watch. There were a lot of good places to sit and people watch, both down by the water and up at the Chateau.

Here were some of our views:

[click any picture to enlarge]

Oh, THERE'S my yacht:

[Note: I made "Oh, there's my yacht!" jokes all day long, so if you're thinking that you wish you'd been here, bear in mind that about once every hour, I'd say either, "Oh, there's my yacht" or "Oh, there's my villa." Once I said, "Oh, there's my car." Hanging out with me = not as much fun as the photos imply.]

After we left the Chateau, we decided to go have a drink, and we wound up at an Irish pub. We had a drink there and then wandered off in search of dinner. After evaluating the menu at several places, we finally decided on the place that offered us a free glass of rose champagne with our meal. We got delicious pizzas, which we thought were really huge but we all managed to finish them. We liked our free glasses of rose so much that we also ordered a carafe of the wine. (I know rose has a little accent mark but I am too lazy to figure out how to type that.)


We finished dinner and went back to the hostel, and eventually went to sleep (after a wonderful Skype conversation with Shelley).


Nicole and I decided yesterday that we would go up to Monaco today. Claire had already been to Monaco, and she recommended also stopping in Eze (pronounced "ehz") on the way there. We asked Luis, our wonderful hostel concierge if he would recommend any other stops, and he suggested Villefranche, another small village between Nice and Monaco. After sorting out elaborate bus schedules for a while, we set out, and Claire joined us since she had not been to Villefranche. It was a very cute city - not a whole lot to do, but a picturesque place to have a cappucino, which is exactly what we did:

Villefranche was incredibly cute - I loved all the pastel colored buildings:

After Villefranche, we all took a bus BACK to Nice. Claire had to go catch her train (boo hoo hoo) and Nicole and I grabbed lunch near the bus station and then jumped on another bus to go to Eze. Luis, our wonderful concierge, had suggested that we go to a parfum shop in Eze, so we went in here:

This was incredibly fun - my favorite part of the day. We took a short tour where we learned about different methods of producing perfumes, and then we had a little session that I'll call a "perfume scenting" but it was actually incredibly similar to a wine tasting. Nicole, myself, and another woman gathered round a counter which had many, many bottles of perfume on it, and the woman who gave us our tour would give us a brief description of a scent, then spray several of the little cardboard strips, and hand them to us to smell. There was also a little glass jar of coffee beans so we could cleanse our scent palate between perfumes. We learned all about base, middle and top notes, as well as all about different scent families. It was really fun. Obviously the whole point was to sell us perfume, and THEY WIN - I bought a small bottle of my very own French perfume.

After the parfumerie, we went to explore the "Old Town" of Eze, a wonderful medieval town high above the Mediterranean. None of my pictures do a good job of conveying that you're really high up, but believe me - it's basically on giant cliffs over the sea. 

It's a fun place to wander for an hour or so; lots of shops, restaurants, art galleries. Very rambling:

Here's a statue:

See? We're WAY above the sea:

Up really high! Really!

There were some gorgeous vantage points looking out over the sea:

Once we finished exploring the old town, our adventure for the day was about to begin. A remarkably disproportionate amount of our time today was spent consulting, analyzing, discussing, evaluating, and questioning bus schedules. To make a long story short, we needed to get from the very top of town to the very bottom of town to catch our next bus. The woman in the tourist information office told us that there was a path to follow and it would take about 45 minutes. She did not mention that we should have hiking boots, walking sticks, matches, small shelters, and a Saint Bernard with us.

Things started off promising; there were steps:

The terrain quickly became quite rugged:

It was the most difficult and beautiful walk to the bus stop I have ever taken! We spent some time discussing wilderness survival tactics, and paused every several hundred feet to comment on how gorgeous everything was:

Amazingly, RIGHT as we reached the bus station, our bus pulled up, so we hopped on and continued on our way to Monaco. Our goal was to find a good spot to watch the sun set in Monaco, but we sort of missed it. Oops. Still, we walked around the harbor area just at the beginning of dusk.

Oh there's my OTHER yacht:

This is not the main harbor but rather the one near the heliport. While we were near the heliport, a helicopter landed and a guy in a suit hopped out and strode away to a waiting car, which promptly zoomed off. His bags were attended to by random minions - he didn't even wait for them, presumably, his clothes will be unpacked, pressed, and hung in the closet by the time he needs to change. THAT'S THE LIFE.


The sky looks bright here but this is as dusk was falling and all the lights were coming on:

Exhausted from our adventurous day, we got on our final bus home - the bus from Monaco to Nice is probably the only public bus I have ever been on where half the women are carrying Louis Vuitton bags; one woman had a leather trench coat on that looked so soft, it took all my self control not to reach out and stroke it - and hopped off in time for a quick trip to the grocery store. We grabbed some quick food and cheap wine to make back at the hostel. That turned out to be an adventure in and of itself, but that's another story for another time.