Ah, Mediterranean Europe... Endless beaches filled with tourists, people playing paddle board, gelato stands, men in tiny speedos, bare-breasted women, and tans so dark you swear people here have been sunbathing for years, like its their full-time job. Gotta love it!
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| One of the many busy beaches we lied on in the French Riviera... La tee da! |
Nice was the first city we hit on the French Riviera, and it oozes with posh Frenchies. It's like Kits beach on steroids, where all the well-to-do people go! The city itself has fairly narrow streets in the old town with bars, restaurants and ice cream parlors filling the squares in between. It's a beautiful city, especially at night, to sit under an umbrella, sip on a glass of wine and watch people pass by for hours on end.
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| Gorgeous winding mountain view drive on the way from Geneva to Nice! Tough on the stomach, but easy on the eyes! |
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| One of the restaurant-lined streets in Nice |
Chris and I stayed in this amazingly James-Bond style apartment building that literally hangs out over the mediterranean! We got the hook up from some friends and stayed in what used to be the maid's quarters (small room with bed and shower, etc) for free! Score!
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| The view from the rooftop of the place we stayed in Nice. Doesn't get much more 'oceanfront' than that! |
The driving habits of the French (especially in the South) took some getting used to, to say the least! Particularly the parking habits. We would be following the tricky GPS directions intently and then pull up behind a car at an intersection only to find that the owner of the car had thought it acceptable to park literally in the middle of the lane, sans hazard lights! On the other hand, some of the French drivers believe that having hazard lights enables the driver to park absolutely anywhere. This includes but is not limited to parking in driveways, on sidewalks, and most commonly double parking for hours at a time on single lane streets! The roads are already enough of a maze without having to dodge cars every few minutes! We did however follow suit a couple of times, embracing the car culture for a quick pee break. 'When in Rome', right? The other mind-boggling part of driving through Europe is trying to fit into the parking lots made to encourage every car-owner to drive either a Smartt car or a Mini. Just to get past the gate we have to tuck in our wing mirrors and there is absolutely no room for error on either side of the car. The streak marks on the cemented corridors show that not many vehicles make it out unscathed. The American truck population would have trouble adapting to the parking conditions in Europe - trucks just don't exist!
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| Some of the yachts in Monte Carlo |
While we're on the subject, Chris and I went into Monaco to spend a few hours ogling the fancy cars and yachts in and around the famous casino. You can just imagine how important those rich guys must feel having a constant stream of tourists standing next to the door of their Ferrari, pretending to be its owner. I swear they get together with their rich buddies and take bets on whose car will get the most photo ops of the day. It's amazing how the principality of Monaco is so small that in order to house the overpopulous number of inhabitants, the buildings appear to be piled on top of each other with little room to breathe and limited green space. We're not exactly the pompous type, but it's crazy to see the frivolity of people with ridiculous amounts of money!
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| Lookout over beautiful French coastline! |
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| The Monte Carlo casino! |
We then had some much needed beach time for a couple of days. Chris was pumped because he can float better in the Mediterranean than any other sea and it's way warmer too! Perfect! I was just happy to bask in the hot sun and read my book. We checked out Antibes and another beach in between Nice and Monaco. It was hard work having to embrace the beach culture but hey, we're here to experience it all so we did our part!
Heading into August and being in the popular mediterranean Europe area, it became rather clear that couchsurfing would be a challenge from here forward. We opened ourselves to the possibility of going to places that might be a bit more remote, but where we might meet people who are a bit less inundated with requests from other tourists and experience more rural areas in Europe for a change. This is how we met Christine and Olivier, a middle-aged, kind, English-speaking, motorcycle-driving couple who live outside of Orange in a small town in Provence. We left the 'French Riviera' to hit up Provence. Wow, both of those areas are do well known- we're stoked we got to check them both out! We stopped in Avignon just long enough to get a picture in front of the "Pont" (bridge). I was pretty excited to be in the city that's home to the song "Sur le pont d'Avignon, l'on y danse..." etc. You frenchies will know what I'm talking about! Then we continued on to Orange to meet our hosts!
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| The Pont D'Avignon |
Lucky for us, there was a Medieval festival going on in Chateauneuf Du Pape (great French name!). The area is a well-known wine region, as are most areas in Southern France! We spent a solid five hours at the festival tasting wines, trying local specialties like nougat, sausage, cured meats and sweets, and checking out some of the events. One of the best parts was the jousting Knight's competition, which reminded us of those people that re-enact medieval battles in their backyards as a hobby. These guys were in their element! We also heard a scottish band (?) playing in the old local church and had some wine from the barrels being carried through the village streets by a bunch of donkeys. Olivier was in his glory, knowing many people from the village and going to the front of each food booth to ask for a taster for his 'Canadian' friends. It was pretty funny, as there were quite a few other tourists from other parts of France and the EU, but Olivier always seemed to get a taste of whatever it was he wanted us to try! Christine cooked up a giant feast for us when we got home later. It must've been a four-course meal, with prosciutto and melon, ratatouille and lamb, cheeses and then ice cream to boot! The French down here know how to eat!
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| Chateau Neuf-Du-Pape, the beautiful little town known for it's wine worldwide! |
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| Check out the barrels of wine on the donkey! We got free refills kindly poured for us - pretty kick ass! |
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| Looking good, I'm so scared! |
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| It's harder than it looks! |
Carcassonne is a city that was recommended to us, so we headed to check out the area and be somewhere a little less touristy. Considering it is in the middle of the high tourist season, other than Nice, Paris and Munich we have done well to avoid super massive crowds! We didn't really know what to expect of the area. All we knew was that Carcassonne is where the "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" movie was filmed and when you see the old town surrounded by fortress walls you can see why they chose that location. The medieval town is protected with 52 towers, making it Europe's largest city fortifications. It also has a drawbridge and is set high up on the hill which makes for a good-looking postcard pic. We tried to go into the castle, stood in a line of 50 people or so for a solid 20 minutes during which they processed maybe 3 groups of people. Apparently this was the norm, according to the ticket-ripper, so we decided to instead appreciate the castle from the outside and spend our saved time wandering around the narrow streets inside the rest of the fortress walls and swimming at a local lake.
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| This may or may not be Carcassonne... I think it is another random castle we passed along the way! |
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| This is definitely Carcassonne! |
Normally in Vancouver if you go to a lake it is a pretty stock-standard event. It doesn't require description because what you do is generally typical and most of them are similar in layout. We have twice now been astounded by the lake culture in France. The first time we had to pay an entrance fee. During this second occasion we followed Garmin's directions down what seemed like a footpath for a good 15kms only to reach the lake and be flagged down by a pimply-faced 'security' guard. He told us we actually couldn't go through that particular gate and that we would have to turn around and go all the way around to the other side of the gate. Then he walked in front of our car for a good kilometre while he 'led' us back where we came from, even though the only other possible route would be to drive through the actual lake itself. So a good hour later we parked up on the other side of the lake at which point we were sweating and eager to jump into the water. We swam around for literally all of five minutes before some policemen showed up and started announcing something on a loudspeaker. It was so muffled I couldn't decipher the french, but we started to notice that people were responding to whatever it was he said by getting out of the water. There were the same security guards, using their whistles very officially and ordering people to get out! We were baffled, but politely obeyed and returned to our towels, somewhat frustrated at this point that our original plan of having a quick swim had turned into an all-day affair! We waited about an hour for a man to ride around in a boat with what appeared to be probeware of some sort. Every now and again a little girl would wade in up to her knees to fill up her sand-castle bucket and get whistled at to get back onto dry land. I'm surprised the police didn't start giving out fines to whoever dared to venture too far back in! We though it was a less than opportune time to test water quality, but it was all lost in translation to us and quite amusing in any case!
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| The infamous lake |
Our last night in France was spent with Ivan, who was doing an internship at a winery in the area. We stayed in this old school-house that was part of the winery. He took us on a random, but unique tour of the area in the pitch black we checked out a place that is supposed to be an optical illusion - it's too hard to explain but in any case, it was memorable...
The next morning we checked out the area in daylight and our visit ended with doing a tasting led by Ivan in the actual winery. We can confidently say that this place was one of the coolest winery rooms we've ever seen! What a great way to say aurevoir to France!
Before we hit up Barcelona we wanted one extra stamp on our passport - Andorra! We wound through the mountains of Andorra listening to the Ricky Gervais "Guide To...", an amusing series in which Ricky, Karl and Steve discuss various topics. The premise is that Karl is a small-brained Englishman with inventive answers to questions of opinions on the environment, health care, the future, etc. We should've stocked up on more podcasts and similar programs for our long drive back to Germany at the end of our trip! Anyway, Andorra ended up being really cool so we stayed for an extra night and did a hike up in the mountains. Chris decided to go on an epic hike around this lake, and I dipped my feet in the water on top of this mountain while listening to the mountain horses jangle their bells while grazing nearby. Andorra has a cool vibe because pretty much every single building looks like a ski lodge. Probably a good thing considering the main draw for the country is snow sports! The passport stamp was pretty cool too!
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| A picnic at our empty campsite, enjoying some delicious wine of the region! |
Overall impressions of Southern France didn't disappoint! If anything, they exceeded our expectations, especially with the awesome people we've met! Give us more!!! On to SPAIN!
