Twice as Nice

We had an early departure from Castellane as we had to return the rental car to Nice Airport first thing. The descent from the mountain town was stunning - a thick early-morning fog had settled in the valleys, so it appeared the green hills were floating in the clouds. We stopped a few times to take in the sights (apologies for the picture quality - these are a few iPhone photos we've salvaged)

As we neared sea level the fog lifted and we drove through Grasse, the home of perfume, and then had our last toll road and petrol stop in France (hooray!) We eventually dropped the car off at Nice Airport after driving round a confusing series of one-way streets and contradictory signage - who'd have thought something as big as an airport could be so hard to find, especially since we could see the planes, just not the entrance!

After bussing it into town and dropping the bags at the hotel we found some brunch and sat in a park manging on the local Nicoise sandwich, a bagnat - a roll with onions, egg, tomato, tuna, capers and a decent slug of olive oil - delicious! The bakery owner was amused by my Australian pronunciation of it as "bag-nat" and helpfully informed me it is "ban-nya". We strolled around the old town and looked at the fabulous flower and produce markets, and enjoyed watching the sights and sounds (not to mention traffic chaos!) caused by a parade of South American samba schools going on. The old town had a great authentically dingy feel with some lovely old buildings and winding streets, unfortunately overflowing with the ubiquitous lavender and souvenir shops. We did stumble upon a gelateria that is something of a local legend - Fennochio - which has all sorts of weird and wonderful flavours, such as tomato and basil, olive and rose. I went for lavender flavour and Simon chose a more traditional white chocolate. The lavender was exactly like eating lavender in ice cream form - not to everyone's taste I suppose but I enjoyed it! But I must say the gelato in general wasn't amazing compared to other kinds we'd sampled.

After popping back to the hotel for a much-needed nap we went in search of dinner. We ambitiously chose somewhere on the main square filled with tourists, and it was predictably average, but I did try a couple of Nicoise specialities: farcis, meat-stuffed vegetables; and daube, a Provençal beef stew, both of which were tasty enough. A stroll back through the old town finished off a long day.

The next morning was steaming hot as we set out across the north of the city and up a hill lined with big trees and gorgeous old mansion houses to a park at the top. There were two attractions we had trekked up for - the Matisse museum and another Roman arena (help us, we have a problem!) Unfortunately the Matisse museum was closed for its 50th anniversary celebrations, and the arena was a bit worse for wear - hardly anything was left, just the outside wall and a few columns, and we also couldn't go inside. It still looks as though they hold concerts there though as sound equipment and a stage was set up. We did go into the free archaeological museum which was worth a brief look, mainly for the remains of the Roman baths out the back.

There were also some really nice gardens overlooking the city, and after strolling around there and getting some photos we headed back to town. We went a route that from our map looked a scenic pathway along the river, but in reality was a fairly dry canal through an industrial area. The highlights were watching some ducks hitching a ride down the fast-flowing currents, and seeing the number of old 1980s Peugeot 205s (Simon's first car, he has a soft spot for them!) still in operation.

We made it back to the old town and up another park on a hill, this one with a view to the harbour from one side, and over the old town and the long promenade of Nice beach to the other - beautiful. After all that walking we refreshed ourselves with some more gelato, then a beer and some people watching on one of the squares. For dinner we sampled more farcis and another traditional Nicoise snack - socca, a chickpea-flour pancake. It was okay but could have used some sauce with it to liven it up.


A stroll along the beach promenade as the sun set finished the evening off nicely.

 Overall I quite enjoyed Nice - although there aren't a lot of museums or the usual sights, it had a nice vibe, I liked the old town and there were heaps of little cafes, bar and restaurants to pass the time in. I'm sure if you weren't on such a budget as us you could eat well, and enjoy yourself for a few days quite easily! Simon wasn't such a fan and didn't really feel the buzz, so different strokes I guess!

Gorge du Verdon

It was sad to be leaving the Gite, as it had been a fantastic three-night stop. As I said in a previous entry, the scenery was stunning, the owners so very friendly, a perfect base for our few days en Provence and of course Willie the dog.

Our next destination was to be the Gorge du Verdon, dubbed the Grand Canyon of Europe. The drive was long, but the scenery along the winding mountainside roads with glimpses into the perfectly light blue alpine river running alongside the road more than made up for it. We drove to the nearest 'big' town, Castellane, where we stopped for a picnic before heading out to our camp-site. The site was just out of town in the hilly forest past the town. We had booked ourselves a wooden caravan for the night, so we were basically Glamping. It was a fun little caravan, if perhaps a little small!

Right, it was time for the hike, so we headed to the start point of a 2 hour round trip hike down into the gorge. Stunning, stunning, stunning! The aches of the previous days hike seemed to lighten amidst the beauty of the descent into the gorge. We stood for an age at a vertigo-inducing cliff-side and looked in awe at the sheer rock-faces, fast-flowing dazzling turquoise waters of the Verdon river and ever so narrow walkways along the cliff faces. The Gorge slices its way through 25km of Provence's limestone plateau, reaching heights of 700m and lows of 250m, the deep gorge floor is between 8m and 80m wide meaning virtually every part of the gorge is spectacular. We also walked through a 2km series of pitch-black (torch required) large-puddled (soggy trainer alert!) tunnels which were originally excavated in the late 1800s as part of a rather ambitious plan to harness the power of the rapid flowing waters in a hydro electric plant. Before their time! Sadly, they never finished but the tunnels remain and are now an integral part of the Gorge walk.

We ascended back to the car and in search of sustenance. Such exertion is hungry work! We headed back into Castellane, whose highlight is a chapel perched above the town atop a needle-like rock, and picked up a pizza to eat out at the camping ground. A great evening albeit short as we had a very early start the next morning to return the car in Nice. I think we would have happily stayed another day or so in the region. Plenty more hiking we missed out on, in fact more than two days worth in all. Next time.....

The "Creme de Cassis"

It was decided that for the rest of our French adventure, Clair would only be entering into the passenger door of the car. It was safest for everyone. I joke, obviously. It was a very unfortunate series of events.

Another beautiful day's weather presented itself and rather than go on the hunt for further Roman articles we ventured to the coast for what promised to be a stunning hike around the Calanques National Park; A 20km stretch of brilliant-turquoise Mediterranean coastline featuring a series of high and rocky cliffs, coves and bays in and around Cassis, just south-east of Marseilles. Our journey there however was not without incident again, this time of our own making. In our best efforts to save a couple of Euros, we decided against adding to the ever increasing road toll bill, so opted for the country roads or so we thought! The route ended up taking us through the centre of Marseilles. Wow, it may be the 2013 European Capital of Culture, but it is also my 2013 European Capital of where not to drive through, as it was certainly chaotic and at times every man, woman and child for themselves! Also, when the only signs you are presented with are 'Toutes Directions' (All directions) and 'Autres Directions' (Other directions), you begin to ask some serious questions. Most notably, how do I get out of here!?

Eventually we escaped the horrors of central Marseilles, unscathed, and descended into the quaint cliff-side town of Cassis. There are two contrasting facts about Cassis: first, it has charm in abundance; secondly, it does not have half enough parking for the quantity of visitors it receives. No less than half an hour after we arrived, we finally happened upon a car park out of town. As it turned out this worked out perfectly for us, as it was at the start of the walk we were there for!

We set off around the coves and inlets on our first semi-serious hike of the trip. There were plenty of rise and falls along the way as the path weaved around harbours, down into idyllic coved beaches and up far too steep hills for my knees. We then reached the summit of the third bay before the fitness levels and the time were against us. Not that the virtual sheer descent wasn't enough in itself to put us off going any further, but in the interest of not burning out too soon we headed back the way we came.

Nothing more can really be said about the walk other than both the scenery and weather were beautiful making it another great day out. We are only sorry we don't have any photos to show you! This site describes the walk we did and has some pictures if you are interested.

We drove back to the Gite (paying the toll and avoiding Marseilles this time!) for our last night in Mallemort. Plenty of cheese, meat and beer were consumed!

Orange - not just a fruit

Ever in pursuit of more Roman relics, we set off on a day trip to Orange today.

But before we even got far from the gite, we had to get through our first bit of drama for the day. Let me set the scene - I had agreed with Simon that I would do some of the driving in France and Italy, and given we were in a rural area I thought this would be a good place to start. However there were several little alarm bells that probably should have tipped us off that this wasn't a great plan. Firstly, I haven't driven a vehicle of any kind (does sitting at the front of the DLR pretending to drive it count?) in over 18 months. Secondly, I haven't driven a manual car in about seven years (and yes, the Juke was a manual). And the last and probably most crucial factor - I had never driven on the "wrong" side of the road before. I reversed the car from the car park and drove down the long driveway without taking out any flower pots or local dogs, so although I was feeling nervous we decided I'd take her out on the open road. Things were going okay for a while and I was pottering along with Simon constantly telling me to "move over" as I veered towards the right. Then a car came zooming up behind me and I got a bit panicked, driving even further to the right and riding into the dirt on the side of the road. Again this would have been fine, except the place I swerved into happened to have an exposed metal pipe - instant double tyre blow-out, brilliant!

Ever one to stay calm in a crisis, I resorted to holding my head and repeating "oh my god". Simon, being more the nervous type, got out the emergency contact details and immediately got to calling Hertz. We really need to give credit where due to Hertz at this point - we got through to someone straight away and he said he'd send a tow truck within an hour who would take us and car somewhere we could collect a new car, potentially Avignon, which we were intending to visit anyway. Sounded okay to us. But not more than 40 minutes after the call a super-efficient tow truck driver turned up with a brand-new Insignia - he rolled it off, gave us a new contract and hauled away the Juke in the space of about five minutes. We couldn't be happier with the service and were on the road again. No, I was not driving but Simon was pretty happy he had scored a nice shiny upgraded car, so all's well that ends well!

Anyway, onto Orange. The big draw-card for the city (town? It wasn't that big) is the Roman amphitheatre, the best preserved in Europe and one of the most impressive in the world. We headed straight there for a look. I have to say, I was completely blown away - I knew it was going to be big, but the scale of it was unbelievable - the back of the theatre is about the size of a five-storey building. so actors on the stage must have looked tiny when compared to their backdrop. It even has most of the statue of Emperor Augustus still there - he stood right in the middle of the whole thing, all part of the cult of the Emperor thing. It is mostly the underlying rock on show now, but it is so well-preserved it was easy to imagine the beautiful coloured marble façade it would have sported nearly 2,000 years ago, with dozens of columns, and alcoves filled with statues. The semi-circular seating arrangement was no less impressive, reaching up nearly as high as the stage - it seated thousands of people. Seating was arranged according to social status - the city's officials, nobles and visiting dignitaries sat on temporary, plush seating at the front. Merchants and other middle-class sat in the next rows, and so on until you got to the slaves, prostitutes and city layabouts who were at the back. Like gladiatorial contests, the theatre entertainment was free for the people, and there were up to 100 days off to enjoy the shows per year. There was all kinds of theatre - improvisation, comedies and dramas so something for everyone really.

While we were there we got to sample the great acoustics of the theatre first hand - during summer they host concerts there (amazing to think a lot of these Roman sites are still used for the their original purpose centuries later) and this day, the Straits (a band including a couple of former Dire Straits members) were playing, so they were doing their sound check while we walked around. I wonder what the Romans would have made of Sultans of Swing? I think they would have liked it.

Once we'd done our Roman duty for the day we wandered around the old city for a bit. We bought some of the local sweets - callisons - to have later. They are small diamond-shaped marzipan sweets with pastel-coloured icing on top, pretty tasty. Given the dramas of the day we decided against heading to Avignon and drove back to the gite to enjoy a few well-earned drinks and watch the sun set over the mountains in the distance - very enjoyable.

Arles not be back!

The time had come to leave what had been a wonderful couple of days in Nimes and surrounds. A beautiful area with ample Roman artefacts to amuse all. Our next stop was not too far down the road, We were to base ourselves in a Gite (cottage) in a town called Mallemort. Nothing of any note there itself other than its proximity to a geographical triangle of towns of interest, notably Arles, Orange and Aix-en-Provence.

Our first stop on the way from Nimes was to be Arles. Former home to a certain Vincent van Gogh, he spent a number of years there and it proved to be the inspiration and subject for a number of his paintings. There was a self-guided walk which you could follow to take in the original scenes for his paintings. Now, this was sadly not quite as exciting as it sounds. I hear some of you say, 'no surprise, you're no art lover', but even Clair (the 'arty' one of us) said it was difficult to get excited about standing in places which no longer looked anything like the paintings. To make things even less interesting there was not a single piece of Van Gogh's art in Arles at all. Arles was also the subject of Van Gogh's only ever painting (The Red Vines, 1888) he sold in his lifetime. Again, not to be found in Arles either. Curious! 

Arles was also a Roman cultural and religious centre full to the brim with your typical Roman sites. It had it all and not in too bad condition in spite of those medieval folks attempting to pillage and appropriate the structures. There was the Amphitheatre, and whilst impressive, did not live up to the previous impeccably preserved example we saw in Nimes. Then there was the Theatre, which had been considerably restored but was nonetheless grand. Also present in the small town of Arles were a Cryptoporticus, therefore also a Forum (I'll get to this), and the Roman Baths.

At this point, it would be prudent to inform you that we have no photos for the next 2 weeks worth of sites and experiences courtesy of some low-life scumbag in Florence, who stole not just mine, but also Clair's camera. To say we weren't impressed is somewhat of an understatement but it is what it is! We also learnt a valuable lesson in backing up photos. I.e. more often! Expect stock photos of some of the places mentioned!

So, we spent the morning strolling around these wonderful sites, which I feel if we had only visited Arles would have been far more impressive than I felt they were at the time. It got to lunchtime and 'Roman fatigue' was setting in. We sat ourselves for a lunch in the shadow of the Amphitheatre and tucked into a delicious aubergine and goats cheese salad for Clair and a rather average and watery steak hache for me.

After lunch we endeavoured to finish what we'd started with the Roman sites and headed for the Baths. What we had already forgotten is that we were in France. Everything was shut and wouldn't open again for another hour. We contemplated waiting for the Baths to re-open, but thought better of it, citing the Roman Baths in Bath as our reason/justification for not wanting to see any more. We strolled to the Cryptoporticus, which fortunately was just opening. I was quite looking forward to this. A set of sub-subterranean caves/vaults built by the Romans as foundations used to support the 'portico' (the arched porch at the edge of a Forum). It sadly didn't live up to expectation, mostly due to lack of any signage or description of what we were looking at. Only subsequent research told us what it was we walked through.

We left, having had our Roman fill for the day and drove onto our Gite. As the title of this entry suggests we will not be rushing back to Arles. 

Little was known about or expected from the Gite as we had booked it quite last minute. But as we drove through the countryside, never could we have imagined the absolutely stunningly presented Gite in glorious Provençal countryside (in case you find yourself in the area check it out: Mas de l'Ancienne Magnanerie)

We stopped along the way at a supermarket for all our self-catering needs for the next 3 nights. We settled in and enjoyed the first night on our lovely terrasse with a smorgasbord style feast and free-flowing beer. We also met the rather over-friendly local dog named 'Willie'. He had obviously smelt the Toulouse sausages we had fried up and decided he wanted in on it so sat himself quite comfortably on our patio. Although he was sat very nicely, he was also rather mangy looking so we chose to ignore him. However, his neat trick was scooting himself along the ground to edge closer to the table in the desperate hope that we would cave. Sadly not this time Willie! But, after we had finished dinner and were sat around the American family staying in the other Gite came across, saw that the dog was there and decided they had leftovers. Willie was beside himself with joy. What they hadn't realised is that they fed him on our patio. He lingered within sniffing distance for the rest of our stay!