Day 13 - Antibes, Monaco, Villefranche

I think I will always have very warm memories of this day. It was honestly lovely. I can't quite put my finger on one thing that made it so great. But it was so wonderful, filled with laughter, good conversation, beauty and lots of unknown.

I wouldn't have guessed it was going to be such a great day by the way it began. Isla awoke us at 2:40 AM, serenading us with crying and screaming, not to be soothed for at least 45 minutes. Graham had not been feeling well and had a piercing headache; I was exhausted by too many nights with little sleep. I'm not sure what the deal was, but I again refused to feed Isla as I didn't want to encourage these awakenings. She would scream every time we laid her down and again if she heard the sheets rustle in our bed (Poor Graham, I almost slapped him at one point when I'd finally gotten her to stop crying just as he decided to flip over in bed. Another crying fit ensued...)

I expected a grumpy day but it's pretty hard to stay grumpy when you are served fresh baguette, croissant (because one without the other certainly would not be enough carbs), butter/jam and coffee in an outdoor courtyard.

We really had no set itinerary and that's what made the day so great. No place to be, no pressure to abide by a schedule. Alas, the clouds were upon us once again, but we didn't let it get to us for long.

We drove to the old town of Antibes and popped into the Picasso Museum for the 1/2 hour before it closed for lunch. Surprisingly, I actually really enjoyed the modern art although I did wonder aloud "Was he okay mentally?" Some of his pieces made me question...the thing that I found most entertaining was to look at the dates of all of Picasso's pieces. There would be a whole bunch of sketches completed on the same day or during a three day stretch. Graham confirmed that he was indeed believed to be bipolar which might explain his rather manic production of pieces.

(Above picture is of the church/buildings outside the museum)

There was a nice patio portion of the museum that displayed all kinds of statues with the Mediterranean as a backdrop.

See the old city wall of Antibes?

There was even a cactus in bloom, which Isla was dead set on touching.

We took a quick walk through the VERY crowded Antibes market. Graham's sore throat the day before had turned into a full blown head cold (or allergies?) and he started feeling quite faint. We managed to buy some sun-dried tomatoes, olive tapenade and a loaf of bread and ate a little picnic in a nearby square.

We browsed in some of the cute shops, my favorite of which was a French toy store. I was really wanting to buy Isla a little French toy as a souvenir but couldn't decide on anything. In retrospect, I so wish I would have purchased one of these wooden butterflies as she was quite enamored by them!

The streets of Antibes

It was still cloudy so rather than go to the beach, we decided to check out some neighboring riviera cities. We were aiming for Villefranche sur Mer but ended up missing the turn or getting on the wrong road or something and so quickly changed our destination to MONACO, which is actually it's own country (did you know?) Now here is where Rick Steves and I disagree. He'd recommended spending an entire day here. When I told Graham this, his response was "Heck no!" We couldn't get out of there fast enough!! Although I'm glad we did a quick drive through (actually we did it twice because the signs sent us in circles), I saw no need to even get out of the car. The place was pack with glitzy buildings, nice cars, huge yachts and people dripping with $$$. Not my kind of place. We did grab one drive-by photo of the famous casino, just for kicks (the front of which was line with black Mercedes).

After numerous attempts, we finally found our way out of there via the Middle Corniche (a road that made it's way along the coast back up to Antibes). We had to laugh because we probably passed at least 10 signs pointing us to "Retour Monaco" (which I'm pretty positive means return to Monaco)...no thanks!

See how it is just crammed with high rises?

As we drove along the coast, the sun began to break through but there was still a light fog/mist, making it hard to capture the beauty in pictures (although we tried!)

We continued on to our original destination: Villefranche sur Mer.

Sigh. This is where Graham had initially hoped to stay and he was so right. If money were no object, we could have and would have stayed here. Buy alas, rooms were going for no less than 150 to 200 Euro/night, well above our tight budget. Needless to say, it was by far our favorite stop along the riviera. It is small, less touristy, sporting the colorful buildings with shuttered windows that we'd fallen in love with on our trip to Italy. We'd packed our swimsuits (I think it was our wishful thinking that made the sun reappear) and so did a quick change and headed off toward the beach.

I was pleased to see that the women on this beach actually seemed to be wearing their swimsuits. But it only took a moment for me to realize I was wrong. I am not joking, there was a woman lying there topless who must have weighed upwards of 300 pounds!!! Wow. I just might have whispered something horribly rude to Graham but I mean really? I guess everything goes here!!

We settled down and I tries my best to ignore the -cough cough- large woman nearby. The beach really was beautiful and the sun was out!! I took a dip while Graham watched Isla. He looked away for only a moment (maybe distracted by the lady, who knows?) and looked back to find the babe eating a handful of small pebbles and sand. Yum! I read some more of our book to Graham while we traded Isla the pebbles for cheerios. It was around this time that we reached for the camera to capture the beach's beauty only to discover the battery was dead so the rest of our lovely day lacks pictures.

We decided upon an early dinner at La Serre (another Rick Steves recommendation), given our rather light lunch. Now mind you, the French don't eat before 7:30 PM so I think our wanting food at 6 PM caught them a little off guard (our first clue being that the restaurant was completely empty except for the chef and waitresses who were enjoying a meal at the back table). They invited us to take a seat and said they'd be with us in 15 minutes.

I'd made it my personal mission to be sure to try the famous dishes of each region we visited and in most instances, I'd been delighted with this endeavor. The riviera is known for it's Salad Nicoise (pronounced nee-swahz, not nick-coys like I'm ashamed to admit I always said...) so I decided that I should try it despite the fact that I didn't like tuna and I was pretty sure I wouldn't like anchovies either. Surprise, surprise, I wasn't a huge fan of the salad. Graham ordered a pizza with 2 kinds of sausage, jambon and mushrooms and he was thankfully in the mood for sharing. French pizza is quite good with much thinner crust than in the US. We drank the house rose which was tres bon. Isla tried my tuna but I was nice enough not to force the anchovies on her (they were unbelievably salty!) When our waitress came to ask if we'd like dessert, I was in the middle of saying no when Graham cut me off and said we'd have their chocolate cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream along with 2 espressos. Oooooh what a treat! We hadn't ordered the prearranged three course meal so adding a dessert and coffee to our dinner felt like a real treat! I wasn't sure what I'd think of the plain espresso but boy was it good!

We made the leisurely stroll along the water back to our car. I needed the little girls room but unfortunately the only one I could find was a lovely stall with a hole in the floor with two wooden platforms where you are (I guess?) supposed to station your feet while you do the deed. How people do it, I have no idea! I won't go into gory details but I was shocked to exit the stall and discover that, to top it all off, it was supposed to be the handicapped toilet. Huh?! If I had a hard time, how on earth...? I felt like I needed to rub Purel all over my sandals (not because of anything I did, mind you) and made a mental note not to let Isla play with them since I had no idea how a room like that could be sanitary.

ANYWAY, we drove home as the sun was setting. Everything seemed to glow in the golden light. We made our way up the coast with a quick drive through Nice where we might have made our first entrance the wrong direction on a one way street. No harm done though! Nothing quickly switching into reverse didn't fix!

Once back at the hotel, Graham watched the World Cup from bed. I made the mistake of looking at the upcoming forecast for the places we would be visiting. Rain rain rain! For a whole week! Everywhere we planned to go! So we started looking at other "nearby" European cities to see if we could adjust our itinerary to find sun: Paris, Milan, Corsica, Geneva, Zurich....apparently the entire continent was expecting nothing but rain for the rest of the week! I went to bed hoping the weatherman was wrong.