When I got back from the DC/Virginia trip I spent a day in the office an then was off to meet Rach at the Nice airport... she had been in Cannes for the previous 11 days - which was the reason why she was unable to make the trip for the wedding.
She had found a hotel in Eze that had caught her eye - and managed to negotiate a decent rate there for the weekend in return for us having a smaller, non sea view room.
Once we had the rental car (a super-subcompact manual Citroen) all sorted out we popped the address into the satnav and off we went (kind of - first we got off the road immediately due to a satnav misread which caused us to go through the same toll twice - a flashback to the Spanish road trip)...
Driving around the towns in this area of France is very fun - you come off of the Provence toll highway and are immediately on tight hairpin turn roads through the hills - which made the sat nav display look like a purple squiggly line... but it got us right to the front door of the hotel - literally. We bombed right past the gate house (and the porter inside) and wedged the tiny red rental right between a Ferrari and Lamborghini (the Bently and Rolls you see below were there the next morning - while our Citroen had been relegated to the post office parking lot down the hill!)
Our budget room turned out to be great - and since the only dinner option was going to be
€300+ each at their high end restaurant - we both decided that we could do without the meal that night and that some snacks would suffice.
Our room had a small balcony - and while we could tell that there would be a good view from all of the lights that we could see - we were both still surprised with this the next morning -- it was just great - and if this is the non sea view small room - I wonder just how dramatic the others are...
the photos just do not do it justice... after that breakfast we decided to walk down to the down and explore a bit - and then ended up at a pizzeria that also had great water views (pretty much I think the whole town of Eze does - even the grocery store) as well as a visiting accordionist:
We then went back to get the keys to our underappreciated vehicle and set off on another hairpin laden drive down to the water and Saint Jean Cap Ferrat. The town (and even the whole Cote d'Azur region) was only half-open - owing to it being firmly in the offseason and well before the holidays - which was actually quite nice not having to dodge ice cream cone tourists and being able to see these towns through 'local's eyes'.
We walked around the town center and marina area for a while - and with it being so quiet we just explored and took photos:
Knowing that our only option at the hotel that evening was going to be the spendy restaurant, we took a look at where people were getting their bread, cheeses, etc and followed suit - thinking that we had a perfectly good balcony to have dinner on.
The goal was to make it back up there for the sunset - which was a challenge given the roads and tiny engine - but we made it in time to catch:
The next day we set off to Cap d'ail, where we had breakfast and tracked down a hostel that I had stayed in some 14 years ago which is situated literally right on the Mediterranean with massive gated homes around it... it is still there (and looks to have been renovated) and is still
a good deal today.(I remember getting off this train years ago with my backpack that had all of my possessions on it trying to figure out where to go- it was a traveler word of mouth destination in those pre cell/internet days - and I passed it on to Kerry who did the same ~5-6 years later...)
We then continued east through Monaco - having lunch in Menton (why do I always get the nasty looks from people when I am not even taking pictures of them?)
- and then on to Italy, basically just to say that we did so - and where we got some Christmas ornaments for our tree (photos to come soon - this is from outside of the stores looking north-west - we were both a bit surprized how different the 'feel' was once we had crossed the border - from resort/beach communities to much more industrial Italy - in just a few miles.
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