Nice, Quite the French Riviera
We drove 3 hours from our beach house in Saintes Maries de le Mer to the famed city of Nice. This is the real French Riviera in all it's glamour! Sydney, Carley & Avery rode bikes for more than an hour around town, after Stacia figured out how to pay & check them out from the bike stands. The 4 of us strolled along the promenade, found some candy, sat to enjoy the Mediterranean, walked through the large piazza with beautiful architecture & then found a park with various activities going on. Kyra & Cannon put on their chef hats & assembled their own fondant creations ...
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| Cannon & Kyra with their fondant creations |
Hello Italy! Ciao Italia!
We enjoyed the happenin' seafront of Nice more than we thought & we're pretty worn out so we skipped Monaco today, maybe tomorrow after church. As we ascended the coastal hills, it became eerily misty as we passed through tunnels & soon came out to a sunny valley... Italy! We finally made it! It suddenly felt quaint & welcoming.We could have stayed right on the coast somewhere, but we decided to book in a town a few miles up in the hills where an old castle stood above a medieval town. The evidence shows that the castle in Dolceacqua was originally started around 1152 AD & the town grew up around it. Our place, built sometime in the 1400s, consisted of 3 levels, after passing 2 other floors to get there! Cannon counted 52 steps from the ground level to our attic floor where he, Carley & Kyra slept.
Our host, Luisella, & her husband showed us the apartment, which was their house for 18 years & welcomed us with 2 bottle of wine. We'll have to start telling our hosts when we book that we prefer the plain version of grape juice! Luisella told us (she speaks pretty good English) that there were other people who wanted to book this place but she held it for us because she wanted to meet our big family! She and her husband wanted a big family but were only able to have one son.
After we got settled in & the kids claimed their beds, we left for the old city to a restaurant recommended by our host who called ahead for us & made a reservation. We walked out through the maze of tunnels & cobblestone streets down across the old bridge. What a cool place! We later noticed the plaque that shows the picture that Claude Monet painted of this castle & bridge, picture to follow...
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| welcome to Italia! |
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| the back of our lodging in Dolceacqua (Castle in the background) |
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| on our way to dinner crossing the cool bridge (Ponte Vecchio di Dolceacqua) |
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| our fist meal in Italy at L'Osteria Di Caterina in the old city |
Your Sundays are always interesting, especially the other U.S. citizens you find at each one.
ReplyDeleteLoved the Legos & the sunglasses and the treats that save the day.