Along the Riviera

The sun woke us this morning as it rose over the hills to the east and shone directly into our unit. This is a long thin apartment with bedroom at the front door and living space at the balcony end with the view. After breakfast, we headed for the car park through the heart of this complex, with it's shops and restaurants. At the apex is the pool or rather two heated pools and the hotel itself is beyond the centre to the west. I don't think I've mentioned that our apartment is on a 9 hole golf course. Today's objective was to drive along the coast from Agay, where out resort is, to Antibes. When we lived in Germany, Carole and Claude with their son Paul and us spent an Easter holiday in a campground in Antibes, thus the incentive to return to Antibes. This drive starts with the most picturesque section of the Estelle Massif. This area of the Massif de L'Esterel is dominated with panoramic views featuring the volcanic rocks of porphyry and historically the Roman road Via Aurelia passed through this area. Our 60km route today took us 2 and 1/2 hours. Now, part of that was the windy slow coastal roads but part was also the number of times we felt obligued to stop and take a picture. As we made our way along the slow highway, we finally rolled into one of the premier attractions of the area, Pic du Cap Roux. The Germans thought this was a good area too, during WW2, with its 200 degree view of the coastline, and they built gun emplacements here. From here we passed into the famous film festival town of Cannes. Like Nice, this place has an impressive history with many Brits moving to the area. At Golfe Juan, we opted for a lunch stop and found a nice marina view restaurant where Claude and I had a fine grilled sea bass, while the girls has salads, Carole smoked salmon and Dawn warm goat cheese. Then, we finally made our way to Antibes via the road around Cap d'Antibes and none of us really recognized anything. That's what 36 years will do to you. There's a picturesque fort here but by far the most impresive feature are the multi - and I'm talking multi - million dollar yachts parked here. Most seem to be staffed with young lithe creatures like the one shown above. We took the autoroute back to Cap d'Esterel and finished the day at the apartment with cards and pizza and maybe some wine.

That was unexpected!

Today we set out from Sisteron in bright but very windy skies. We anticipated a 2-3 hour drive to our next destination in St. Raphael on the Mediterranean so since we set out pretty early, we opted for secondary roads for the second part of our trip. This was a picturesque, windy and windy - that was both interpretations of that word - drive. Our first destination was St. Tropez which has been a hot spot for ever for the rich and famous. Due to the wind, the seas around St. Tropez today were nicely churned up and the only decent photo op came from the opposite side of the bay from St. Tropez. It was also at this point of the vista to St. Tropez that we stumbled upon a totally nude beach - Whoops! There were an amazing lack of traveller facilities on this leg of the trip and by the time we reached Frejus, we all needed bathroom breaks while our car finally got a short rest from the challenging roads. Shortly after 1:00, Emily had found our next accommodations in St. Raphael. This was a private residence in a gated community. We snuck into the compound after a car entered only to discover with the help of a resident that this booking had been cancelled last June. Oh Oh! The only thing we could figure is that I treated this cancellation as I do most e-mails form booking.com - advertising - and deleted it. Booking.com when phoned gave us links to some other places in the area at our price point and left us to fend for ourselves. That meant finding a place with wifi, so off we went to McDonalds for lunch. We weren’t impressed by any of the new choices, so we went to the tourism office which just happened to be located right beside the restaurant. Here we were greeted by a really nice and helpful fellow who said he would help us solve our problem. It took a while, since most people don’t like to rent apartments for less than one week, but finally he found what he thought was a good solution - separate flats next to each other overlooking the Med in the village just west of St. Raphael. Claude and Carole are in the apartment with the light on in the pic above and we’re in the one to the right of that one. These places are in a development called Cap d’Esterel and they are part of a large complex including a hotel with heated swimming pool. The cancellation turned out to be a blessing as this place had vastly superior views to the one we had initially booked. Before settling in, Dawn and I went back to St. Rapael to do some grocery shopping at a huge E Leclerc. We later discovered that our new accommodations had a grocery store as part of the complex. We finally sat down for a drink at 7:00 and watched the sun go down and the lights come on to the west of us. Not really a day I’d like to repeat, but like they say, “All’s well that ends well” and this day definitely ended well!

Sisteron

Today we set off at a fairly decent hour and took around four hours to make it to Sisteron. The visibility was excellent and as a result, the vistas of classic alpine villages were amazing. These autoroutes, although not inexpensive, are truly a visual delight. This I say to the nay sayers, who suggest that no scenery is to be had on the autoroutes. The entire route today, was not, however, on the autoroute and we were required to suffer through the very slow national highways, just north of Sisteron. As has been our routine on this trip, we stopped before hitting Sisteron to do some lunch shopping. Then a picnic just north of Sisteron followed. When we booked our hotel in Sisteron, we had no idea what Sisteron was all about, but we had heard that it was worth visiting. So, first of all there is a seriously impressive citadel that dominates the horizon above Sisteron and is visible in all directions approaching the town. These pics represent the various views to be had. The citadel here was built to serve as a protector on the Durance River to any murauding armies heading to Paris from the south. They had an impressive perspective on the route through this valley and did their job until the Allies bombed Sisteron in 1944. Thanks guys! Undoubtably this had become a Nazi stronghold requiring obliteration. Done! The French are very good at adding modern art to embellish ancient monuments - the Louvre comes to mind. At the citadel of Sisteron, a Mexican sculpture added numerous athelic nudes to the landscape. Bizarre and yet appropriate. We walked and climbed the entire Citadel site and found the history and persectives truly amazing. Well, maybe the whole group didn't find it amazing. As well as the constructed beauty of Sisteron, there was the natural grandeur of the erroded rock face on the opposite side of the river from the Citadel. Our travels today were pretty much tourist free - clearly this is not 24/7/12 town. Our Ibis Hotel tonight was not in the heart of town, but as the sun went down and the lights went on at citadel, we had a pretty good view from our hotel window, that looked out first at the entrance to the autoroute north of Sisteron but also to the citadel beyond. Because of it's somewhat obscure location this Ibis served dinner, which although not gourmet, fit the bill for tonight. Tomorrow we hit the autoroute again to head to St. Raphael on the Mediterranean.

Annecy

Do you know the way to Annecy? Yup! Jump on the autoroute and five and one half hours later from Andlau, you're there. This drive has the potential to be a very pretty one, but all through the Jura, which is the region between the Alsace and the Savoie where we were going, the fog was relatively dense. The closer we got to Annecy, however, the skies cleared and the remainder of the day was pristine. One small novelty today was that they had built numerous bridges over the auto route to allow deer to cross the road. So the joke should be, "How did the deer cross the road?" Easy! They built a million euro bridge for him. On the outskirts of Annecy we stopped at a rest stop for lunch. We have found the autoroutes to be easiest place to find a picnic table. Our route today was the fastest way to get from point A to point B but it came at a cost - 42 euros in tolls. Once in Annecy, Emily (our GPS) led us directly to our Ibis Hotel built alongside the scenic river running through Annecy. Arriving early afternoon gave us lots of time for a leisurely stroll through town and around Lac Annecy, with a few photo ops. This is called letting my pictures do the talking. The last time we were in Annecy, there were no views. We had come here with Tony and Jackie to let Tony get his first glimpse of the Alps. Alas, all we got was clouds to the rooftops and pouring rain. So, Tony, this is what we missed. On the recommendation of the hotel, we booked a reservation at Les Chineurs for dinner. We asked them for a a place authentic and not touristy. This place was only one minute from the hotel which was a bonus. At 7:00, we were the first customers and as the place filled we realized that they still eat late in Annecy. We all had different main dishes tonight, Carole the Savoie chicken specialty, Claude scallops, Dawn the special of the day, a slow cooked lamb shoulder and I had a sweetbread cassolet. The portions were healthy but everyone throughly enjoyed their meal. After dinner the girls retired to the hotel, while Claude and I went back to some of today's photo highlights to try for night shots. Our endeavours did not go unrewarded. We're really glad that we were able to get back to Annecy to appreciate its true splendour and hope that the great weather continues for Sisteron tomorrow. By the way, Happy First Day of Autumn! Which is a nice way of saying Summer 2015 is history.