Andre and Wendy: February 2024

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Eze and VilleFranche-Sur-Mer

Up this morning and it is beautiful out so decide to do Eze, a mountain top town we had heard great things about. Took the bus, which was very busy, I can't imagine how it must be in the summer time!

Eze is a very small town that has lots and lots of tourists visiting. There is the old town at the top of a mountain, and Eze on the water as well. We went to the mountain top, explored the old town and the tiny streets, once we were done with that decided to hike down to Eze on the waterfront. This is about a 2 KM hike down on a pretty steep pathway in sections, lots of steps. We have heard people get a bus to the waterfront town instead of the mountain top and hike up, I can't imagine doing that, but we did see quite a few people hiking up. Once we reached the sea we caught a bus to VilleFranche-Sur-Mer, where Andre and I had spend a day last week for the boats parade with flowers. It was nice to see VilleFranche-Sur-Mer without the thousands of people around for the parade. Had a nice lunch, except for the mistake Joey and Wendy made ordering small fish and chips, well it wasn't a small fish and chips it was literally small fish. Heads and everything. They were good but they definitely could have shared one portion. Andre had Moules & Frites.

Once again we are in a bit of a mess for getting the bus back to Nice. It was parade day in Menton which we didn't even think of so everyone was on the busses before us from Menton returning back to Nice. Busses went by full, so finally decided Uber was our solution to get home, 20 euros instead of 5. It was a lot more comfortable than being packed as sardines on the bus.

Wendy and Joey went for happy hour in town, managed to only get slightly turned around, Andre stayed home to nurse his cold. Quite night tonight.

Wendy thinks step count should be much higher, her knees are very sore after all that down climb today. 22,400 Steps, or 14.25 KM

On the walk to catch the bus

Square Head aka Tête carrée

First view of Eze, Still need to go up

A small market at the base. Locals must have to come down

Fancy hotel but closed during the winter

Entering the village

So many small alleys going up and down

Only 1 church visit today and it was under reno

The start of our 2 km hike down (1000 feet elevation change from here)

Eze-sur-mer

Love this little island with it's little bridge

Villa Marguerite from the gate, can't imaging the rest

VilleFranche-sur-mer without all the tourist from the last time

Wendy found her boat "Spritz"

Speaking of spritz

Lunch

At the citadel. More ups and down. A large place with beautiful gardens and art

Might have to come back and see Brigitte

Happy hour. Joey found a new drink

From Feb 11 to the end of February, we have done 250KMS. An average of 13 kms per day

Tintin & Carnival Parades

Today is carnival parade day! We actually have 2 parades today, will see how that goes.

Start the day by walking through some streets we haven't been on yet back to the Tintin exhibit which is at the cultural center at Nice Port Lympia. Yes we get in today, and it is a free exhibit, always a bonus. The exhibit is in the old prison, it starts of in the chapel area. Joey and I were not brought up with Tintin, Andre loved Tintin as a child, but I it was still an interesting exhibit. Interesting to see how the books were made, and how much the author Herge loved art and tried to incorporate it in his books.

Walked back along the waterfront and through old town to pick up gnocchi for supper tonight from the amazing pasta place we had ravioli from the other day, and we each get a piece of pissaladiere for lunch (it is a carmelized onion and anchovy tart, very yummy)

First parade done, the afternoon parade is a flower parade. It was fun, we had good seats, but very high up in a great section. Great MC that got the crowd involved. The parade took about 1.5 hours, beautiful floats with lots of flowers on them for decorations. After they finish going around the parade route once for everyone to see they return back to the beginning of the route where we were sitting and start passing out flowers from the floats. Hard to believe this is done 5 or 6 times over 2 weeks, so many flowers! We were given mimosas when we first arrived so have those in our apartment now, but missed out on adding other flowers from the tossing.

Supper back at the apartment, gnocchi from the pasta shop with mushroom and Parmesan sauce from the same shop, delicious, like little pillows. I am sure we will be back to this shop once more to try another pasta. An amazing price of 13.67 Euro and there is leftovers for at least one person for tomorrow. No more ordering pasta in a restaurant, we will get it from here. We saw large orders being picked up while we were there, I'm sure they wholesale a lot to restaurants.

After supper a short break and we are back for the evening parade. Lots of spectators without seats, you can buy tickets for standing only, and if you are dressed up the standing tickets are free. The MC was the same as this afternoon, and pretty much the same script, so that wasn't quite as fun, but it was fun to see everything in the dark. The floats were all different than this afternoon, and no flower decorations. It was fun to see both versions.

Again even quiet days here turn into lots of steps, 19,800 today or 12.4 KM

A cute little hotel on our walk to the port