Skip to main content

#102 - And the Winner Today is.....

BIOT... no, ANTIBES......mais non, MOUGINS.  
It’s an impossible choice, to say the least, and all are wonderful in incredibly different ways. It seems impossible that three towns or villages within 30 minutes of Valbonne could all be so charming in such different ways.  

 We started the day in Biot, a very small, very old, not very touristy spot only 15 minutes away. We have already gotten the hang of driving to these small villages, learning to park in the free lots at the edge of town and walk in, making it easy to avoid finding ourselves on streets too narrow to actually negotiate and reducing Steve’s frustration quotient by 1000%. Biot (pronounced Bee-oht) doesn’t appear in the Rick Steve’s guide, and no one had ever mentioned it to me. It is an artsy town with a wonderful history of pottery dating back centuries and glass blowing currently still going strong. It was the perfect stop for our morning coffee, a sunny square and an hour walk through town, up and down steep alleys, peering into peoples lives and homes.  A stop at one of the four glass blowing factories found us watching tourists trying their hand at glassblowing -  for 48 Euros they could work with a pro and blow the glass, picking it up the next day to take home. Had I room in my luggage I would have tried too, and brought home their famous glass of bubbles.

Instead I settled for a coffee cup, the perfect size for my morning Nespresso.    

 Just up the road was the Fernand Leger Museum. Unluckily they were hanging their new show which opens tomorrow; luckily part of the permanent collection was still viewable, and the entry gratis due to the small number of works to be seen. 




Leger lived in the area and bought the property to build a house (he never did this) and fulfill his dream of art for the public. Today, instead, his mosaics appear on the exterior, giant for all to see. Its quite beautiful, colorful and impressive.   


Next up - Antibes, another quick drive, a parking lot on the edge of the port and a walk to Old Town past about 1600 pleasure boats. Some were mega yachts, crazy big, fully staffed and used maybe four days a year by wealthy owners. Others looked more like our FIRST boat, Cheeseburger, which for those of you who remember looked like it would sink every time we went out.  Antibes has a beachy vibe, sandy beaches, a parapet wall around the old city and feels more airy, more small city like. 
We enjoyed a lovely lunch of sardines and a crab and avocado salad. 

I asked Steve to order me a SINGLE glass of white but of course, after I blinked, there appeared a bottle of rose. 
Now I must ward off any thoughts that we are a pair of drunkards tooling around Provence. I am sure that the alcohol content is much lower than back home because even when having half a bottle, there is no buzz at all.....its almost a waste except its delicious.    Shopping in all these towns is fun, whether its a souvenir coffee mug or a great smelly cheese, a tin of olive oil or an interesting chutney for cheese. Even a chapeau was bought for what promises to be some warmer weather in Aix on Sunday.     

Our last stop, though out feet were giving out, was Mougins (moo-sjohn). Within one minute of arriving we could tell this small hilltop village with an amazing view was tres chic. 


You could easily see the Kennedys here, or perhaps just the blue bloods from the Main Line - easy-going blonde bobs on the women and some animal print faded red khakis on the men. The town was quiet and the galleries were starting to close but it was a lovely walk (we hit our five mile mark for the day here) with a sunny main plaza for an aperol spritz (again, no actual alcohol in these, just bright orange and refreshing).    So the day overall was a total success. Steve has gotten almost too comfortable driving, zipping around and tooting his horn and I have done well planning itineraries that aren’t too taxing or too many miles. We have more easily, or at least more quickly, fallen into a relaxed pattern of schmieing, eating, and enjoying our life under the sunny blue skies of the Cote d’ Azur.                                          

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

August 3. West, East or Central??? Where the Hell is Vienna?

 West, East or Central??? Where the Hell is Vienna? Aside from the fact that it is approximately three hours and fifteen minutes from Cesky Krumlov, Vienna, it turns out, is technically in Western Europe, even though Austria makes its appearance in Rick Steve's Eastern European book and people who live in Czech, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia are Central European.  In fact, it is almost offensive to call them or their country Eastern European, as that is clearly only for the old Soviet bloc.  We made a few stops along the way, taking the scenic way past a magnificent very long lake, and over beautiful mountains with rolling fields of crop and grain, not quite the Sound of Music Austria, but not too far off. Crossing from Czech to Austria in the EU of today entailed no more than driving past the old vacant border patrol building.  We checked into our hotel, just a couple blocks outside the busy Ringstrasse and next to the Rathaus, and sank into our air conditioned room,...
Post a Comment
Read more

#118 - It’s Sunny and HOT in Paree

Dinner last night was just a ten minute walk, following the Marci school of city touring which says : “run around all day, anywhere you want, take public transit everywhere, but once you are back at your hotel, be it 6 or 7 or even 8pm, just walk close by for dinner”. I always pick the neighborhood to stay in first and then I pick my hotel. I don’t mind running all day, but once the day is done I want to be near lots of good places to eat dinner.  Astier, a bistro in the 11th, qualified on the location and the Good Eats. Again, the food sounded simple, like my beet gaspacho with crunchy veggies. The deep purple was rich looking and the flavors layered and fresh.  Steve started with the pickled herring and I think he was quite surprised when the waiter delivered and LEFT on the table a  quite large glazed terracotta container of herring, a serving spoon and fork, a bowl of small potatoes and a basket of bread.  Then he left. Clearly this was an all-you-can-...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Beer Primer, Brewery to Baths

A Beer Primer, Brewery to Baths In Czech, beer is king. It is the breakfast of champions, the lunchtime  liquid, the afternoon aperitif, the dinner drink and evening bar crawl beverage. There is dark and light and everything in between. You can order normal, at 10% alcohol, or 11 or 12 for a faster buzz. It can be smooth or bitter, yellow, brown or red. It goes with dumplings, and pork knee, and pickled sausages and apple strudel. It fills you up and always makes you need the WC. And so, although we are not beer aficionados, and I am not even a beer fan, we picked Plzen, CZ as the first stop on our 15 day road trip through Eastern Europe (or Central Europe to those who live there according to a Czech acquaintance). It was close to Prague so even if we got lost, the day would not be lost.  The morning's challenges would be getting to the rental car place in town by metro, finding our way back to the apartment in our Skoda, the largest produced Czech car,  and navigating ou...
Post a Comment
Read more