Today we headed to Nice, or at least we thought we did. Right from the start we were traveling through very picturesque, mountainous countryside, driving through the mists of low cloud. Trees all around, and then the trees thinned out only to be replaced with rock, and gorges. The rock faces are amazing, rising up high above us, often times forming ridges like steep vertical spines of a reptile stretching from the peaks above, to hundreds of meters below on the floor of the gorge. There are rock faces that have obviously been pushed and pulled by nature, giving the strata lines the most interesting shapes, curves and twists. Many of these high, seemingly inaccessible ridges and peaks there are fortifications from days of old, which makes you wonder who was living here and from whom were they protecting themselves. This would be the most amazing area for any geology student, such a vast collection of geographical examples right before your eyes.
We passed through numerous small villages that seemed to be ghost towns with no sign of life at all, the exception was one very elderly woman sitting patiently in her car at the gas station. It made us wonder if she was waiting to be served, and exactly how long she had been waiting.
We zig-zagged our way up one incline through a continuous series of hairpin bends, only to wind our way back down and then up the next one, and so the trip progressed. From one of the peaks we looked down into the valley where there was a small town with a huge rock overshadowing it. To say it is a ‘rock’ is an understatement. It is a huge block of stone with vertical sides rising several hundred meters above the residents. On the apex of the rock is a small stone church, with not much room to spare. When down in the village the first question is, how do you get up there? and the second is why is it there? But it looks very cool, especially against the perfectly blue sky that we are finding the further south we go. It is hard to image that over the last few days we have been dealing with rain, showers and low cloud.
Finally from one of the peaks we saw the sea, and realized that we hadn’t seen the sea since we had left Denmark all those weeks ago, and we have missed it. But this sea looks a little warmer, after all we are now heading into the French Riviera and the sun drenched coastline of the Cote d’Azur.
The closer we got to Nice the more crowded the roads became and the driving behaviour started to show a strong Italian influence. It was a little crazy, but not by Naples standards, they still hold the record in our books.
It was about now that we realized that the hotel that we had booked in Nice, wasn’t in Nice at all, but in Villeneuve-Loubet 14kms away, and it isn’t so much a hotel as a hostel. We are just a stones throw away from the beach, that is providing you have a strong arm and can throw a stone over the railway track.
After spending seven and a half hours getting here, we didn’t get to see much of this place tonight, but we did end the day on an interesting note. We went to the local Italian joint for a pizza (cheap and cheerful) and we were not only served by a very large guy of seemingly African origins, but when he found out we were from NZ he treated us to his version of the haka a’la the All Blacks. How’s that for a cultural mix. We proceeded on to have an interesting conversation somehow bridging the language divide as best we could. The main emphasis of his conversation was that all they have here is “sun, sun, sun, all year.”
Regarding the language divide, we still haven’t got used to the most common response to the question “Parlez-vous anglais?” The immediate response is a very definite “Non!” But despite this they still understand exactly what you are saying, especially if it is regarding the price of something. Perhaps that is where they get their reputation from, it is the emphatic response. But so far we have had no real problems conversing either verbally or non verbally.
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