France (the south side)

Our next stop was the French Riviera or Cote d’ Azur in the south of France. We had a pretty rough 10 hour overnight bus trip from Barcelona to Nice, with the driver taking corners very fast and turning the lights on every time we stopped. He even put some upbeat Spanish music on at 6am, probably to keep himself from nodding off. But hey, at least we made it safely and on time! We soon found out that France was quite a bit more expensive than Spain when we brought some food and a train ticket - just something we have to live with while traveling.

Nice is the largest city in the area and we checked out parts of the city while we waited for friends (Matt & Hannah) to arrive in the afternoon. We were based in Mandelieu which was a bit out of the way, but for a reasonable price we had a nice modern apartment and swimming pool to use. We decided to check out the local sights before hiring a car for two days to explore further afield, so headed to Cannes just along the coast. It was pretty obvious from the start that this was a place for wealthy people, judging from the nice cars, resorts lining the beach and multimillion dollar boats in the water. Most of the beach was for resort use only but we managed to find a small area at the end of the beach free for the public.

Locals playing cards at Cannes beach

 After picking up our hire car (and Matt having an interesting drive home on the right side of the road) we headed inland to St Paul du Vence. This town has a lot of character, being perched up on a hill & surrounded by vineyards. It was built back in medieval times and we had fun exploring the town by walking along the narrow paths. We decided to try and get home by avoiding the toll roads, which proved to be the wrong option. We ended up heading along the coast and having to go through Antibes, Cannes and Mandelieu which all had very heavy traffic. I think it took us 2 hours instead of half an hour on the toll road.

Town out in the country - St Paul du Vence

We decided to check out Monaco the next day with the car, and a small coastal village called Eze on the way home. Monaco was surprisingly easy to get to along the main highway, and although it is technically in a different country, we didn’t have to stop at the border. Monaco was something else! After driving past about 3-4 Ferraris on the way in, we went up to the palace and took advantage of the views. We enjoyed checking out all the luxury boats sitting in the harbour and seeing the track for the Monaco Grand Prix (which had been on the previous weekend). It felt like we were a bit out of our league here but was still an experience to see how the rich and famous live. We only spent a couple of hours here as they charge by the 20mins for parking and it wasn't cheap!

View down to Monaco city

My favourite part of France was definitely the village of Eze! This cool little town is perched up on a small mountain right on the coast. It was a steep walk  to get up to the top but the views were stunning to say the least and well worth the €6 to get up to the viewpoint. Not a bad spot to have lunch in amongst the cactus gardens at the top! The town itself has some interesting history – dating back to 2000BC when it was first populated. Some of the original buildings are still standing today due to the way they have been built. The streets were purposely designed to be narrow and roofs are made of terracotta to help the stonework withstand the harsh summer heat.

Old town of Eze up on the hill

Narrow paths & terracotta roofing in the town of Eze