Intro Part II (Liguria & Lake Como) Part III (Villages & Friends) "From Napoleon to the Riviera II" Saturday 18 September. We got up at 7 a.m. and finished packing so the bags could be loaded on the bus. After breakfast, the group assembled at 9:00 for a ride along the Route Napoleon, the route Napoleon took in March 1815 when he escaped from his exile in Elba and marched on Paris. We drove along the coast past Nice and on to Antibes. Antibes was founded by the Greeks in the 5th Century B.C., and it is much older than either Nice or Cannes. Unlike them, it was later made into a fortified city, protected by ramparts. We spent some time in the Marche Provencal, a covered market featuring flowers and foods. From the nearby Place Massena we could look down on the Chateau Grimaldi, now the Picasso Museum. Picasso had his studio in the chateau in 1946. The old ramparts were just below the chateau.
From Antibes, the bus headed up into the Maritime Alps. Our first stop on the Route Napoleon was Grasse, "the perfume capital of the world" and a popular tourist destination for centuries. Queen Victoria, for example, spent several winters there. Notwithstanding its mountain location, Grasse is a too large (pop. 42,000) to be considered one of the "perched villages." But the picturesque "old town" is full of tiny streets that wind between 17th and 18th century buildings, up and down steps, and through arched tunnels.
We also visited the medieval Cathedral of Notre Dame du Puy with its huge 18th century clock tower. The 12th Century Tour de Guet (watch tower) is on the same square. We had a large lunch (hors d'oeuvres, mushroom-topped pastries, baked fish, ice cream/fruit) at La Richelieu restaurant in Grasse. Our bus next took us to Gourdon, an ancient village perched on the edge of a rocky spur above the Loup river. It's most prominent feature is a chateau, originally a Saracen fortress (9th-12th Centuries), but completely rebuilt in 1610. The village is now filled with shops and boutiques for tourists.
From Gourdon the bus took us to the harbor in Cannes where the Star Clipper was waiting. We would see more of the Cote d'Azur on the last full day of our week on the ship (24 September). Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 |
