For my last weekend on the French Riviera I made a visit to an inland hill-town and then coastal Antibes. Thirty minutes by bus from Nice is the village of Vence. Not unlike the hill-towns of Provence, Vence is old and small. It’s cathedral dates from the 4th century and is mostly swallowed up by [...]
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With my weekdays kept busy by French class, my touring slowed down quite a bit. On Sunday, I took a quick trip up the coast towards Monaco. I had no particularly significant sights in mind, I just wanted to take in some of the beauty of La Côte d’Azur. I began my journey by riding [...]
The next day I went by the Alliance Francaise because I was interested in taking a French class. My hope was that I could find something that met an hour or two per day either every day for a week, or every other day for two weeks. What I found was a class that met [...]
Departing Aix en Provence I left behind the first part of my trip; a tour of Provence. Next up was two weeks in Nice. I had an apartment booked in the city center not far from the train station. Given that the bedroom, living room & kitchen were all separate rooms, it was actually something [...]
My next stop was Aix en Provence, one of the larger cities of Provence.Aix isn’t exactly over-burdened with sights. And the biggest reason I visited was that it was Easter weekend and, after my Christmas 2005 experience in Ireland (where even most of the hotels were closed), I wanted to be in a larger city [...]
After returning the car in Avignon and dropping my bag by my new hotel, I hopped a bus out to Pont du Gard, another ancient Roman sight; in this case a bridge transporting an aqueduct over the Gardon river. I had hoped to visit here on my first day, along with Nîmes since they are [...]
The next day, my last full day with the car, began much better; all windows intact.I began by driving to nearby Orange, which is home to several Roman ruins including a relatively unique theater. Unlike most other ancient theaters, Orange’s theater has retained the original wall behind it’s stage. So it has a much different [...]
I woke up early for a busy day of driving around to visit a number of little hill towns. Unfortunately, as I closed the trunk after stowing my bag I heard a tinklingly crash. My hopes that the disturbing noise had been merely coincidental to me closing the trunk were dashed when I observed the [...]
Breaking with my traditional touring practices, I rented a car to get out into the country side more. Provence is dotted with medieval villages and castles, and a car is the only effective manner of visiting many of them. So, Monday morning I departed Arles via automobile, rather than train.My first stop was just outside [...]
Sunday was laundry day, then some exploring around my “home-base” of Arles.Did I mention how hard it is to pronounce Arles and be understood? Remember my marathon journey to get here? My last connection was from the empty & mostly dark TGV train-station (out in the middle of nowhere, rather than in town) to a [...]
My next day’s touring took me to nearby Avignon. Arles, Nîmes & Avignon are all about 20 minutes from each other by train. So I decided to save touring my home base of Arles for Sunday, when the train service is less frequent.Avignon is a fairly large medieval city still surrounded entirely by it’s old [...]
After my late-night arrival, I got up early the next morning and hopped a train from Arles to Nîmes.Nîmes was an ancient Roman city of some importance. It’s two major sights (an arena and a temple) are both notable for being among the (if not the) best preserved examples of their respective types of Roman [...]
What is the difference between Paris, France and Frankfurt, Germany? Well, let’s face it. There are many. But at the moment the one I’m most interested in is that one is the city I was supposed to fly into and the other is the city that I actually flew into. My flight out of St. [...]
