Rain and Eze-le-Village

Today we walked down to the waterfront and around the Citadel in Villefranche.  The Citadel was built in the 1500s by the Duke of Savoy as a defense against the French.  Currently it houses some city offices, a theater and two art galleries.  It's still a very imposing castle.

The Citadel in Villefranche

A wall of the Citadel

A different view of town from the Citadel side

We walked over to the more serious harbor and marina in town. 

Lots more boats!

The weather wasn't very nice.  It was windy and overcast, so we decided to go out for lunch.  We stopped at La Belle Epoque again, and I had moules frites (mussels and fries) again.  Rick tried the octopus salad, which he liked.  I know I swore off café gourmand after last time, but lunch wasn't too filling, so I had to see what they served here. 

Café gourmand, this time consisting of a mini chocolate cake, floating island, ice cream, and fromage blanc with raspberry sauce, and an espresso 

Aren't they cute?  It was so good too, but this is the LAST TIME I'm ordering this.

We picked up some lamb chops at the butcher for dinner and hunkered down to watch the storm coming in.

Before dawn the next morning, Rick saw two big cruise ships anchored in the bay.  At daylight the launches would start bringing visitors to shore for the day.  Tourists!  Yikes!

Two cruise ships anchored in the bay

During the night we had quite a thunderstorm and lots of rain.  About 8:30 the next morning an elderly gentleman knocked at our door.  He spoke no English, but we understood that there had been some water dripping next to his bed in the night.  Imagine him pantomiming sleeping, and then drip, drip, drip.  He was sure it was coming from a leak on our terrace and went out to take a look.  I gave him the phone number of the apartment management company so he could talk to them about it.  He was very nice to us, knowing that we were just visiting.  We also called the management company to let them know about the problem. 

The skies had cleared fairly early, so we decided to visit Eze-le-Village, way up on the hill above the coast.  There's also Eze-Bord-de-Mer, which is right on the water, but that isn't very picturesque.

They say that knowledge is power...oh, and it also saves lots of farting around with the buses too.  Though it's true that many local people don't even own a car, and depend on the bus to go everywhere, I'm sure their lives revolve around the bus schedule.  And, though it's true that there may be 16 buses per day from Point A to Point B, that doesn't equate to a bus going by every 15 minutes.

We walked up to the bus stop and realized that the next bus wouldn't arrive for 45 minutes, so we decided to walk from the old part of town, nearer the water, to the new part of town, up the hill.  This was the route our bus would take and surely we wouldn't have much of a wait at the top.  Our walk took 30 minutes, and when we got to the upper part of town we had to wait an hour for the next bus. We were disappointed!  We could have waited near the original bus stop and enjoyed a coffee at a café!  Oh, well.

We got to Eze-le-Village by the skin of our teeth.  The bus was packed with people.  I was holding on to the ticket machine right next to the driver for dear life.  Rick was standing on the lowest step at the front door.  We were sure the driver had just gotten off probation for reckless driving, and would soon be put back on.  He seemed to love squealing around corners, and there were plenty of them.  I was afraid Rick would be ejected through the doors and over the cliff. 

How many people can you fit on a bus?

The ride up to Eze was almost worth it.  It's a quaint and picturesque village (I'm trying not to use the word "cute" every day!)  The old part of the village is set on a hilltop

A street in Eze-le-Village

A doorway in Eze

At the top of the village is a garden of succulents, cacti, sculpture and castle ruins.  To get a view from the very top of the village, you need to visit the garden.



The Jardins d'Eze combined sculpture and 400 different succulents and cacti

A view of the Mediterranean from Eze

Another view of the Mediterranean from Eze

The bridge our bus drove over to get to the village of Eze

We had a good lunch at a café in the upper village, Restaurant le Nid d'Aigle, and walked down the hill to catch the bus.  OK, so I've admitted that we don't know the schedule, so of course we had a 45-minute to an hour wait for the next bus.  We probably missed the previous bus by just a few minutes.  We decided we'd walk down to Eze-Bord-de-Mer, on the water, and catch the train back home.  It was supposed to be a 45-minute walk.  All downhill.  How hard could it be? 

The views on the way down were incredible.  The walk was on a rocky and uneven trail, but it didn't seem treacherously steep.  It took longer than 45 minutes, but only because we stopped to look at the view so often.  It turned out that we had walked down 1,300 feet.  My knees were very upset by our choice. 

Here's me, still cheerful, at the top of the trail

We caught the train in Eze-Bord-de-Mer and got back to Villefranche in short order.  The cruise ships were gone, and the village was left to us, the locals.