DAY 390 - million dollar boats, million dollar views, a castle & nudity

The drive back over the French Boarder is amazing.  It is one of the best coastal drives you can do in Europe.  The road hugs the coast all the way from Genoa at the heart of the Italian Riviera to just past Nice in the heart of the French Riviera.  We couldn’t believe that the road hasn’t been closed off or re-routed to make way for resorts and houses.  The scenery is amazing and it’s not hard to see why this area is often rated as one of the best views in the world.  As the road is narrow there aren’t many stopping places so unfortunately it was hard to get any good photos.

After crossing the border back into France at Menton, just near Monaco, we virtually re-traced our steps from our last visit here in 2007.  We drove past Monaco, Aze & Nice….who would have thought that 5 years later we would have thrown caution to the wind and be driving wher’dmadaygo’ down Promenade des Anglais in Nice on our 2 year gaunt of Europe?  We didn’t stop in these places as “been there, done that”, but it did bring back some great memories of our 2007 trip.

Antibes is a great fortified town and being on the Riviera has an equally impressive marina.  The annual Antibes Boat Show was on when we were in town and decided to rub shoulders with the rich & famous for an afternoon.  If you have a cool 400million Euro to spend then you can pick yourself up a very nice boat, which comes with a matching helicopter, Ferrari & “James Bond” speed boat.  We couldn't find anything we like that matched where'dmadaygo so decided to not place an order....lol

The drive to Avignon was not the prettiest in our opinion.  TOM-TOM took us via a very windy National Park which reminded us of the S.A. scrub, some might love it, but we didn’t think much of it.  Our reward when arriving in Avignon was a great campsite, right opposite Pont d’Avignon and the Papal Palace – awesome view.  On our journey further south our lunch stop was Arles, this is where Van Gough lived for a few years and produced over 300 paintings and drawings during his time here.

view from our campsite

In true Rose and Paul style we never really know where we are going to spend the night and often do little research, we kinda just hit the road with a rough plan and see how we feel and how far we get.  So we ended up in Agde, which also happens to be a naturist seaside resort (i.e. nudist resort) and hence is nicknamed the "Naked City"…… GULP!   It’s totally acceptable to wear just your birthday suit to lunch, dinner, shopping, getting your hair done, riding a bike – oh can you just imagine???  Where would you put your keys & wallet?  I was a little afraid to get of my bicycle as I didn’t know where to sit!  Thank goodness the weather was coldish so we luckily didn’t see any “francs and beans” or “oranges in footy socks”. 

Cather Country was our next stop for a few days and again we had a great campsite in Carcassonne with a Million Dollar view of the ‘Cité de Carcassonne’ from our pitch.  It’s a “Disneyland Fairy Tale“ type fortified old city with a castle and was used as a strong defense on the French frontier in 1247 against the Kingdom of Aragon (now Spanish) and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The real highlight of our time here was finding a winery called Rose & Paul.  We of cause did the obligatory taste test and purchased as much as we could fit onto the motorbike.   It’s a family run winery and has an interesting history.  Paul (the grandfather) went off to the war and Rose (the grandmother) had to attend to the vineyard all by herself for years.  Paul returned from the war and they eventually increased the size & quality of the vines.  

It’s a great love story and business story here’s there website if you want to know more about their wines.  

Domaine Rose & Paul

DAY 376 - a taste of Italy

You know you’ve crossed the border and arrived in Italy when the first thing you see is a local’s garden full of concrete and marble statues.  And when the supermarkets have whole aisle’s dedicated to Olive Oil and tomatoes.

We have quite literally eaten our way through this part of Italy and enjoyed every mouthful.  When we first arrived Pizza was often been the food for choice for brekky, lunch and dinner…and we have now expanded our diet to include Pasta, fish & gelato!  Ah how we love Italy…..we love it a lot.  

Turin

Turin is in beautiful Northern Provence of Piedmont which is like Tuscany but without the tourists.  Rolling green hills filled with grape vines, hazelnut & olive groves, hill top villages all boasting a castle and/or massive church, wineries galore and beautiful villages with winding cobblestoned streets full of B&B’s and restaurants.  A lot of people bypass this area, but it really is a gem and a gourmet food lover’s dream.

We didn’t release it at the time but Turin & Piedmont is considered the capital of the food of Italy (however I’m not sure every Italian will agree) but it’s bursting with fresh produce, sparkling wine, rare white truffles, chocolate,  the “Bra Sausage” & is where the Slow Food Movement headquarters are located.

The first thing we stumbled across in Turin was the local produce market, so we stocked up on local wine, tomatoes, meat and bread.  The food is so much cheaper than France and better quality and to our delight it was on daily, so we went back twice.  We didn’t really know what to expect but we liked Turin and found it easy to get around.  The locals are really friendly and with an abundant choice of pizza and gelato shops on every street there was not much of a need to cook in the motorhome.  It’s also home of the ‘Shroud of Turin’ but that’s not really our sort of thing, plus only the Pope & the bishop of Turin can view it so we skipped the big line up at the museums and spent most of our time in and around the produce market.  We made sure we left Turin with full pantry cupboards & a bit of wine to wash it all down.

We then headed south and stopped at an awesome little town called Cherasco.  In the lush Langhe wine district.  It’s apparently well known for its chocolate & snails (we didn’t see any or try any).  We intended to only stay a night as a stopover on our way south, but found it really well situated and ended up staying for nearly a week.  It’s a beautiful village around 1000 years old with 7 or 8 castles (and summer houses of past Kings & Queens from all over Europe) and just as many churches, built on a hill overlooking the hills.

From here we did day trips to Alba (factories for Frerro Rocher, Kinder Surprise & Nutella), La Morra & Barolo (home of Nobbiolo grapes and famous for its red’s where you can do wine tasting in their castles’) Monfortme d’Alba (beautiful village sitting on a hill top ridge) Cuneo & Fossano.  All beautiful, all worth seeing and extremely affordable.  Tuscany gets a lot of attention and so it well should, but if you’re after a less crowded Italian experience, Piedmont is perfect.

We then headed south and drove along a route that Napoleon took and past many ‘Jesus boxes’  as call them (concrete shrines depicting scenes from Jesus life and death)  down to the coast and along the Italian Riviera from Savona ending in SanRemo.  

The weather hasn’t been so kind to us so we didn’t get to see much outside the motorhome windows, but with it’s typical cobblestoned winding narrow street, impressive coastal drive and world class marina’s it wouldn’t be hard to spend a summer anywhere along here.

We could only stay in Italy for a few weeks as we are heading back to France and UK & looking forward to returning and working on our waistlines again for a few months in June.