Quiet on the South Coast of France

Yesterday was a quiet day for us. We docked at Villefranche, in between Monaco and Cannes to the south while Monte Carlo lie to the north. We decided after three straight days of going from early to late to rest for the next couple of days. Villefrance is a small, quiet, but beautiful town on the edge of the sea and built on the side of the mountains. Our ship docks out in the water and we catch the tender boats into town. There’s not much there besides a few restaurants and shops at least half of which are closed for the season. We headed up to the train station, managed to purchase two train tickets from billet machine in French and boarded the train to Nice, one stop over.

Nice (niece or neese whichever you pronounce it) was nice, pretty big but nice. We got off the train and headed towards the port, or so we thought. It was several blocks down through the middle of town and we were the only tourists we saw. I like that. It doesn’t make me look like a local though as we stood out like sore thumbs everywhere we went. We strolled by a local park where some retired men were playing some kind of game with large metal balls. They threw a red ball aways away from them and then attempted to throw one of their three bigger ones closet to the read one. After their first attempt to see who got the closest, the rest were an attempt to knock the close one away. It was fun to watch.

We did go the right way, made it to the port and sat in an open air café for a morning beverage. The port was full of boats of all kinds, from small colorful fishing boats which we hoped to see to multimillion dollar yachts and everything in between. Mornings are slow to get started in Europe. Nothing seems to get going till 10 or later, then most places shut down from 12-2 for a rest I guess, then things open up again.

After a long leisurely time sitting at the port café and being pretty much ignored by the waiter and everyone else at the café we headed back towards the train station. We happened on a local bakery which we found first by the smell of baking bread. What a treat it was to go inside and see all the French pastries and bread, just like you imagine it would be and at local prices. We got what looked something like an éclair, shaped more like a small dingy, filled in the middle with dark chocolate, chocolate chips, and doused with powdered sugar all for 1 euro, what a bargain. We quickly ate that one and decided to get another one to go, plus something that looked like fried pie dough, also covered in powdered sugar. Both were divine to say the least. We would have loved to sit there for hours and tried one of everything, not to mention take home those torpedo shaped loaves of French bread. But it’s time to head back on the train to Villefrance, make our way back to the ship for our own siesta before dinner. There’s nothing quite like quiet, restful days…that’s today…and tomorrow before heading home.

De & ke