Our journey there was broken up by a night in a hotel in Limoges and the room that is featured on the website is the actual one that we stayed in. Nice hotel, but it's a shame that our favourite local restaurant in Brittany has spoiled our taste buds forever, as no other chef is a patch on Christophe Le Fur at our favourite local restaurant. The chef at the Limoges hotel circulated amongst the diners and informed us that he had trained at Le Gavroche with the Roux brothers, but he was still not up to the standard that we have got used to.
The evening of the following day we arrived at our destination of Villeneuve Loubet, a third floor apartment with views of the sea, Nice to the left of us and Cap D'Antibes to the right. Rather lovely. It was strange being in an apartment with the noise from the lift and neighbours and, even though the bichons liked being able to bark at lots of new noises, it did make us rather fraught.
So passed a week of the usual suspects such as Nice, Monaco, St Tropez and Cannes, but I lost my heart to this beautiful village about 15 minutes away We went there twice, had coffee in the place that used to be the home of Yves Montand, bought some lovely porcelain from a shop which has begun a new buying obsession with me (more about that another time) and St Paul has been classified by me as The Most Charming Place I Have Ever Visited.
It was a bit of a tourist trap though and there were several coach parties of various nationalities. I felt in such a good mood that if I saw one half of a couple taking a photo of their other half, I offered to take a pic of both of them. I pretended to be French whilst doing it, thus doing my bit for French relations with the rest of the world.
We decided to make our return road trip a motorway free zone and opted for a longer route over the French Alps ( Alpes Maritime). My partner had arranged for our tomtom to sound a bugle horn every time we reached a mountain pass and that horn sounded quite a few times on that first return trip day.
Our overnight stay this time was Vichy and I don't think we'll bother going there again. I say overnight but we actually left the hotel around 03.00 with two very sleepy bichons and got back to Brittany about 09.30.
What a beautiful country we have chosen to live in and we had a fantastic time.
3 comments:
Now that really reads like someone who's comfortable with the place they live. The SE corner is the only part I've never visited at all, but then I'm fairly sure it's just a few degrees warmer but otherwise similar to where I come from, so I'm in no rush to get there just yet.
When you say it's similar to where you come from, Uber - do you mean you come from a place whose beauty has been murdered by over-zealous property developers trying to blot out the beautiful ocean view with row upon row of ugly, so-called luxury blocks of flats?
If I lived in Monaco, well I'd just move!
That wasn't quite the precise angle I was thinking of, but it's not a long way off. It's in the same spirit, certainly.
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