Au revoir vieille ville

Yesterday, being our final full day in town, brought glorious weather (the sun was downright intense and hot, but the actual temperature was beautiful at 26C).

We decided to go for a stroll along the heights of the Boulevard du Garavan (where today’s videos are shot from), and through the narrow, winding, “pedestrian only” streets of the old village.

I realized that all of my blogs have failed to show you all what the actual “core” of the village is like. It is made up of these criss-crossing, narrow, winding and exceptionally steep streets. They’d kill you, Diane! Because of the mountain that the village clings to, you are generally walking uphill or downhill almost all the time. The promenade that you see in my photos is actually level land that has been built on fill brought in and claimed from the sea. Most of the town is like this. Locals who live in the area & own cars have to park in collective parking lots and then walk to their houses. This includes things like your groceries and moving!

I don’t know if you’d find it a nuisance or if the charm of it all outweighs that.

I am actually writing this on Wednesday, May 19^th, which is our last day in the Riviera. We leave very early tomorrow morning for our flight: Nice to Paris, Paris to Toronto (volcano permitting). We are currently in our Menton apartment, and are packed. We are taking the train to Nice this afternoon and staying the evening in an airport hotel. I don’t know how much of Nice we’ll actually do, but if there’s something interesting going on I’ll post something again tonight from the hotel.

I’m sorry to report that today is solidly overcast in Menton. It’s settled down a bit now, but this morning we had some rain (!) and amazing wind and gusts that were so strong (blowing down from the mountain) that it toppled the patio furniture!

We’ll be in transit all day tomorrow, so no post then (we’ll be getting up to start our trip home when it’s only 11pm tonight, May 19^th, in Elora!). We are looking forward to seeing our family and friends again and of course our precious little Clousseau. We’ve missed that little boy something terrible.

If you ever have a chance to see the movie “Paris je t’aime” in the very last scene there’s a woman standing in a park. She’s about to leave the city after finally visiting it, which was her life-long dream. She says that she is “… at once, happy but sad.”

I know how she feels.

Au revoir, Riviera. Bonjour Elora!