Southern France

Wed. night after arriving in Cannes, we took the bus to Nice for the evening to walk on the beach and to head to a local inner city restaurant for a 4-course meal. We put our hands into the Mediterranean Sea and then walked along the streets of Nice. It's a very posh place but very much smaller than we had imagined. Thursday - Who told it to rain? Rain? That wasn't rain, that was the heavens opening up and giving us a bath. G and I went for a walk down the main street of Cannes - you know, the big one where all the stars going walking up the red carpet during the Cannes Film Festival. Well, don't get all excited before you know that it's a really small town, the beach area is quite small with mostly only hotel ownership and the hotels and shops along the beach could never deal with the likes of us "NORMAL" folk. As if telling us to get the heck off their rich property, it poured so hard that we both had soaked boots. We made if back to our hotel room, finally, and slept for 2 hours just to make up for the weather. Then, I held the room's hairdryer to the inside of our boots, especially mine, as that is the only footwear that I have with me. G wore his sandals today. The rest of the day we played cards, watched tv, wrote postcards, and just hung out with the rain puddling in around our wet clothes that were hanging out of our hotel room window. The rest of those who chose it, had gone on an extra excursion to a mountain town and then to Monaco. We didn't want to spend the money because we don't feel the pressure to see as much as the others cause we are here for so much longer.
Friday morning we took off for Lyon - aaahhh, but here's the clincher - who put the French Alps right in my way from Cannes to Lyon. Who said it was important to go the exact route that Napoleon took on his way to Paris. Was he nuts? Just cause he was afraid to run into any big places with a lot of people. Well, let me tell you that there wasn't a lot of people, there wasn't a lot of anything in the French Alps. Just mountains - oh yeah, and CLIFFS. Okay, first before we headed up, we visited a unique perfume factory and learned how things are made in the smelly part of France. We visited the town of Grasse which has one of only three perfume schools in France.
Then,,,,,,then.... we headed up - straight up. So up, as a matter of fact, that we ran right into a pile of snow and a left over glacier. We had wet roads for only a small portion of our drive and I kept wishing that loads of traffic would help slow our bus down but the driver, who was very good, seemed to think that he needed to drive beyond my limits. Let me tell you that I wasn't the only one who had had enough.
Tomorrow we head for Paris again. In the evening G and I are going to the Cabaret show and then will spend all day Sunday taking it easy walking around the city. We head for Lahr on the Monday train.
Toodles to all,
Aurevoir J and G