Day 6 in Southern France: Skipping through the Countryside

It was disappointing that we couldn't stop in Antibes, our first "destination." We were let out of the van to view the massive harbor, which contained some of the most elaborate and expensive yachts I've ever seen. That was nice, but the old part of the city looked more intriguing, and it was a shame to be on such a short time schedule.

Our trip to Cannes told a similar story, as we only had a half-hour to walk around the grounds of the convention center where the famous film festival is held. I actually ended up waiting 20 of those 30 minutes for a sugar and butter crepe — which was well worth it — while Lindsey strolled through the world-class shopping district.

She did get a great shot of the beach, which I mentioned the other day is one of the very few public sand beaches on the French Riviera. Like making snow on Stone Mountain where it is not so common, Cannes puts a giant vacuum into the sea in order to replenish the sand when it washes away.


As we left Cannes, we passed through some parts of the city that looked much more appealing to visit, showing that it's much more than the Myrtle Beach of the Riviera. We left the coast and headed up into the piedmont town of Grasse, where we visited the Fragonard factory, which produces some ridiculous percentage of the world's perfume. Here's a picture of their hand-made soaps on the day they were made:


After spending about an hour on the tour, we headed further up into the mountains to the medieval town of Gourdon. Here we stopped for a quick lunch and some gorgeous views, as is shown below.


Driving down through the valley of the river Loup, we wound around a spectacular gorge carved out by the stream. Looking back up the sides at waterfalls spilling from the mountains was quite a sight as well. Unfortunately, though, there's not much room to stop for photos on the side of the thin, curvy roads.

However, there was time to stop and take a snapshot of our next stop, Tourrettes-sur-Loup, from the road. It's so small it doesn't have a Wikipedia page, unless you can read French, which I cannot very well.


There, we spent another short stop, which was enough time to walk around the "city centre," which contained a church, a parking lot and a couple cafés. The streets were beautiful, though, looking something like this:


From there we drove back in toward the coast, making our last stop in a vibrant artist community called St. Paul de Vence (pictured below). There some great links on the Wikipedia page describing some of its intricacies. Though not very large itself, the town had probably 50 galleries and various shops and restaurants, as well as a very famous modern art museum, the Maeght Foundation. Unfortunately, we did not have time to stop there ourselves, so here's someone else's photo gallery I found online.



Here's a picture that I just happen to really like, of a house that had both a small vineyard and orange trees just below the town center in St. Paul.



It was a long day, and the scenery was everything we hoped it would be, but in the end wished we had taken the tour earlier in the week so that we could have revisited some of these too-brief stops. Coming back to Nice, we stopped for some more excellent pizza, then headed on home to get a good night's sleep before the last day on our French vacation.