Chapter 1 of 2: First leg: Nice, Vence, La Napoule, Saintes Marie de la Mer and Martigues

On September 29th, 2018. we flew off from Montreal to Nice to meet up with friends in Southern France and to join a boat up the Rhone river. I have shown our itinerary at the end of this chapter.

I had booked premium economy on both the Air Canada Rouge(Air Canada's low cost line)  flight to Nice and on the Air Canada flight from Paris back to Montreal. I find the premium one pays is worthwhile and the total cost is still less than half of the business class ticket. As a matter of fact, on the Rouge flight there was no business class.  The difference is the legroom space between the seats which really makes a difference on a 6 or more hour flight. On the rouge flight, we were served dinner with real forks and knives which I had not seen in years on a plane. I guess not since the World Bank was paying my first and business class tickets...

NICE
The flight to Nice is  7 hour non-stop flight which is great as changing flights anywhere costs at least 3 hours of time and no end of pain unloading and reloading.  We got into Nice at 0800 on time. I had reserved a rental car with Avis for the first week of our stay.  But little did I know how difficult it is to rent a car at Nice airport.  First one needs to go to terminal 2 by shuttle bus with one's luggage, then it is a half a kilometer walk to the car rental desks. Once the paperwork done, one is sent to the multi layer garage to find one's car. We got an upgrade to a Mercedes SUV which was fine but we spent 30 minutes trying to find the car.  When we did find it, some brilliant car jockey had parked it so close to cars on both sides that Monique had to do a rubber women exercise to squeeze in on one side and slide over to the driver's to drive the car out of its slot. Of course, there was no one around in the garage to help.

By 10 AM after 2 hours spent renting the car, we drove out of the airport and headed to Vence which is in the mountains behind Nice.  We had our first run-in with the toll road which would not accept my credit cards until we were told we were in the wrong lane, Luckily, it was Sunday morning so there was not a lot of traffic to hoot at the silly tourists...

VENCE AND SAINT PAUL DE VENCE
We got to Vence and checked into our nice little hotel Floreal. I managed to get an hour of rest before we met up with Monique's friend, Louise Rousseau. Louise is a Montreal girl who has spent the last 20 odd years in Vence during the winter.  She and Monique worked together at the Tourism office of  Montreal. Vence is a small town way up the hill with wonderful views into the valleys below.  We had a light lunch on the main square in an outdoor terrasse as the weather was beautiful.  We spent the afternoon walking through Vence and then had dinner at Louise's flat. On Sunday we spent most of the day in St Paul de Vence which is a middle age walled city which lives of tourism.  It is a real gem of a city.

Louise and Monique

Nice name for a funeral home...

LA NAPOULE

Keith Norman having his third desert on an earlier trip.

The Norman penhouse in Napoule

View from the penhouse on to the Med.

The next day, we left for La Napoule where were going to meet up with our friends from Florida, Keith and Claire Norman. The drive to Napoule took us 2 hours along the coast past Cannes.  Sadly, the train runs along the coast so one cannot see the Med from the road. We did stop just out of La Napoule for a long lunch at a nice restaurant on the beach. Again, the weather was sunny and beautiful so we spent 3 hours at lunch.

Our friends live in Cocoa Florida most of the year. I have known Keith and Claire over 30 years. He is British and Claire is Quebequoise. I was their best man at their wedding in DC many years ago, As they were going to rent back their penthouse apartment in La Napoule (which they had sold a few years ago) , Monique and I had promised we would visit them.  The flat is a huge penthouse looking out on the Med.  They had family visiting so we took a room in a nearby AirBNB for the 2 days there.  Keith is still full of life and energy. We had dinner with them at a lovely fish restaurant next to our place. They were quite happy to be able to get out of the flat which was filled with a daughter, her man and two rather quiet Australian teen-age daughters. The next day, we spent the afternoon and evening with the whole family at the apartment which was fun.


LES BAUX DE PROVENCE.

The following day, we set off early as I had booked lunch at one of the most beautiful restaurants I know called Oustau de Baumaniere.  It is at the foot of the cliff where the village of Baux  de Provence is located. Baux is the first place where Bauxite was discovered, hence the name.   I had spent a week-end there 25 years earlier and it had made a big impression on me.  After a 3 hour drive westward, we arrived in time for our lunch reservation.  The food was exquisite and so was the price, even more.  At one point during lunch, a helicopter landed at a pad near the restaurant and two couples jumped out and came to have their lunch at our restaurant. Nothing but the best...

The main dining room of the Ostau de Baumaniere

The dining area of Ostau de Baumaniere

SAINTES MARIES DE LA MER

The presentation of the horses at Saintes Maries de la Mer

Playing with the Toro, Camargue style

The church of Saintes Maries

Typical street of Saintes Maries where we stayed.

Camargue horses with the Guardian, the local cowboys,

A strange name for a nurse...

After lunch, we headed south to Saintes Maries de la Mer where I had booked an other AIRBnb.  Saintes Maries, in the plural, as legend has it, is where Mary Magdalene and an other Mary arrived  with the 12 apostles who left them here. It is on the coast of the Med with lovely beaches, It is in the heart of the Camargue National park which is in fact a huge flat swamp area where the French have their version of cowboys working huge ranches which raise horses (white) and cattle (black).  Ste Maries is also a venerated town for gypsies who congregate each May in their thousands to celebrate their Mary.  It is also this area which gave the world the Gypsy Kings, a group singing gypsy songs in Spanish. These gypsies arrived in the area when Franco was trying to kill them off in and around Barcelona during the civil war. They also have quite a large salt production which is sold at premium prices.

We did the tourist things of  taking a boat up the Petit Rhone which comes out there. We also went to a bull and horse show where we saw how the Camargue cowboys handle cattle and also how they have their local bullfight. It is more of a game as the bulls have a flower between their horns and the young men try and get near enough to remove the flower. In fact, they spend most of their time running from the bull and jumping over the fences which are the same as in the Spanish bull fight rings. The difference is that the bull goes on with his life after the event.  Saintes Maries is worth the visit but not during French holiday periods as then it must be crawling with tourists. While we were there, the weather was lovely and all the restaurants were open.  We even found one where two men were playing guitars and singing flamenco songs.  Nice environment and our place was just a block from the beach,  restaurants and the bull ring.

MARTIGUES
After the bull event in Saintes Marie, we hit the road to Martigues where we would spend the night and return our rented car. I found the AVIS agency office which was closed when we arrived and there was no place to drop the keys. I left the car in their lot with a note saying the keys would be delivered Monday.  I asked the concierge at our hotel to drop the key which he agreed to do.  We spent the evening at the hotel and the next day we walked down to the harbor to scout where we would find our ship later.  We found the pier but the boat was not due to arrive till the evening so we headed back to the hotel for the afternoon. Martigues is not a very interesting place we were told by our driver who dropped us off at our boat in the evening.