Pat and Tony arrive and we visit Cap Ferrat

Thursday, 9/11

Pat and Tony were scheduled to arrive that evening from Southampton, England – a good airport choice for them, as S’hampton is much closer than London. I had an email from Tony printed out with all the details and I recalled – without looking at it – that they were arriving at 9:50 that evening, at the Nice airport.

Jim spent the day doing the map to tour book and tour book to map research and I got additional towels for Pat and Tony’s visit. I also did a couple of loads of laundry and read while I did that. In the afternoon, we decided to go west on the Basse Corniche road from Cap d’Ail center and discovered the charming town of Eze sur Mer (as opposed to Eze-Village, farther up the steep slope). Beyond Eze, along the coastline, was the town of Cap Ferrat, where we saw that a villa and gardens once belonging to one of the Rothschilds was located. We decided we’d have to come back to take lots of photos. Once again, the Mediterranean was breathtaking – this time, to our left!

We got back to the apartment and hung around a little more, deciding that we’d have a quick dinner at the resort snack bar, Jim would shower, and then we’d go to the airport to get Pat and Tony. Just as we were leaving the apartment around 5:30 to go to the snack bar, I said “Hey, wait a minute,” and went to look at the email from Tony. They weren’t arriving at 9:50pm, they were arriving at 19:50, which is 7:50pm in American! We didn’t have as much time as I’d thought. Jim grabbed his shower right then and then we scrambled to get down stairs and inhale some dinner. We ended up getting to the Nice airport in plenty of time, but it was touch and go for awhile!

The Nice airport has 2 terminals, and we made a lucky guess as to which one they’d arrive at (it’s amazing how out of touch one becomes when one does not have the internet at one’s fingertips – I hadn’t wanted to drag my laptop to France, but if I had, I’d have been able to hook up to the wireless internet at the resort – who knew?)

When we’d arrived the previous Saturday, we’d been told that the elevator that would save us about 3 of the 5 flights to our apartment was not working, but would be fixed by the next day. It wasn’t, and it wasn’t fixed on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday either, but we were glad to see on Thursday that it was working – finally! As glum a picture of our accommodations as we were planning to share with Pat and Tony on the ride from the airport, at least we’d be able to tell them that the lift worked!

After their arrival and hugs all around, we got them into the car and tried to find our way out of Nice. After a couple of misses, we finally figured it out and got on the road back. We told them about the apartment and probably got them wishing they hadn’t come, but once we all huffed and puffed up the last 2 sets of stairs to the apartment, they decided the place wasn’t too bad. They had a very cute letter for us from their grandson Owen, whose birthday had been earlier in the summer and which we’d commemorated by sending him some money to spend. We’d gotten them some little gifts from the US, including Pat’s favorite garlic juice that she likes to use in cooking, and a red UGA t-shirt for Tony who assured us that red is his favorite color. It may not be but he’s nothing if not a gentleman.

We all settled in for the night after deciding that we would go to the Rothschild villa and garden in Cap Ferrat the next day.


Friday, 9/12

Warm, humid day, so it was nice that the Rothschild villa and gardens were in a lot of shade. There was an event going on later that day or the next day, and there were work crews setting up a stage and public address system, but we could just ignore them and enjoy the grounds.

We got tourist brochures in English that told us about the history of Euphreny (I think) Rothschild whose villa it was, but I haven’t retained an iota of it, so if you’re interested, look up the Rothschild villa in Cap Ferrat. In addition to the house itself, which we toured and could take interior photos of, she had constructed 6 or 8 gardens around the building – a Japanese garden, a stone garden, a rose garden, an exotic garden, and so forth. It was past the season for the rose garden, but there were still some flowers blooming and it was all just lovely. We also had great views of the Mediterranean there as well. After we looked around the gardens – and Jim took a zillion pictures (I only took ½ zillion) – and before we went into the house, we went to the small restaurant there and had tarts and ice cream for lunch. Very rich and yummy. We finished up with the house and went back to the apartment to rest up for dinner.

I must say, Pat and Tony are our kind of tourists – they like to stroll around and look at stuff, and then take a break. It was great to be with them that day and through the rest of their visit with us.

When we got back to the center of Cap d’Ail, we decided we should stop at the tourist office and see where they might recommend that we have some dinner that night. We parked the car and I went over to the tourist office. The young woman there didn’t speak English and didn’t have a lot of success conveying to me where we might go. She pulled out the map of the area and pointed to a place where we might be able to have dinner, but she didn’t know if they were open; she called but apparently no one was there at the moment.

In the meantime, Pat went to the post office and Jim and Tony came into the tourist office to say that there were a couple of places right there in Cap d’Ail, on the main drag, that looked promising. So that ended up being easy and we decided to try the pizza/pasta place after we rested up for the remainder of the afternoon.

The parking area where we had been accustomed to parking when we went into Cap d’Ail was full, however, when we returned for dinner, and there was no street parking available. We kept driving, toward Monaco, trying to figure out what to do. It was apparent that we couldn’t park along the way and then walk back – there just wasn’t any parking. We passed another parking area – I don’t think we were in Monaco quite yet – and right after that was an Italian restaurant that looked promising. It was just coming up on 7pm and while there were no patrons at the restaurant yet, there was activity – a woman was doing some sweeping up around the outside tables.

This apparently was meant to be the place to eat, as we found a parking place in the lot next door. And it was quite nice. I had pesto, Jim had a seafood and pasta dish, and Pat and Tony each has something they enjoyed. The woman who served us was very nice and friendly and we had a lovely time.