Wednesday, September 17
Les Alpes-Maritimes! Before we left on our trip, I had found that one of France’s seven national parks was not far from where we would be staying. Jim loves to go to parks where he can see trees and mountains and lakes and streams. The park was the Mercantour and look
ed like maybe it was an hour’s drive north of Monaco. It took longer than that to get there, but it was a wonderful drive.
We took the Moyen Corniche to Menton and then went north to Sospel. We stopped in Sospel to pick up some bread and cheese for lunch, and also had some coffee while we were there (actually, we never drank “coffee” in France, strictly speaking; they serve it in demi-tasse cups and it would probably be way too strong for our taste – we brewed our own coffee in the apartment, American-style, and we ordered cappuccino when we were out and about).
As we drove into the higher altitudes, the temps got cooler and cooler. I have a photo of the car dashboard with a readout of 14 degrees Celsius at one point.
We figured that was in the 40s. We had a couple of chances to get out and walk, but we used the car to do the L’Authion circuit. We saw some hikers doing it on foot – good for them! L’Authion was the site of one or more WWII battles and we saw the shells of a few buildings and a tank abandoned on the mountainside. It was hard to fathom how a battle could have been worth fighting there, but the German march across Western Europe must have been pretty relentless.
The drive up to the French Alps and back was pretty exhausting for Jim – lots of switchba
cks and a lot of gear changing in the car. We had his lovely curried dish for dinner with bread leftover from earlier in the day. Ahhhhh!
Les Alpes-Maritimes! Before we left on our trip, I had found that one of France’s seven national parks was not far from where we would be staying. Jim loves to go to parks where he can see trees and mountains and lakes and streams. The park was the Mercantour and look
ed like maybe it was an hour’s drive north of Monaco. It took longer than that to get there, but it was a wonderful drive.We took the Moyen Corniche to Menton and then went north to Sospel. We stopped in Sospel to pick up some bread and cheese for lunch, and also had some coffee while we were there (actually, we never drank “coffee” in France, strictly speaking; they serve it in demi-tasse cups and it would probably be way too strong for our taste – we brewed our own coffee in the apartment, American-style, and we ordered cappuccino when we were out and about).
As we drove into the higher altitudes, the temps got cooler and cooler. I have a photo of the car dashboard with a readout of 14 degrees Celsius at one point.
We figured that was in the 40s. We had a couple of chances to get out and walk, but we used the car to do the L’Authion circuit. We saw some hikers doing it on foot – good for them! L’Authion was the site of one or more WWII battles and we saw the shells of a few buildings and a tank abandoned on the mountainside. It was hard to fathom how a battle could have been worth fighting there, but the German march across Western Europe must have been pretty relentless.The drive up to the French Alps and back was pretty exhausting for Jim – lots of switchba
cks and a lot of gear changing in the car. We had his lovely curried dish for dinner with bread leftover from earlier in the day. Ahhhhh!
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