The Great French Roadtrip: Conquering the Coast
We picked up our sweet French rental car in Perpignan after a solid 4 hour bus trip from Barcelona up the coast. The French highway system is really good (though you stop to pay a toll every 10 minutes) and our car cruised like a dream. Since all speeds were in some meaningless km/h unit I didn’t pay them much attention, and was more interested in trying to figure out how the windshield wipers knew to come on automatically as soon as it started to rain. Those French do make some pretty cool cars.Our first stop, to celebrate my 26th birthday was the valley town of Millau, home to one of the top 5 most amazing bridges in the world! We beheld the Millau Viaduct as the sun was getting low on my birthday, and what a present it was. We made it to the bridge gift shop 15 minutes before closing, and pretty much cleaned them out. If anyone wants to borrow a fascinating 30 minute video on the viaduct, you just let me know.
The four of us spent the night in Millau, which is a wonderfully quaint French town on its own, and overshadowing it with the highest vehicular bridge in the world only improved it. The next morning we followed an elderly French couple to what seemed to be the only church in town open for Easter mass. It was interesting to take part in the service in French, and afterwards we had lattes, bought a lunch of baguettes and cheese, and generally tried to blend in with the locals.
Next, we travelled 2000 years into the past to see probably the best example of Roman bridge-building in the world: the Pont Du Gard (2 bridges in 2 days…who planned this trip!!). This 3 level stone aqueduct was part of a water system that carried water from springs in the French Alps to the town of Nimes 70 miles away. The bridge looks stunning in the sunlight and you can wander all over the site: up the hills on either side, over the pedestrian level, or along the River Gard which it crosses.
Happy and contented with pictures of bridges dancing through our heads we headed back to Nimes where we had a hostel for the night. We quickly learned that not much had changed on the streets of the city since Roman times, and it is the most challenging/frustrating driving experience of my life! New York’s northing, you should try driving in Nimes. Anyway, after 2 hours of winding through the narrowest, oldest streets of France we found our hostel and managed to crash our car out front. That night we managed a walk to see Nimes’ main claim to fame: the well-preserved Roman amphitheatre.
The next morning, ready to leave Nimes forever, we set off on an unbelievable road trip of discovery (note how much stuff is going to happen before I write about going to sleep again). So, we set off fairly early and headed down through Marseille, France’s second city and a tricky one to get through. We drove along the coast and saw the famous Château d'If prison out in the harbour, where the Count of Monte Cristo was held in the book, the Count of Monte Cristo, which was about a count, who lived in a place called Monte Cristo.
Right, taking a tunnel (?) out of the city we headed down the coast and down a HUGE cliff to the beautiful fishing town of Cassis. We had some coffee and walked around the harbour some, then got lunch overlooking the sailboats bobbing in the crystal blue sea. I read that one of the best drives in France was along the cliff tops east of Cassis, so we wound our way up what can only be described as an incredibly dangerous road. The wind was insane that day, so the cliff top drive was closed for safety, which was extremely disappointing to our car’s driver but deeply comforting to its 3 passengers. Instead we found a road to the top of a cliff and got out to be nearly blown over by the unbelievable coastal winds. There’s a great video on our picture link at the end of all this that shows how crazy the wind was that day.
Finding our way back to the main road, we continued along the coast through Toulon and down to another of the top drives in France along the D559 north of Le Lavandou. The coast there undulates up onto huge cliffs then down to protected beach coves and the road and coastal villages follow right along. We kept stopping to snap pictures out to sea or try to get out onto a beach…it was a great drive. After an afternoon of driving and stopping, we decided to visit St-Tropez to ogle at how the other half lives. We walked around checking out the high-end designer shops, beautiful people, and enormous yachts with names like “don’t touch”, “all mine”, and “I’m so rich it hurts”. We bought a postcard.
Back on the road, we got stuck in a 40 minute line to pay for a toll, which seemed to show that building a fast road to make people stop every 10 minutes and pay a toll results in a very slow, expensive road. Finally well after sunset we made it to our goal for the evening: the posh principality of Monaco. Having just walked the streets of St-Tropez we were used to looking glamorous, and I know I certainly cut a dashing figure in my grey fleece, jeans, and sneakers. I popped my collar for that extra boost of panache.
We made the usual rounds through the city and checked out the casino Monte Carlo (they wouldn’t let us on the actual floor), the Grand Prix circuit, and the harbour. Monaco is an amazing jumble of buildings and you can tell they really tried to cram as much as possible into their tiny country. The hillside starts with a road, then houses, then a bridge carrying a road over those houses, then houses built above that, with a road coming through a tunnel, with houses on top of that. It’s not somewhere you’d live if you wanted a backyard. Anyway, we got dinner at a nice restaurant with a picture of the prince smiling away at us and pictures of his mom, princess Grace, everywhere.
At 11 or so we decided it really was probably time to head back to Nice where we were staying for the night, and arrived at our hotel just before 1. What a day!
The next morning we took Eric and Dez to the airport to catch their flight to Paris (turns out France is actually really, really big and Paris is not just next door) where they would spend a few days before coming to Birmingham. Lauren and I spent a few hours on the beach that morning, and then did a quick cliff-top drive before flying out ourselves. Not bad for 6 days!
Whew…TRIP PHOTOS
