Helloooo France

Driving long, windy roads can be exhausting, even as a passenger 😉, so we decided to make an overnight stopover at the seaside town of Diano Marina. It is one of the few places on the Ligurian coast that has a long sandy beach (about 3 km in total). The beach season is in full swing and the beaches were filled with chairs, umbrellas and lockers/changing rooms for pretty much its entire length. For a daily fee of €15, you can hire two loungers and an umbrella but don't expect a lot of privacy. There is however a tiny segment of the beach that is free of charge but you have to bring all your own chairs, etc. Another wee feature of the town is that many of the streets are lined with orange trees. Not sure if you can help yourself to the oranges but we weren't game enough to try!
After a very fulfilling breakfast at the hotel this morning, we made tracks with the aim of driving along the coast road and stopping at San Remo and Ventimiglia. However, our plans were thrown out the window once we arrived at San Remo. The place was awash with traffic and scooters, scooters and more scooters. I'm convinced San Remo must be the scooter capital of Italy. So we kept driving until we reached Ventimiglia, another seaside town on the coast. We managed to find a car park a little bit out of town so stopped for a walk along the boardwalk and to stretch our legs, and for Neil's obligatory espresso coffee. He's pretty happy with the prices over here compared with NZ - generally around €1.50, which is about 3 NZ dollars.
We crossed the border into France without incident, although seeing the guards standing there with their rifles at the ready was a tad intimidating. We have checked into a fairly old but decent hotel and there is only the road and a carpark between us and the Mediterranean sea. The road is quite noisy when we're sitting out on the terrace but once in the room it's relatively quiet. The highlight for tomorrow - a trip to Monaco.Leggi altro