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  • Day 406

    Day 407: Driving the Cote-d'Azur

    March 28, 2018 in France ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    Long day of driving today! We headed out around 9am, since neither of us were particularly inclined to stay much longer cooped up in the small room. It was nice enough, but our host's father came to visit as well with a large dog (very friendly, but Schnitzel didn't like it) so we felt a bit disruptive too.

    Found some pastries for breakfast at a boulangerie and then headed eastwards along the coast. Took a detour through a national park which was quite nice, lots of dramatic limestone cliffs and such towering out of the blue water.

    Spent a couple of hours driving before we arrived in our first destination: Saint-Tropez. Wasn't sure what I was expecting to find, but it's actually really small! Just a village really. Parked up and browsed along the waterfront, though all the restaurants were hideously expensive again. Managed to find a place that had a plate of the day filet mignon with potato puree for 16 euros which we both had. Delicious, but we definitely paid for it! 6 euros for a small 250mL of draft beer was comical as well.

    Bought a delicious Tarte-Tropezienne which is basically a two-layer sponge cake with an enormous vanilla cream wedge in the centre. We shared it while sitting in the sun looking at the enormous yachts parked at the marina. Quite a bit larger than the boat we'd been on a couple of weeks earlier!

    Back to the car where we kept driving, roughly along the coast but also inland as well. You can't really take the "coast road" since it's very windy and takes forever - also low speed limits since it goes through every town and village along the way. So we spent a couple of sections on the freeway as well.

    Arrived in Cannes by mid-afternoon, running a bit late to make it to our Airbnb still 40 minutes up the road in Nice. Parked underneath the Casino and conference centre on the waterfront where the film festival is held, and then walked for a bit of the promenade. Cannes is a much larger city than Saint-Tropez, and is definitely much busier as well.

    In the end we didn't have much time to do anything beyond search fruitlessly for somewhere selling ice-cream. So we had Magnums instead, then got back in the car!

    Getting out of Cannes proved to be a nightmare - horrendous traffic and lots of one-way streets, along with confusing direction signs and crazy French drivers. They aren't Italian level bad, but not too far off! Lots of roadworks going on which I assume they have to get done before everyone descends on the town in summer and makes it unbearable, though they probably want to do everything before the film festival as well which I think is in May.

    In the end, we arrived about 45 minutes late to our Airbnb - probably the first time that's happened to such a degree! The lady spoke very good English and was fine about it, since we'd kept her updated on our progress. The apartment is a downstairs granny flat under her house and is quite modern and well-equipped. Bread and cheese from the supermarket for dinner after our expensive and filling lunch!
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