Nice to Chasteuil (10/29)

Continental breakfast and pack. Checkout time was 10am but we didn’t need to head for Chasteuil for a couple of hours. So we left our bags at the front desk. We were going back into the old town and there was considerable concern about leaving our goods in the car. There were many stories of cars being broken into and everything taken. Nancy told of one story of when she was working a the currency exchange in Castellane and a couple arrived from Nice with just their swim suits. Everything else had been stolen. We then drove back to the same parking lot we had been at the night before. Again this was along the waterfront. Only now it was daylight and we could see. Next to the road is a very wide sidewalk with a separate bike path. On the other side of the sidewalk was the Mediterranean Sea. There was no sand beach. It was all small rocks. There were lots of strollers, skaters, bikers and runners. Obviously a very popular place. This goes on for several miles and ends in a boat harbor. It was mostly pleasure boats, some extremely large. Then we parked and walked back through the old town to one of the most spectacular farmer’s markets I have seen. It was huge. Several times larger than the Saturday market in Santa Cruz. It operates 6 days a week and was jammed. There were a dozen or so flower sellers, then dozens of fruit and vegetable sellers. There was another section of just the farmers themselves selling direct. There were several fish vendors, a few cheese vendors but no meat vendors. We roamed around for some time with Pascal buying supplies for the B&B and Tai taking her usual kajillian photos.

A little side note. Tai and her camera. Throughout this entire trip, Tai has been taking pictures. Lots and lots and lots of pictures. Sometimes 300 pictures in one day. The wonderful thing about this is that they’re great pictures. Every evening I download them to the laptop. As I watch them download, I am amazed at her photo eye. Several times we have played back the pictures on the laptop and marveled at them. Tai has had to struggle to select just a few to upload to this blog.

So after making our purchases, we sat at a sidewalk café and had some coffee and watched the scene go by. Then we walked a half block to the beach and had to touch the Med.. The sea was totally flat calm. There were swimmers and sun bathers on the rocky beach. It was a beautiful sunny day, not too warm. No wonder there are apartments and hotels lining the entire sea front.

However, it was getting late and we had to get to Chasteuil. Guests were expected this evening. So back to the hotel. Get all the baggage plus all the stuff from the farmer’s market into the car. Find room for people and off we went.

It only took a couple of hours to reach ‘home’. Tai and I were looking forward to stopping our traveling and making this our home for the next couple of weeks. Nancy and Pascal kept forgetting that we had only seen Chasteuil for only one night and one day before we left for Italy. Every sight there was still very new to us.

Into the house, unloaded the car and Pascal prepared a leek and potato soup, cheese plate, fruit plate for the guests and us. It’s Sunday so we must be in France or are we still in Poggibonsi or Venice or Sienna…