Papal Palace

Papal Palace, you are thinking to yourself, I thought they were in France not Rome?  Turns out, there is a Papal Palace in Avignon.  I was not aware, but in the 1300's, there was about a 60 year period where the Papacy moved to France.  The tour said it was for "political reasons".   The Papal Palace is a world heritage site that we toured today.  Very nice and interesting. There is also a Roman bridge we will visit this evening.  Avignon is a very nice town, but we are only here one night.

Goodbye to Nice

It has been very nice to be in the same place for four nights.  For me having been on the road with 1 or 2 night stays, it has been like a mini-vacation (a vacation during my holiday).  Wonderful time with Anne at the beach and walking around town.  We are now off to Avignon, which is about three hours away.  We are only there one night, but really want to see the area.

The one last item that remained un-done this morning was to hike to the top of the castle behind the hotel.  We were up early and did it to watch the sunrise, great way to start the day.

 

 

A day in Monaco (aka Monte Carlo)

Very close to Nice is the small country of Monte Carlo.  Only a few miles long and one of the smallest countries in the world.  That said, also one of the wealthiest.  Ruled by the same family since the 1500's, it is famous for many things, especially Grace Kelly marrying the prince in the 1950's.  It was about a half an hour bus ride from Nice and is right along the French and Italian Borders.

Definitely lots of money in Monaco, look at the size of this yacht. 

Check out the car on the right side for perspective.

Changing of the guard at the palace

View of the city.  The hills behind are in Italy, it is a very small country.

Look down from the Palace to the Harbor, as you see, it is packed.

National Music Day

The music festival I referenced earlier was a prelude to national music day.  By law, there is one day a year that people can set up in the streets and play whatever music they want, as loud as they want, and it's all fine.  That was yesterday.  It becomes a huge event that goes even beyond music.  Lots of arts and craft, acrobats and other events.  Here's some shots from the day:

 

 

Band walking along the street

 

Acrobats in the town

 

Local band outside a bar, played wide range of music

 

 

 

A day at the beach

I left three and a half weeks ago and have been on the go the entire time.  One or two nights in each place, hiking most days and full of things to see.  Much of it is because when you are by yourself, you want to do stuff not just hang out alone. With Anne here, we took a much needed day at the beach and had plenty of chatting and people watching.  We headed down mid-morning, thinking we may stay a few hours and instead, time flew by and we stayed all day.  It was warm, but had a nice breeze with wonderful sounds of rolling surf.  What a great break.  This is just some of what we saw:

Lots of paddle boarders on the water

Sail boats and power boats jetting around

That is one person comfortable a wave is not going to get her iPhone

Parasailors landing on the beach 

Not the entire day is about fun, this is the garbage pick up boat going by

This guy just stuck out.  Everyone else in bathing suits, he's

on the beach with a huge pack, camera and on the phone

View when we got back to the beach.  As you can see it's

very full of people, even at the end of the day.

Le Fete de la Musique and a long walk

After the bike tour, we decided to walk to the end of the promenade and back, about a 6 mile round trip of top notch people watching.  I am sure there is normally a lot going on, but this day was unusually busy.  Turns out this is the annual music festival day and they expected 200,000 people at a free concert.  When we walked around, we were able to get close up to some of the groups practicing.  We saw a French star Shy'm and her dancers practice and later in the evening we saw them on TV performing live.  Zara Larsson performed and there were rumors that Jay Z was reported to show up, but we never saw him, even on TV.

Shy'm and her dancers practicing.  We saw them on TV later.  You could

see the back of the stage from our hotel and the massive crowd.

Stage during practices

View along the promenade.  Our hotel is the red roofed structure

along the shore on the upper left.

Lots of water sports going on

Not something we had seen before.  Similar to a Segway, but without

a handle.  These guys were moving along fairly fast.

The E-bike tour

There was a highly rated E-bike tour of the city and we were not exactly sure what an E-bike was, but we gave it a try.  What a wonderful experience.  The E-bikes are a battery assisted bike that allows you to cover much more area than you normally would, especially up hill.  We felt a little guilty that the tour was not as much exercise as you would get from a traditional bike tour, but given all the hills, it would not have been possible to cover all the ground we did.

We were amazed by how much power they had.  On flat ground, they will go over 20 miles per hour.  Up hill, you need to peddle some (like you were on flat ground), but the rest is done by the bike.  This did allow us to get to some awesome views.  We made up for the exercise by walking 6 miles on the Promenade when we got back.

E-bikes, very small battery back, but lots of power

View of the port area with row of huge yachts.  We were told Paul

Allen's yacht was there.  Most were valued at near $50 million

View of Nice from the hill

Beach area in Ville Fanche (town next to Nice)

 

Lots of yachts in the harbor at the town next to us