Day 12 - St. Laurent

Day 12—Thursday, May 21, 1992

We got an early start on this day, obviously owing to our early bedtime the night before. Ate breakfast at the hotel, where we had the entire dining room to ourselves. The coffee was superb. It was slightly overcast as we began the days journey, which called for a visit to the Verdon Gorge aka Grand Canyon of Verdon and then on to the French Riviera.

We were making pretty good time until we got to the town of Greoux, where we were forced to detour from our planned route. The detour took us on tiny Route D8 and then onto the absolutely narrowest road of the entire trip. We stopped very briefly in the town of Allemagne to look at a chateau, which was closed on Thursdays. Our next stop was at Lac de Ste. Croix, a lake situated at the beginning of the Verdon Gorge, where we took some pictures of the marvelously vibrant blue-green water. We would have enjoyed the view more had it not been so cold, windy, and rainy. It was particularly windy. We drove about a mile to the mouth of the river that flows through the canyon and stopped again to take in the scenery. This time Sharon stayed in the car.

With me driving and Sharon navigating, we ending up going about twenty kilometers in the wrong direction and had to double back to the lake to begin our drive along the south rim of the gorge. Even once we were on the right road, we still had our doubts and ended up going back and forth over a short stretch—so it is with French road markings. But alas we wound up and up and eventually came to the upon the canyon’s south rim. The Verdon Gorge is not nearly as immense as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, but in some ways because it isn’t, it’s more wondrous to behold—you feel as though you’re really inside the canyon and you can actually see the river at the bottom. The river, a pastel green snake slithering through the gorge, is worth the trip alone. For the most part the road is in good shape (in a relative way) with something resembling a guardrail in place on most of the more treacherous turns, although I doubt the rail would have done anything more than momentarily slow down a car heading over the edge. Also the clouds were no more that a couple of hundred feet above the road. Had we been forced to drive through the clouds, things would have gotten hairy. We stopped four or five time along the rim to partake of the view along this stretch, which ran for about twenty-five kilometers.

Near the end of the canyon, we started heading south toward the Mediterranean Sea, but we still had to drive out of the hills, which meant we still had about a thousand more turns to negotiate. We reached the resort town of Ste. Maxime about 4:00 p.m. We drove straight through following the signs, as best as that was possible, to St. Tropez, where I parked at the first parking lot I came to. Then we walked around this world famous playground of the yacht set. Overall our first impression of the place was not favorable, although there were lots of yachts, we didn’t see anything resembling a real beach, prices were exorbitant, and it was raining. Anyway we walked around, browsed in a few shops, bought a couple of crepes at one (I had a tasty Grand Marnier crepe) and some sandwiches at another (as it would turn out, the crepes were our lunch and the sandwiches our dinner), and after we figured out how to pay for parking, we drove out of town.

We headed east along route N98 which hugs the Riviera coastline, stopping here and there to take in the view. At one such place, where the cliffs were a rusty red, I was asked to move our car by some fellow who was shooting a Mercedes commercial, which should say something about the scenic quality of the place. We arrived in Cannes a little before 8:00 p.m. We parked and walked along a strip by the bay (where the beaches come from imported sand), stopping at one point to enjoy a cup of coffee. Then it was back on the road to Nice, where we planned to hunt for one of the hotels recommended by Rick Steves. But it didn’t work out that way. It had become dark, I was becoming very exhausted, and the highway we were on, the Promenade des Anglais, became very clogged and thus very annoying. One drunken idiot driver didn’t help matters. We drove up and down the Promenade des Anglais looking for a hotel; we saw many, but either they looked too expensive or seemingly impossible to reach. We never did make it to Nice, much less to any of the hotels in Rick Steves’ guide. At this point, we only wished we’d stopped for the night long before now. We ending up staying at the modern drab CAP Hotel in a room that made the Ibis hotel look like a charmer. Too bad it was dark out, because we had a perfect view of the CAP 3000 mall right from our room.

I stayed up a while reading the International Herald-Tribune that I’d bought in St. Tropez, drank a few beers, and then watched some French MTV. And finally went to bed at the customary 1:00 a.m.

HIGHLIGHT: The Grand Canyon du Verdon.

LOWLIGHT: The traffic outside Nice.

NOTE: In France they do not call it the French Riviera but rather Cote d’Azur.

REFLECTIONS FROM 2020:

While reviewing and revising this account, I’ve been struck by how frequently it rained during the trip, or at least how often I mentioned that it did. Yet I don’t recall it being particularly rainy. So did I over-report about the weather? Or did I forget about it because it wasn’t memorable enough to remember? Or both? Now that I think about it, I’m struck by the fact that one’s day-to-day living is largely spent indoors, where the weather isn’t much of an issue, if at all. But when traveling, one’s default position is outdoors. And when outdoors, the weather, and rain in particular, to a large extent dictates what you see and do. What mostly gets remembered, however, isn’t the weather, but what you saw and did. If what you did was get soaked, then that’s likely to be remember, but most often people stay dry.

The Hotel Cap is now called the ibis Styles Nice Cap 3000 Airport Hotel.