Thursday - St Paul, Nice, Monaco & Menton

After breakfast, I walked down to the internet cafe at Vence while the others had a quiet morning. They picked me up from the internet cafe at about 11:45am.

We decided to go first to St Paul which is a town just on the other side of the valley from Vence. After parking in the multi-storey carpark, we wandered the streets (which was interesting) until we stumbled on the entrance to the ancient town. A great discovery.

Like other ancient towns we have seen, there were narrow cobbelstone streets but this one had more character because of the hilltop location. It also had lots of shops and lots of tourists from various countries.

We could have spent hours there but decided to continue on. So we headed off towards Nice.

A combination of signs and the navigation system (Gabrielle) got us to Nice. After travelling for a while along Promenade des Anglais, the boulevard along the beach front, we turned in to drive through the city centre. We did not find the city very attractive - it was just a big, noisy city. So we didn't stop but continued on to Monaco.

After parking in a multi-storey carpark in the centre of Monaco, we strolled around the streets and down to the waterfront where we visited the tourist information office. They suggested we take the "train" tour. So we climbed up the hill to the palace area. The train trip took us down the hill via the grand prix circuit, past the casino and past the palace.

We drove on to Menton which is a town close to the Italian border. We had dinner at a restaurant on the promenade next to the Mediteranean. Great location for dinner.

The trip back to Vence was quite an adventure. We had thought it would just be a case of getting back on the freeway and driving back to the Vence turnoff. However, the freeway is at the top of the mountains overlooking the sea. The roads were narrow and windy yet again. When we got to the freeway, Gabrielle let us down because she told us to turn off at the first Nice turnoff which just took us to Nice airport. We were lost. Perhaps she was giving us a message that she was tired of directing us around France.

We eventually found our way back but it taught us yet another lesson about driving in France: don't try driving long distances at night. We vowed only to go to restaurants close by from now on.