It can be expensive to travel on toll roads in Italy and France: for instance, $30 for 115 miles to Italy. So David decided we could spend more time on the “red roads” on the map and “Why don’t we see a little more of the coast while we are here?” So we took the red coast road toward St Tropez. (It just happened that our trip coincided with the Cannes Film Festival and the Formula One Grand Prix in Monaco, so we had decided to avoid both places.) Once you are on the red coast road to St Tropez, there is no way to get off it. It consists of a little time spent along beaches and lots of time hanging off rocky red cliff edges. Every inch that can be developed is built up with houses, hotels and restaurants. There was a lot of traffic and many, many bicycles on this narrow, winding, hilly stretch of road. It was certainly beautiful, but it turned out to be thirty miles of white knuckle driving. Once we met a bus on a sharp corner. We were right up against rock wall on our right and we had to back up a few feet and pull in our left mirror to let the bus pass. Fortunately we were on the rocky cliff side all the way and not the straight-drop-to-the-sea side.
We stayed overnight in St Maxime, close enough to ride our bikes to the beautiful crowded sandy beach. This time we actually swam in the sea because the weather was close to 100 degrees. This little tourist town was hosting an Italian art fair right at the beach. Then on Sunday we headed north to escape some of the heat. Fortunately it cools down into the 60’s at night and we are very comfortable in Rover. Campgrounds are getting busier and we have been to a couple that have had their pools open. This is still considered low season, so not all the facilities are open at every site.
We spent one night at the Roman Theatre campground in Vaison la Romaine (it was full but they fit us into a parking place made for a tiny French car next to an unrented cabin). This old town is built up around Roman ruins of a terribly over-restored theatre and the excavated ruins of houses and shops dating from 50-200 B.C., so we have seen something older than the Pont du Gard. Many of the shops in town were closed on Monday, but the campground owner strongly suggested we stay on Tuesday morning for the market which “fills the town.” So on Tuesday morning we moved Rover to a “camping car” parking lot in the town and went to the market, which did, in fact, fill the town: street after street of people selling plants, vegetables and fruit, clothing, jewelry, tools, fabics--even mattresses and sewing machines. Because the market took over all the parking lots as well as the streets, cars were parked all over around the edge of the town. We were able to get very close with the special parking lot for motorhomes.Overnight parking is allowed there also but we had opted for the pool and electricity at the campground and were very glad we did.
We are now in the big city of Lyon, where we’ve spent two nights and are about to spend a third. The campground is on the end of a bus line that connects to a subway that gets us into the center of town in about half an hour. Our bus ticket was also good for the funicular to the Basilica of Notre Dame that overlooks the city. This is a relatively new one built in the 1800’s and is totally over the top in sculpture and decorative painting. Walking in was another one of those “Oh, wow” moments. And purely by accident we arrived moments before the astroonomical clock rang at 3 P.M.--one of only 3-4 times of the day it rings. There were lots of people and school children wating for it to do its little multi-leveled mechanical-movement thing.
There is a sweeping panoramic view of the city from behind the cathedral. The city itself is just lovely with all its tiled roofs and wrought iron trim, with one tall, ugly, round, dark Radisson Hotel in the middle of it all. We have exhausted ourselves doing museums and took refuge in the first Starbucks we have seen since Amsterdam and also in a little sports bar where we watched two more finishes of Giro d’Italia stages.
One of the most unusual things we've seen in Lyon is a mural of several buildings painted on to the flat six story side of a building. It is so well done that (pick one):
1. you could swear you are looking down another city street (Susan's way of putting it); or
2. it's only when you get far away from it that you realize you're not looking at a real building blocking your view of some of the painted mural (David's).
Our other favorite is the Miniature Museum. There is not a doll house in sight but instead movie sets created in miniature--and several others full sized--that were used instead of real locations (think “Titanic sinking” and “White House exploding in Independence Day”). This city is also known for its puppet theatres and its silk production. The shops are full of both. It is a good thing Susan has vowed not to add to her fabric collection.