Jan 1-2, 2009 – St-Raphael, France

We planned on meeting the MacDonald’s, friends from Central Saanich in Aix-en-Provence on January 3rd which gave us a couple of days to visit the French Riviera.  After leaving Quiliano, Italy, we headed along the Italian and then French Riviera to a place called St Raphaël, France (Google Map link here), where we had booked rooms for a couple of nights.

It was a nice day and this drive is very scenic.  One of the scenes that caught our eye was these terraced hillside on which, if you look closely, you can see large numbers of green houses.  All faced south towards the Mediterranean.

Also along this route are Monte Carlo and , along this route is Monaco and Monte Carlo.  I still have not figured out the relationship between these two names.  Some references suggest that Monaco is the district and Monte Carlo is an area within the Monaco district but I’m not sure.

Regardless, although quite dark, you can see the following sign provides directions to the famed Monte Carlo Casino.

Unfortunately, on the day we were passing through this area was chock-full of people and cars and we didn’t have an opportunity to get out and walk around.  Here is a picture of the Casino taken from the car as we moved slowly through traffic.  Allister is a James Bond fan and became quite interested when we told him this was the site of some famous scenes from old Bond movies.

More scenes from Monaco.  It was exciting to think about the Formula 1 auto race that runs here every year navigating these narrow streets.

This wasn’t a Bond car just a beautifully preserved Austin Healy 3000 whose loveliness we had to record.

The following picture is of our hotel in St Raphael.  Its owner (barely visible in the middle right part of the photo) was just about to close up for a few weeks (or months).  He was headed to Lyon for a few days and then planned to go skiing.

We stayed in a room on the second floor of the hotel and the balcony shown in the photo above (to which the ‘Auberge Provencale’ sign is attached) offered a view similar to the following photo.

Its probably redundant to say that the French Riviera was a nice area.  But it was. 

St Tropez was about 40 kms away from St Raphael and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to visit.

A view of the yacht basin.  There were boats of all shapes and sizes but lots of large ones.

These were some of the more impressive large yachts.  The boat in the foreground is the tender for the sailboat immediately behind it.

This made us feel right at home.  It wasn’t particularly warm this day – probably 3-5 C – but they still needed an impressive generator / refrigeration unit to keep this and another sheet of ice (not shown) cold enough to support the number of skaters.

Dec 31, 2008 – Quiliano, Italy

On New Years Eve we were en route from Orvieto, Italy to St-Raphael, France on the French Riviera.  We stopped half-way in a small town called Quiliano (see Google Map link here).

We had a room in a bed and breakfast located in this building that was huge and cold but I was sick and just wanted to get into bed and stay there.

We were in bed before midnight but kept awake both before and after by the detonation of approximately 1 bezillion firecrackers and other assorted fireworks in these seemingly peaceful streets.

We were served an excellent breakfast in a charming old dining room but, despite this, weren’t unhappy to put Quiliano in the rear view mirror.

Dec 29-30, 2008 – Orvieto, Italy

After getting off the ferry from Greece at Brindisi, our route to Orvieto took us up Italy’s east coast and then through its center to the Rome area before turning north to Orvieto (see Google map link here).

Our guidebooks suggested Orvieto was a nice hill town and it didn’t disappoint.  We stayed down in the new town at the base but made a couple of forays up the hill to visit the old town.

Orvieto was celebrating the season by decorating the old town with lights and hosting a jazz festival that, from the voices we heard around town, had attracted a range of different nationalities.

More evidence of the Christmas season.

These boars run wild in parts of Italy and France and there are shops like this one that specialize in boar products.

There were lights on the facade of this church, but sunset lighting helped make the lighting for this photo more interesting.

Dec 29, 2008 – En route to Orvieto, Italy

We arrived in Brindisi, Italy at about 7:30 am with a plan to drive to Orvieto, Italy, a trip of about 660 kilometers.  By the standard of our trip, this was a long drive for us but we didn’t want to linger too long in the south because the weather reports were calling for more snow.

We had also made arrangements with friends from Victoria, the MacDonalds, to meet in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France and wanted to keep moving north so we wouldn’t have to rush to our rendezvous with them.

There were a couple of good images on the way to Orvieto.  We don’t know what this structure was but it looked so dark and forbidding but at the same time like an elevated restaurant that Allister named it Darth Vader’s Diner.

A little further up the highway on the east coast of Italy, we saw these wharves that we assumed were fishing platforms of some kind.

More than once on this trip I observed how nice it was to have someone to share the driving.

Dec 28, 2008 – Patras, Greece – Ferry to Brindisi, Italy

This photo was taken on our way to Patras and looks out across the Sea of Corinth to Greece on the other side.  Seeing the freezing level so vividly reminded us of both the North Shore mountains in Vancouver and the Sooke Hills on Vancouver Island.

We arrived in Patras in good time and boarded our ship, the Ionian Queen.  The Minoan Line boat that Allister is looking at is a competitor but gives an idea of the size of ship on these routes.  As with our trip to Greece, this boat was a car ferry and we had booked an inside stateroom so we could sleep on our overnight trip.

Here is another view from our ship.  Allister is looking in the direction our ship would take after departure on our way to Italy.

There are also mountains to the south of Patras and you can sure tell its December from the snow at higher elevations!

This was interesting.  A crowd of young men had gathered on the other side of our ship as we waited to depart.  You see them in the photo below just to the right of the middle of the photo. 

We asked crew members who they were and why there was military and other law enforcement so visible in the port area and were told they were immigrants trying to stowaway on a boat bound for Italy.

Dec 27, 2008 – Melissi, Greece – En route to the Patras-to- Brindisi ferry

We left Poros on the morning of December 27th and headed towards Patras where we would board our ferry to Brindisi, Italy.

Having passed through Patras on our entry to Greece, we had little appetite to spend the night there but thought it was a good idea to get within easy reach so we’d be on hand in good time to board our ship on the afternoon of the 28th.

Our goal on this day was to reach a place called Melissi on the north coast of the Peloponnese just past Corinth that would leave us with an easy 2.5 hour drive to Patras the next day.

Just out of Poros, we saw this inlet with a site that is familiar on BC’s north coast.

The Lido Hotel in Melissi was family-run and they made us feel very welcome. It was located on the waterfront but at this time was catering mostly to those spending the holidays in the area or, like us, just passing through.

Our family has a soft spot for old VW products because of Laura-Lyn’s family history.  Love of VWs seems to have passed on to Charlotte who took this photo of a fine specimen that belonged to our hosts at the Lido Hotel.