An American in Provence

Alain and I went to San Remo, Italy for a long weekend.
This was our third time going. The first time was in August 2006 for our "honeymoon", the second time was in August 2008 (posts 1 2 3 4). We didn't go in 2007 because Alain spent the month of August working on the apartment and I took a week off to remove wallpaper. Oh that was fun.

Anyway, back to our trip.

We left Thursday night, after work, a bit later than we had planned (lots of last-minute packing and checking the car) but finally got on the road at about 8. I drove for the first hour and a half, until we got to Cannes at around 9:30. We stopped at a rest stop overlooking the bay of Cannes and had our sandwiches. (Another "is this really my life? Am I really in the South of France, overlooking Cannes, on my way to the Italian Riviera for vacation?" moment)

Alain then took over driving, which was good because I still can't see very well at night (because of my eye operation- I am going to demand a prescription for glass for driving next time I see my eye doctor). The highway between Nice and San Remo is filled with tunnels, which were all having work done, meaning that we kept going from bright spotlights to pitch black. Also, the Italians seem to have invented a trick for barrelling down the highways at night. Every 30 seconds or so, they flash their bright lights to see whether anything is in their way, drive at top speed for as far as they could see, then flash their brights again. Not fun for everyone else.
We finally arrived in San Remo at about 11 pm, brought everything in, and went to bed.

The next morning we got up at around 9, went to the grocer y store, then headed up into the mountains. It was a bit of an overcast day, and rained off and on. We arrived in Triora, a small village perched in the mountains, had lunch, wandered around a bit, then bought some cheese and bread. We followed some signs pointing to a chapel, only to discover it was a ruin from 1390. We took a different road back, driving through towns such as Castel Vittorio, Apricale, and Perinaldo, finally getting back to San Remo around 6 pm. We had a very Italian meal of pasta, pesto, olive oil, cheese, Chianti wine, then headed to the center of town for ice cream. Came back and fell asleep, exhausted, around 10:30.

On Saturday we again woke up around 9:30, went to the market, marvelled at the plethora of fake designer items for sale, stopped at an internet cafe to check email and have a cappuccino, then went back home for lunch. Alain had to check his email in order to find out whether he had to be back in Marseille to work on Monday or whether we could stay an extra day or two. Answer yes- had to work Monday and Tuesday. Bummer.