  We awoke in Grenoble (6 hours south of Paris) to a stunning day. The compromise for this trip was 'a little bit of alps...a little bit of coast...' and we were definitely ticking off the first part!  After procuring our Covid approved breakfast (masks on, hand sanitiser everywhere, no food 'spread' but plenty of options behind the glass fridge doors) we sat outside to eat and to plan out our next moves. We'd already decided before leaving that the aim would be to spend a week covering the French Riviera from Marseille to Nice however we had deliberately not booked too many hotels in advance in case we ran into quarantine issues! Rough ideas on my utterly overdone google maps (Yellow Pins for places I've been, green for 'wants', blue for fantastic riding roads and pink for this trip) Today we're aiming for the coast - to a secluded little coastal town called Carry-le-Rouet, but before we do that - Lou has found a remarkable piece of French roadtrip advice. There's a series of roads between Grenoble and Cannes which mark the path Napoleon marched his army from Cannes to Grenoble, and then onto eventually lose the battle of Waterloo in Belgium. Unfortunately Cannes is near Nice which is our final destination later in the week, so for today we can only follow along part of the way to Gap. https://www.dangerousroads.org/europe/france/3450-route-napoleon.html Obligatory statue, shot on Lou's iphone whilst flying past at 130kms...  We sailed through more alps, Left Hand Drive now seeming perfectly natural, trying not to spend too much time looking out the windows!   After a tasty lunch in Gap (masks and sanitiser on arrival, waiters in masks, no need outside) we had a quick walk and continued on our way. Coming from the UK where shopping centres have one way lanes set up, and stores have 2m 'socially distanced' tape both outside for lining up and inside for spacing out customers, it seemed like Corona had barely made it here.    The pictures don't do justice to the truly immense size of the mountains off in the distance and the vibrant blue of the glacial melt rivers. We arrived late in the afternoon at the coast - at a tiny town called Carry-le-Rouet.   And having had a massive lunch we settled in for a small dinner plus icecreams and beer!  So we made it, two long...ish... days of driving on the wrong side of the road - Lou madly trying to coordinate reading the GPS and reminding me to stay on the right at roundabouts, plus my constantly asking her to take photos! 
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |