Soaking up some culture...and too much sun...

After a night in a stunning hotel in La Seyne sur Mer we continued our trip along the coast. By this point we were up to day 4 and beginning to run out of pre-booked hotels!
One of the things we'd been most concerned about was the UK's travel advice, whilst officially announced that the 14 day quarantine was going to be lifted, it hadn't actually taken place yet. So whilst we were able to leave the UK and enter Europe, we weren't yet able to easily do the reverse. For this reason we'd left most of the next hotels bookmarked but not booked - so if for some reason the exemption didn't lift on the 10th (today being the Thursday 9th) we could quickly exit and spend the rest of our annual leave burning off the quarantine at home.
A fun side effect of booking last minute is venues tend to drop their prices on the day of - as otherwise the room generally sits empty.
And so whilst we couldn't book the hotel we wanted in Nice until Friday / Saturday, we were able to get a B&B in the hills above in a historic town called Vence.
Powering up the mountains of the Prealps d'Azur I managed to hurt our poor rental car's clutch...but it was completely worth it for the views!

And up we continued until we were almost at the top of the Col de Vence and we arrived at our B&B. The car smelled terrible but I'd had a fantastic time! Sadly the photos we're not nearly as good at these professional shots...so lets pretend we were in a yellow 911.

https://www.getpalmd.com/2017/02/col-de-vence-best-roads-france/


Our B&B was a lovely 6 bedroom place perched on a mountainside - and unfortunately (Covid...) was fairly deserted!


Cue amazing sunset...

The next morning we bombed back down the windy road, clutch much happier descending, to check out the old town of Vence on our way to Nice.

But as the midday sun rolled overhead and the 30c temperatures cooked the tiny alleyways we raced back to the air-conditioned car and made a break for Nice.
After braving the big city traffic we checked in, quick nap, wait for the temperature to drop a little and headed out to explore!
Our hotel was one of them...

Monument to the French who died in WW1 & WW2:

And a monument to wearing masks in public:

To cap off an amazing day we had a rooftop dinner at the hotel, where our snacks and bread came in covid safe bags!

The next day we were down to the hotel's beach club at the crack of...11...and they were full. After a short bike ride using the local bikes (€1.50 to join + 99c /hr) we decided cycling in 30c heat was probably a bad idea!


Luckily there's paid lounge/bars all along the beach so the next one we stopped at happy to have us!

We stayed all day! And moved 4 seats back to the restaurant for dinner!

And as always...killer sunset...

That's all for today...tomorrow...Monoco!