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Today, we took a guided tour via mini-van covering a large portion of the French Riviera. Our driver picked us up at our hotel in the morning, and then picked up another family of 4 from Belgium. The tour guide and most of the other family spoke English, so most of the tour was going to be understandable for us. That was a big relief.

The tour started out from Nice and headed to the east where we stopped and took pictures from a town called Villefranche. From there, we could see an entire harbor and town. Bill Gates supposedly owns an entire peninsula of that harbor, including three houses, private docks, and a heliport.

From there, we went to a hilltop fortified village called Eze. Very pretty views, but the weather was still a bit cloudy in the morning, so we didn’t see them in all their splendor. On the way out of Eze, we stopped on the obligatory perfume factory tour. You don’t really have a choice to stop or not, and we’re pretty sure the tour company and perfume company are in kahoots. They lead you around the factory and then conveniently end the tour in the gift shop. We managed to get out of there without buying anything.

At that point, it was on to Monaco / Monte Carlo. The city of Monte Carlo is very small, only 1 square mile. The country of Monaco is the second smallest in the world, behind only the Vatican. Remnants of the grandstands for the Monte Carlo Grand Prix were still awaiting disassembly, but you could still tell where the race circuit wove through the city, so that was kind of neat. The casino itself was closed during the morning, so we didn’t get to see that. However, the city itself is very pretty and you can pretty much smell the money in the air.

After leaving Monaco we headed back west towards Antibes and Cannes. During the stop in Antibes, we visited their harbor. There, we saw some of the largest privately owned yachts in the world. Very cool.

After that stop, we headed to Cannes along the sea. The drive into the city itself wasn’t all that great, but the city is very nice once you are in it. The shopping district is definitely on the high end and most shops are very pricey. The main Cannes Film Festival Palace is really just a convention center that gets used year round. Not really much to see from that standpoint.

Finally, on the way back to Nice, we stopped in Saint Paul de Vence. It’s another fortified city on a hill. While it was billed as an artist’s community and had lots of galleries, none of the art was all that compelling. In all, it was a pretty place to visit, but not our favorite site of the day.

With that, we ended the tour, and the driver returned us to our hotel. She was a great guide and her English was flawless, making it very easy to understand. She had lots of information, and I’m sure we learned more about the region this way than if we had tried to visit any of those places on our own.

For now, that probably does it from the Riviera. Tomorrow, we fly to Paris for a day and a half, and then to Barcelona after that. We’ll try to update the site again from there. Till then, au revoir.

p.s. There are more pictures in the gallery.