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Published: June 30th 2017
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Geo: 43.216, 5.53863
Our last morning at L'Epicerie. At breakfast, there was another woman who had the most delightful story.
She was in town to look for a place for her wedding in August. She'd ended up finding a darling chateau that
happened to be available for her weekend, and which happened to have about the right number of rooms, and which happened to be less expensive than the place she originally thought she wanted. Talk about your serendipity!
After a little challenge in figuring out how to pay for the parking garage (not at the exit, as you might think....we had to go upstairs to an office to pay first), we were on our way. Rather than head straight back to Nice (our flight was the following day), we decided to take our time getting back. The fact that we had a bit of trouble actually getting out of Aix-en-Provence took some of that time. You know, little things like "Is that a one-way?" and "Will I be able to make that turn?".
But we made it, and were on our way to Cassis. It was raining, which dampened the prospects of our chosen activities a bit -- for example, the boat that does tours of the calanques wasn't operating. I was fully expecting to see blackcurrant items all over the place (you know.....because we were in Cassis?), but I didn't see anything. I was terribly disappointed.
An attempt to locate a geocache was a bust, and then I slipped on a slimy algae-covered concrete slab, and went down hard. Owie.
Well, Dejo knew of some gorges in the area -- like a small version of the Grand Canyon -- so we figured we'd drive through that region on our way back.
First, let's swing by the Carrefour that I saw the sign for. Just around this bend....and that corner....and through this town.....and down this hill......and past that school..... We did eventually find it (or one -- maybe it wasn't the one we saw the sign for), and grabbed some Kinder Surprise and Haribo to take home, and picked up a couple of paninis for lunch.
Did we mention it was raining? Well, as we neared the gorges, that rain started to thicken. If I didn't know better, I'd say it looked like it was turning to......
Snow.
Somehow, that didn't jive with my image of "southern France". Yes, I know (
now) that it happens, but I really wasn't prepared for it. Not mentally, certainly not in terms of my wardrobe.
But it wasn't sticking, so we'll just keep heading up the road....this road that's turning into a twisty sort of mountain road. And.....it's starting to stick.
With no idea of how much further we had to go before we crested the summit, and since we hadn't seen another car in ages, AND we couldn't see anything more than about 50 feet away due to the snow and clouds, AND since we were in a car with which we were fairly unfamiliar, we decided to call it. We turned around, and found our way back to the A8, direction Nice.
We made a small detour to find a place where Dejo could take a picture with an M6202 sign (M6202 being a road out of Nice, and 6202 Cycling Club being the name of the group that Dejo rides with).
With a 5 am wakeup call, we weren't interested in staying out too late or venturing very far, so we hit a place near the hotel (this time, the Mercure Nice Promenade des Anglais Hotel), and made it an early night.
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