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Published: July 29th 2006
The Twilight Zone
Driving in the eye of the storm from Provence to Cote D'Azur. The temp went from 40C to 18C!On our last day in Provence, when it hit 40/104 degrees, Wendy and I decided look for cooler weather so we figured the south of France has got to be better, plus you have water, right? The one thing we didn’t seem to factor in was that it was Bastille Day weekend, so everyone was vacationing that weekend and it seems that they were all in the French Riviera. But, after a lot of searching, we found an open room in a small town called Biot, outside of Antibes. It sounded nice so we booked it and headed out for our long day of driving south.
Halfway through our drive it seems that we entered the twilight zone. All of a sudden it started to get dark and cloudy and was even darker in the distance. A slight drizzle started and the temperature began to drop. Next came MAJOR thunder and lightening and then we drove into the biggest storm I’ve driven in since New Years Eve in Tahoe two years ago. Wendy told me about growing up in the south and how these storms happened all the time, but as I was gripping the steering wheel for dear life
Biot
View from our room. and watching the sky light up with huge bolts of lightening, it didn’t seem to make me feel better. The temp outside went from 38 to 18 within a half hour! Wendy continued to commentate; “Yes, it looks like we’re almost in the eye of the storm now.” Still not making me feel better.
Then, the rain subsided. The wind died down. The skies opened up and the radio started playing American music and the DJs were speaking English! I kid you not. It was the strangest experience ever. We looked at the license plate in front of us to make sure it was still French!
We got to our hotel, and it had air conditioning so that was good enough for us. We had no clue where we were or what the story was on Biot, but we didn’t care. We unpacked, headed up to town and to our surprise it was super cute. We loved it. And, we were even more excited to find out that the next night was the Bastille Ball in town! The tree (where the sign was posted) invited us to join the locals tomorrow night. What fun!
The next day
we headed to Antibes to check out the beach and to figure out how to dump the car and get back to Paris. Wendy was going back to London, and since I didn’t have a clue where I wanted to go next in my trip, I decided Paris sounded pretty good because I could see the rest of the city and figure out the rest of my game plan. Once our travel plans were in order, we went down to the beach. . .
. . . THE French Riviera. Ick! Ok, maybe we weren’t there at the right time, and maybe we weren’t in the right place, but this was my version of Hell. Tons of people set up like sardines on lounge chairs along the beach, tons of people in the water (with no surf whatsoever) and vendors selling hats, sarongs, watches and who knows what else along the beach. I’ll take Laguna any day over this, thank you very much.
That night we had a splendid night at the Biot Bastille Day Ball. Wendy and I cracked open a bottle of champagne and spent the evening watching the entertainment: Our hot Ricky Martin look-alike waiter.
Oh yeah, there was a DJ and dancing there too.
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kat
non-member comment
Nice view~
OOOH and your room view is nice too;)