French Riviera Part 3

10 July 2008 we left the camp ground before 9 am so we were not charged for another day. I'll tell you that it is not easy getting things rolling in the morning with 2 young kids. We had to repack the car and put the rack and bikes back on, but we did it. We drove to the grocery store (Casino--they are the main stores there) and spent 2 hours in there--it is more like a super walmart, we bought so much that I worried how we would put it all away. We really stocked up on water and drinks and I found a nice plastic sand castle mould. I also bought too many pastries. Well, it was our holiday and it was France...forget the eclairs, they have much more amazing delights!

We then hit the road again.

We borrowed my MIL TomTom GPS since it had all of Europe (it had it quirks but was a life saver). It took us nicely through the traffic so we could drive (and there were some jams). While waiting there was this Rolls Royce crossing the street--there were 4 kids and no one was wearing seat belts--I guess bad things don't have to people with money (?!).

Here are other sites we saw as we drove along the coast to our destination Cannes.

Some areas reminded us of Sedona, AZ with the red rocks.

The color of the water was so lovely--you can see why this became such a popular place!

Just as we got to Cannes Niki informed us "I got to go pee" and since he is barely trained I knew we didn't have much time to park and find a WC. Günter pulled off and I took him across the street to the WC but it was a coin one (40 cents) and only took the correct coins so I kept frantically searching. Unfortunately I had to find a bush and let him do it. I couldn't deal with an accident since we didn't have laundry facilities and I didn't want pee clothes in the car. I figured people would forgive me since he was so young, but I don't think anyone even saw us! A few of the rizty hotels on the promenade:

When I got back we decided to find parking and explore a little. We found a car park (which was a problem since they have such low clearance and the camper was a bit higher than a normal SUV). But I was stunned (culture shock) as we drove past all the Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Austin Martins etc in the underground parking garage. FYI it cost us 10 euros to park for 2 hours!

Here is a link of things to see in Cannes.
Once on the famous promenade (as I felt like I should put a bag on my head because if you aren't 6 feet tall, anorexic and tan with designer clothes, you don't fit in!) the kids spied the amusement area. We let them drive a ferrari!

We walked around all the high-end stores (and didn't dare step inside) and found the pedestrian area where they had a lot of food and touristy shops. By this time Jenna was having a hard time and when we stopped to get something to eat she was near a melt down (and there wasn't a place to sit and eat). It was quite stressful since shop owners didn't like her touching anything and I wanted to look around. After eating and drinking a bit she was better, so we went on. Niki found a coin operated car to sit in and so I was looking at a shop while Günter was looking at another. Right about then Niki got out of the car and ran right across a street that had traffic in it. I yelled at him and he froze, which if the car didn't stop he would have been hit for sure. It was quite a scare and I really hammered into him about not crossing unless an adult was there with him. He must have understood since he said, "The car almost hit me and I could be dead like the bird on the side walk." Yes. This lead into another conversation about death.

After a few hours until we found the Etap hotel that is by Grasse (our destination) but still part of the Cannes suburbs (Mougins). Etap is an affordable way (68 euros) to stay at a hotel. It is one price for a room and it has a double bed and bunk above it (we had to be creative to make it work for 4). the bathroom is a plastic unit--like in a motor home with the toliet and shower all together. But it is clean and soooo nice to be in a real bed and have a good shower! (And that is the first thing we did once we got everything in the room. I would recommend it for travels in France.

The next day 11 July we headed out to see if we could find a laundrymat but sadly they all told us it would be a 3 day turn around and the selfserve where shut down. So we headed to the perfume factory in Grasse. There are three main ones advertised everywhere but we stopped at the first we came across Galimard. This region is famous for the perfumes and apparently make 80% of the world's perfume then ship it to companies to be placed in their bottles and marketed under their names.

They showed us how the lavendar (and other flowers) are distilled or flowers like roses have to sit in fat to get extract the oils. There is a man that is call "the nose" and can identify any of the 2,000 sents that may be in a certain perfume. He earns 2% of all the profits of perfumes from their company--he is quite weathly! Of course they tried to sell us perfume (in plain bottles) but I couldn't give up 40 euros for such a small amount. Next year the popular sent will be cranberry.

Then we headed to the Gottes caves.
They told us we couldn't use flashes so my pictures are not good.

The kids did fairly well, all things considered. They weren't as interested in it even though I tried to tell them about stalagmites and stalagtites--ha ha. Jenna was more interested in the lavendar by the parking lot.

We headed to McDonalds (surprise) for dinner and playground, so I could research our next stage of the trip.

On the way to the hotel we drove through Grasse--another medieval town.

Back to the hotel for pillow fights and going to bed for a good nights sleep.

Posted by Krista at July 25, 2008 09:04 AM