16 February ’05, Wednesday. Cité Médiévale de Eze Monday was a lazy day, with us forcing our way out of the door for a long walk later in the afternoon, and then celebrating “Valentines Day” with a dinner. It was a tough decision to decide what we both wanted for this special days dinner. As it turned out, we popped the cork on a bottle of the bubbly, put a romantic movie in the computer, and popped pop-corn…. What a fantastic Valentines Day (night)… Tuesday, we were going to go back into Nice for the night parade. It was going to be the “Flower Parade” under lights. It all sounded good, until the weather made up it’s mind and turned COLD !!! Fact is, too cold for us to go out for a night parade. After waiting up to the last minute, we made the hard decision to stay home. The days have been sunny and warm, and the nights…well, they have turned cold. Today we decided to un-hitch “Bumble Bee” again and this time head down the coast road toward Nice, Eze,
Monte Carlo, Menton, and then into Italy and visit San Remo. We drove to San Remo with a couple of stops for “photo ops” and when we got there we had a wonderful “Italian” pasta lunch. One of the reasons for going back to Italy, was to try in find one of the grocery stores that we have found some great values in…”Lidl”. Unfortunately, we didn’t find Lidl, but we did find a good substitute, so we loaded our shelves and refrigerator up with all kinds of goodies. The ride along the coast road, which followed the shoreline of the Mediterranean, was breath taking. Not only because of the winding and twisting of the road above the water, but also because of the unbelievable villages that sit on the slopes of the hills, the beaches, outstanding homes, castles, fortresses, and everything else that the French Riviera offers. It was very difficult not to stop beside the road every 50 yards or so because of the “Oh, Did You See That??? Besides the stops we made for pictures, we stopped in San Remo and Eze. San Remo was nice, and the lunch was great, but Eze…even better.
It has a long history dating back to the 13th century. It is more than another fortified village, although that is exactly what it is. I guess that what I saw in it was the completeness of the past. This village, sitting high above the Mediterranean, surrounded with it’s defensive walls, passageways winding up and around the interior and reaching out with little entryways into the living quarters , lots of restaurants, little shoppes, and a magnificent church.
The highest point of the village is the “look-out point”, and boy does it ever have a wonderful out-look from there. Each and every stone that has been used to restore (and I’m sure that there has been some restoring), was done with such talent, that it is hard to believe that the village had been “sacked” a number of times in it’s long history. A little note, the son of King Gustav, Prince William of Sweden, had a villa here and spent their family holidays from 1923 to 1953. You would say that they knew how to enjoy their “holidays”…it is beautiful. Another note, they didn’t have running water in the village until 1952. This village is living up to it’s motto: “Moriendo Renascor” (In Death, I am Reborn).