Wednesday, September 25th - Day 15 Menton

Menton is located about 1/2 hour (though only about 12-14 km) from us almost on the border with Italy.  It is a stunning town with beautiful gardens everywhere and colorful old buildings  - all beautifully kept up.  

We headed to the waterfront of the Old Town and went to a post office to mail our ballots.  The woman who helped us spoke a bit of English and was great fun.  She said that many people were in that morning to mail U.S. ballots!

We stopped for coffee to figure out our itinerary through the old town, and for Debbie to make a few phone calls.  Great cappuccino. Great baguette purchased. The proprietor gave us a bag of merengue cookies when we went to pay - 'un petit cadeaux' was all she said!  

                                    

Menton is known for its lemons and Deb had read about a bakery that sold the best lemon bars, Mitron.  We stopped by and picked up a huge lemon bar, lemon chiffon cake, and the award-winning mandarin tart - as made by famous chef Mauro Colgrecos, owner of Le Mirazur, a 3-star Michelin restaurant.

The walk back to our car took us through lovely scenic streets.  Menton was the best town we have visited on the Cote D'Azur!

Amazingly, when Munroe posted the photo of him handing the ballots to the postal worker in La Poste to Facebook, one of his former professors (his first professor of political science at Acadia University in 1975) commented immediately that he and his wife stay in an apartment in Menton every winter! They'll be there in February/March this coming year!  We can certainly see why they love the town - it is slower than the rest of the Riviera, more convenient than the hill towns (with supermarkets, shops, cafes, etc.) within easy walking distance, historic (like the rest of this area), clean (unlike some of the Riviera towns), and filled with wonderful, manicured public spaces.