Thursday, September 19th - Day 9 Nice - Villefranche-sur-Mer School and Monaco

In the morning, Deb was not sure at first about the house - the bathroom and kitchen had not been cleaned for one thing.  We made a quick visit to Cagnes-sur-Mer, just west of the Nice airport, to check out the location of a potential rental - a nice condo near the street along the waterfront.  We stopped for coffee and a delicious (and very reasonable) breakfast, complete with fresh squeezed orange juice, down the street.  In the end, rethinking things, we decided to go back to the Eze house and never regretted it!  In the meantime, we enjoyed driving through Nice - the old town with its charming old balconied hotels.  

In the afternoon we went to Villefranche where, in Feb-Mar 1977,  Deb spent 2 months at the Institut de Francais.  It was exciting to go back and relive memories.  The only entrance was a locked door in a high stone wall but luckily a woman was coming out as we stood there.  Deb explained she was a former student and we were let in.  The stairs up to the building and gardens looks pretty much just the same.  Quite a fancy institution then and now.

Villefranche Harbor

Then we carried on past Eze on to Monaco.  Georges told us the closest place to get groceries was in Monaco - just a few minutes away.  Monaco was a crowded, confusing tangle of streets, directions, turnarounds, and the few minutes turned into almost an hour!!!  The supermarket was vast and we spent a lot of time just finding a few bottles of water.  But it had everything you could want or imagine.  Needless to say, we resolved to find a grocery store near us - not in Monaco for sure.  We returned to the sanctuary of our hillside retreat - exhausted and ready to eat and go to bed!  The huge Carrefour supermarket had fresh sardines so we got a dozen of them for our dinner and they were good!