We got up extra early this morning as we had planned a road trip to St. Paul de Vence, Grasse and to drive up a portion of the Route Napoleon in the mountains. I ran to the bakery to grab us a quick breakfast and lunch for a picnic on the road and we headed to the parking garage to retrieve the rental car and discovered the rear drivers side window (the small back one not the main back window) was smashed in. Uggh. We called the rental company and they said to bring it by the airport rental location and get it exchanged. That was more or less on our way out of town so we loaded up all of our stuff and headed to drop off the car. I was worried it was going to be a big hassle but in all reality they had the paperwork filled out and had us in a new car in 30-45 minutes tops.

Finally we got on our way out of Nice towards St. Paul de Vence which is a mountain top medieval walled city in the beginnings of the mountains north of Nice. We fought a bit with the car GPS and Google but got there pretty quickly. After parking we walked up the hill and into the city. Imagine a castle perched on top of a hill but this is an entire village that is surrounded by the main walls. We wandered the narrow streets and found the cathedral which was small and understated but very pretty.  Becky found her favorite thing in France a “Toilette Publique” (read her blogs for more on this) so we took a quick pit stop. The town was a bit crowded with tourist groups but overall it was a nice peaceful stroll through the narrow and winding village streets. We made our way to an area marked as an overlook and boy was it. You could see all the way down to the Antibes area and the Mediterranean Sea and all the hilly country in between.  After taking a few pictures we went down to the cemetery where we gleaned a few things from the tour group in front of us. They grow olive trees in this area and also pepper trees (the crushed leaves smell just like fresh ground pepper). We also learned that Marc Chagall was buried here with his family. There was another overlook at the end of the cemetery and then we made our way back through the village and back to the car.

From here we headed towards Grasse but when we got there we caught the “Route Napoleon” road which follows the route that Napoleon took through the mountains to reclaim France when he escaped imprisonment in 1815. We headed north for a bit and as it was around noon stopped at an overlook and had a picnic lunch. After lunch and enjoying the views we headed further north for a while as the road wound its way through the mountains and small towns (a bit like driving around Newton County or out in Colorado). We stopped a few more times and turned back to Grasse.

After arriving in Grasse and fighting the GPS a few more times we found the Fragonard perfume factory (Grasse is famous as a center for perfumes) which we planned to tour. We got parked and found the factory which also includes a small museum. We went first through the museum which shows perfume making implements and techniques through the ages. After that we headed down to the factory for a tour where we waited for a few minutes for the english tour guide. I can’t say I learned all that much new but it was interesting to hear about how they extract the fragrances from flowers and other spices, etc to create the final perfumes and colognes. The end of the tour of course is a demonstration of their perfumes to buy in their shop but again it was interesting to smell them and have her tell us a bit about what “flavors” were involved in making the particular scent. Becky found one she liked that was made from local jasmine flowers so we got a small bottle. After we finished there we went through the old town of Grasse and saw the WW1 memorial and the cathedral from the outside (it was closed). They also had a beautiful overlook as Grasse is up on a mountain top as well. We grabbed a couple of drinks and headed back to the car to return to Nice.

On  the way home we wanted to A) try and find a scenic route and B) save money for tolls (plus we didn’t have much change on us) so we put no tolls in the GPS and Google and we decided to go with Google which looked like the more likely route. We had a few misses on some of the turns and the route included at least 439 roundabouts of varying sizes (plus or minus 1 or 2). We finally got to Antibes and figured out the way to the coastal road with not much thanks to Google or the car GPS. Once on that road it was pretty straight forward getting home. This time instead of parking in the Cours Saleya parking garage like last time I decided that we would park in the Palais de Justice parking garage and try our luck with a little justice parking. Fingers crossed as we only have the car one more day.

After dropping off our stuff at the apartment we went to find dinner. Turns out it is a drizzly rainy night so we decided on a pizza place we had read about and each got a humongous pizza and a mozzarella salad to share. Even stuffed we grabbed our traditional ice cream. I think between us we have tried about half of the total flavors. Tomorrow will be a drive to Eze, Cap Ferrat and possibly a last trip to Monaco.