Alpes-Maritimes - September 14, 2000

I was awakened by a very insistent rooster at 6:30 a.m. The petit dejeuner was self-service which was nice. Afterwards we left our packs downstairs while we walked about Sospel. First we walked up to the old bridge � a medieval looking affair with arches and towers and the symbol of the town. It had been bombed during the German retreat in 1944 but was rebuilt. We went onto the cathedral which was baroque with some 15th century paintings. Also there were an amazing number of saint reliquaries, mostly bones, including a jawbone of Clemitis in the center. At the top of the town we saw the ruins of the castle and some Roman ruins. From here we crossed down to the bridge again, and through an old alley which had been on the salt route. Salt had been very important in the Middle Ages for the preservation of food and apparently it was brought up from the sea along this route. On the route was an old pillar surmounted by a capital with a dog, from the 15th century. At the "boules" park there was now a market which sold everything from food and clothing to diamonds. There was one vendor who had a pizza type oven on wheels and made a wonderful variety of pizza with onions and olives and a chickpea crepe called socca. We headed back to the hotel where we picked up our packs and to the bus station.

Right on time at 13:00, a small bus pulled up. The passengers were mostly elderly people and there was a man who looked like the simpleton in "Jeanne de la Florette" in the seat adjacent to us. The trip to Menton was amazing for the number of hairpin turns which the driver negotiated at speeds I wouldn't dare in a car. At one point we passed an ancient stone arched aqueduct. It was mountainous and rocky all the way to Menton and to the Mediterranean.

We had culture shock right away being in such a metropolitan center after petite mountain villages. We disembarked and walked down the main drag to find tourist information which was in English and we located a hotel to the east of town. We walked along the shore which like Nice was rocky � small stones � and not sandy. There was a promenade which bent around the old village on a hill and then led out to where Hotel Orly was located.

We dumped our stuff and walked back through a busy commercial and tourist district one street back from the promenade. After a leisurely afternoon, we went out for dinner, opting for an Italian restaurant. Bon was fascinated by the table next to ours where there was a man about 50 with a much younger wife and two girls about 17 and 12. The little one, sitting next to her dad, wanted to please but didn't like the paella and ended up crying. Then she switched places with her older sister. The father never stopped talking and pretty soon the older sister ended up crying as well. I watched a younger couple. The young woman looked very Italian and out of the movie, "The Garden of the Fitzi Continis." She was slim, fashionably dressed, made up, coifed and was elegant with a long nose. However, when she got to her spaghetti, she ate it directly from the plate! There was a very large Madame who waited on us with a skinny young male assistant. After dinner we walked through the restaurant district looking unsuccessfully for a dessert and eventually headed back to the hotel and to bed.