On the road again. Deduced our way out of Florence--loving those roundabouts of countless lanes that are not treated as lanes. We headed for Pisa, really only to see the tower of course.
Driving around Pisa, we couldn't seem to find the tower nor signs for it, so we pulled over and asked two obvious backpackers whose reply caused us to blush: "Um...it's right there." We followed their pointing and yes, there it was.
Found a place to park, walked to the tower. Took pictures.
Bought some souvenirs. Tried to get some food without cash and therefore, without success. Drove away from Pisa. Stopped at a restaurant. Decided not to eat there, but bought some more grappa.
Driving along from Pisa back towards France was gorgeous. Very high and somewhat scary highways with amazing views. But I hit a point where I couldn't drive anymore and finally took a turn to nap in the backseat.
Stopped for some service station food and then I was back at the wheel headed for the border. As we neared the end of Italy we sensed our need to arrange some place to stay that night. Turning back to Judy's Rick Steves' so far reliable accommodation recommendations, we selected a couple places along the Côte d'Azur to call. All gathered around a payphone, we were able to make arrangements at a hotel in this Riviera region of France.
But before we would get to France, we had the privilege of going through Monaco too!
There was time, so we decided to go on down into Monte Carlo for dinner. Here we are trying to look cool overlooking the boats. High society.
Had some ok crepes, laughed with our waiter as multi-lingualism seemed a necessity in this place.
Then back onward and upward to Villefranche-sur-Mer and to our quad room at Hôtel La Flore that proved to be perfect, although lugging our bags up stairs was really getting old by now. Here's the view from our ceiling window:
Finally we reached our beach holiday. Although we'd have to wait until morning to enjoy the pool and the seaside. We had to take advantage of our very French looking hotel desk guy's computer and printer while we figured out where we wanted to drive over the next couple days. We consulted Rick Steves' again and chose a small town in Burgundy with wine cellars for our next stop and were able to book a room there. After our first France driving experience, we learned that national mapquest-style directions were the best method and so we printed off a French online direction giver with the hotel guy's help. While we were at it, we figured we should get directions printed off for the final leg of the trip too. As prepared as we could be and having driven through as many countries as we possibly could have that day, we went to bed.
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