Cote D'Azure - What must these people do for work?

If you ever wish to feel ordinary, come to the Cote d’Azure (French Rivera)... From the beautiful houses, cars, boats and people to the crystal turquoise colour of the Mediterranean Sea this place is everything you will ever see in a magazine designed to sell people dream holidays in rich-ville. There are of course only two ways that you should visit this exquisite location; by flying in your own helicopter and landing on your recently acquired several hundred foot ship (penis extension), or of course arriving in your 1989 Volkswagen Transporter motorhome conversion that is being held together by very conspicuous but very sturdy black tape (more on that later).


Our first stop in this part of France was St Tropez, a fairly small town that seems to have a fairly hearty hatred of campervans touring the area. Unfortunately we struck St Tropez in the middle of what seemed to be the busiest day that the town has ever experienced with traffic slowed to a ridiculous crawl and Buck’s chance of getting a parking spot for a car let alone a much longer camper. After a little swearing and a declaration of hatred from Jamie against the town, we made it back out again and finally found a camp ground which we were happy with. Quite excited, we jumped out and went to speak to the reception where they told us that there was a three night minimum stay without exception. This renewed Jamie’s feelings about the town so we told them politely that we wouldn’t be staying, and moved on. Finally we found a camp ground that looked to be someone who owned a farm, but wanted to cash in on the tourism aspect of the place. We crashed there for 21Euro and drank away the tough times that this town had given us. The next day was much nicer, we were able to find a car park in town and have a walk around to see the sites. It was quite nice, and I would say the town would be much more pleasant if we were travelling by train and staying in hotels, we can’t have it our way all the time...

Next stop was Cannes..... well it was Cannes. We drove through this town hoping to find a spot for some free camping but the local Council was pretty strict on Campervans as well, so we ended up driving straight through the town. Although we drove through, we still saw what an amazing place this is. Yes, it’s famous for the Cannes Film Festival that draws all the A-list celebs from around the world, but this place is much more of a beach town and general holiday destination for Europeans. It’s comparable to the Gold Coast, but without the high rises on the beach, and with more rocks instead of sand.

We ended up stopping at a town between Cannes and Nice which was just perfect. We were 500m from the beach and 400m from a supermarket which is like gold to us. The camp ground was really nice and full of young people, which was cool. We also had 24 hours use of the WiFi which was the icing on the cake as we’ve been relying on McDonalds to provide us with their free WiFi for most of the trip and I think the McFlurrys are having a direct effect on my ability to put my boardies on without undoing the drawstring, think I’ll have to buy new ones.... Anyway, getting up early and going for a swim in the ocean has to be one of my favourite things about holidays and is becoming a habit. It’s fairly easy when the water temperature is around the 27 degree mark, kind of like jumping into a big spa!

We caught the bus into Nice and had a look around town. It’s much like we expected, and seemed to be the poorer cousin of Cannes, in saying that, it had its fair share of Ferraris and Maserati’s driving around. The sea again was an amazing shade of blue that is reminiscent of the colour of the alpine lakes in New Zealand but was obviously so much more pleasant to swim in. We had lunch out at a water front restaurant which was bloody ordinary and left us wishing we’d stuck to our staple of baguette with an assortment of meats and salad, nevermind.

After a couple of days chilling out, we moved on to Monaco. There are not enough superlatives to describe this place. If Nice is the poor cousin of Cannes, then Monaco is that rich cousin that puts the rest of the family to shame by arriving by helicopter on the previously mentioned penis extension. We have never seen such a concentration of expensive, high powered and simply astonishing cars. Of course this drew slight embarrassment as we were driving through Monaco in Callum, although he’s a great little bloke, he seemed to shrink as we were driving through these streets of gold. We found a car park on the side of a main road which we decided to use as our camp ground for the night knowing we’d be safe, but probably wouldn’t get much sleep. After a day of walking around the marina’s checking out the endless lines of multi-million dollar boats we did what every person should do when they go to Monaco. We went to the Monte Carlo Casino. This was THE spot for the cars to be seen. There must have been 50 of the most expensive cars in the world from the lowly Porche to a couple of Maybachs and even a Bugatti Veyron. Thats right, for anyone who watches Top Gear (Rickie J Cook), we touched a real live Veyron, and yes, it looks incredible!

Anyway, I’ve dribbled on enough for this session. Will try and put something up sooner this time, and will speak more of the sticky tape issue with Callum.

A&J xoxo