Of oxcart tracks and other steep places... Troisieme Part

Finally getting the hang of this driving around the French Riviera thing, we struck out for the pretty little border town called Menton.  We'd heard that things might be a little dead there, what with Covid sprouting out all over this part of France, and such.

Tappity tap tap tap into the GPS goes an address and the English accented bint starts telling us where to go.  So go we obediently did.

 

Taking the Upper Corniche to avoid the really twisty narrow roads that snake their way along the coast.  There were still  plenty of things to see inland.  Take pine trees, for instance.  Hadn't seen pine trees like these in forever.  Scrawny little things.  Hunched against dry granite hills.

Off the A8/Upper Corniche and down the valley into Menton, with the Lamborghini repair shop just off the street on the right.  Two or three cars were parked on the sidewalks, no doubt waiting attention from either owners picking them up or awaiting repairs inside the garage.  Pretty little things, those cars, though a bit out of our budget range.

Left turn onto a narrow narrow snakey shaped track and up onto the heights of Menton we go.  In the narrowest parts we have, again, inches of room to spare on each side of the rear view mirrors.  Someday we'll get used to this.

The view from the Old Chateau was reputed to be something special, so that was our destination.  

We'd been in Menton around the lower portions of the town last year.  It's where we might have caught Covid.  The regional train, actually, there and back had been filled with coughing/hacking/wheezing folk and, well, little did we know how dangerously we were all living at the time.

The road around that part of town was good for one car going either direction, but not two.  Passing and being passed could've been an interesting exercise had it not been for the lack of too many people being out and about.

After a spot opened up we parked the Prius and took the easy walk into the cemetery of Menton at the Old Chateau.  The monuments are typical Italianate nearly Roccoco structures.  The colors, when there are some, are garish.  The wrought iron is nearly always twisted into pretty shapes.  The view is fabulous from up there at the top of the hill.  Things (and people) were, indeed, more than a little dead up there in the brace sea fresh air.

It made us wonder how it is that the dead got the best views in town and the living had to huddle against the hill and in many cases see practically nothing.

[More photos can be seen here]