We recently felt we'd reached our James Watt limit of Village Perche'. Seen one? Seen them all. And, yes, we still hate that idiot James Watt. But that's not the point of this tale.
We were coming down to the end of our Winter Stay along the cote d'Azur. In the interest of keeping the Prius' battery charged, we decided to get one more visit in before heading north to certain re-confinement dans la region Parisienne.
There was a magazine in the apartment where we are staying has a nice little article on the village perche' that surround Nice. We looked at one called Peillon to visit. It's just 20 minutes from the apartment. Further up the Alps is a sister village perche' called Peille.
Consulting the maps and considering the terrain, we saw that both are rather steeply situated. After visiting Sainte Agnes we were a little leery of goat paths narrower than two goat rumps in width.
Using Google maps street level I took a virtual drive up to Peillon and wow! that's one narrow and steep road. The road to Peille, on the other hand, looked to be bit, if only a little, more "do able." So Peille it would be.
We passed Peillon on our way out of town and were very glad we'd not tried to climb that road. That's one seriously "perched" village! The way it juts out into the valley high up on granite crags is very impressive, even from the road below.
Perhaps we'd made the right decision? We squeezed past at a roaring 2km/hr an on-coming dump truck that was decending the goat herd path. It was a little dicey. But nothing was damaged. Nothing was scrapped. We are slowly getting used to this kind of thing.
It turns out Peille is one of the nicest village perche' we've thus far visited. It feels lived in. It's empty of Bobo Super Chic art galleries and Michelin Starred Restaurants are either hiding or are simply not there. It was like a breath of Fresh Alpine Aire.
The Principality of Monaco still has influence there. Parks and paths and memorials to the Prince and Princesses were surprisingly numerous.
Being the geeks we are, Judith and I were more impressed by the fact that the early langue d'Oc is still spoken there. A man who learned the langue d'Oc from his mother now, in turn, teaches the language to schoolchildren.
What makes this a geeky subject is that the langue d'Oc is a very close descendant of plebeian, working class Romans. Of course Italian, French, and Spanish are descendant languages of Latin. Perhaps the langue d'Oc hews closer to the original Roman language? It could be interesting to find out the answer to that.
Wouldn't you know it? The very next day it was announced that all of France would require attestations to travel farther than 10 kilometers. Sure, if you tested negative to CV19 you could climb on an airplane and fly to any country around the world that would accept you. But travel more than 10km regardless of test results? No can do. C'est interdit. Zut!
The question was, do we head north to uncertain restrictions and changing circumstances or stay in Nice for another month. The new restrictions were to last at least three weeks.
For the second year in a row and for the very same reason (ie: we're in the middle of a pandemic) we decided to extend our stay in Nice.
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