Travel day from Avignon to Villefranche sur mer
Trip Start
May 18, 2007
1
29
62
Trip End
Jul 18, 2007
Villefranche sur mer,
France
Thursday, June 14, 2007
We got up early so we could grab an early croissant breakfast and hopeful for some last minute shopping before catching our TGV train to the French Riviera.
After a quick breakfast, and one of the cheaper ones of the trip but all carbohydrates (!), we roamed around our hotel area picking up a few souvenirs of Provence, and attempted to send a box home to the US. This did not work out too well as the French siesta was in full gear (12-2 the post office shuts down) so we had to repack our bags to fit all the goodies inside. This was quite a lot of work as we had to FORCE the stuff BACK into the already over-stuffed Columbia Sportswear roller bags, pushing us to all-time record weights of these bags. We remained hopeful that our next destination had a decent lift and limited staircases
Hotel Riviera bathroom - Villefranche sur mer
.We managed to repack everything and lugged our mega-bags into the taxi and off to the train station for a fairly short journey to Villefranche sur mer, France. The train was a bullet TGV but did not move as fast as the other day, still fast enough, dropping us into Antibes in precisely 3 hours. According to the conductor, we were to catch our last connection of the day, on the same platform, in ~6 minutes. However, we watched the train come and go....the conductor made a mistake. Fortunately, Laurie found a very helpful and nice French woman who spoke good English. She had a current train schedule which she went over with Laurie and actually gave to us for our journey. We ended up only waiting a few minutes for the next "milk-run" train and arrived in 30 minutes to Villefranche sur mer.
We arrived to the train station without directions to the hotel but figured this town was small enough that we could follow our noses. We followed our noses up and down and up and down again, with the roller bags pushing us along, and found the gorgeous waterfront to walk along to the taxi stand. The driver looked at our directions, as the sweat poured off our bodies, and pointed UP and said "this is only up there!". We explained that we wanted the taxi ride and after his "only up there" statement, we did not bother to warn him of the strength he needed to lift the bags into his car and for $15 Euro to go 5 minutes, he needed to earn it! We think he almost had a heart attack after the first bag but afer a few deep grunts and groans, he got our gear into the car and dropped us quickly to our Hotel Riviera www.hotel-riviera-hrv.com
Franco at the Riviera reception, greeted us with "Halo, we expected you yesterday!"
Hotel Riviera bedroom - Villefranche sur mer
. Oy vey! We looked at each other and realized that we have no idea what day of the week it is as we have not looked at television or a newspaper in English in almost 4 wks (and are loving it!). We apologized and told him of our journey and he nicely made accommodations for us. We did not get the sea view balcony room ..... street side! We have learned that street side means loud scooters and mega autobahn all night long. We took what we could get and moved over to the lift to check out our room. Here is where it got pretty interesting. Franco told us several times to "remove your back pack". We ignored him and Franco repeated himself. Once at the lift door we understood. Hotel Riviera had recently submitted what they believe to be the world's smallest elevator in the world to the Guinness Book of World Records and are awaiting confirmation of this any day now. We are here to tell you that this wins!
There is no way that the bag AND a body can fit in the elevator and forget about the back packs! We sent up one bag at a time, hit the button, and ran upstairs to greet the elevator, unload and send it back down for the next load. As if we were not sweating at this point, we were ready for a dip in the Mediterranean to cool off!
After several trips we settled into our street-side room, cranked on the Air Conditioning and agreed that our bathroom should also be entered into the Guinness Book for the smallest in the world (not much bigger than the elevator!).
We think that this particular hotel meets all the needs we have been looking for in a hotel, except the small bathroom: free wireless connection, powerful air conditioning, spacious room, hot shower and toilet that flushes, late-night grocery store next door, post office less than 3 minutes away, Tourism office one block up the street, killer Mediterranean views only 5 minutes away, good food, art galleries, architechture, shopping and LOTS of stairs to climb -- we are happy!
Tomorrow we are off to explore Villefranche sur mer.
Today's walk: 3.4 miles
Total for the journey (152 miles, 28 days)
Love,
Ryan and Laurie
