NICE!

We made it to Nice! What a thrill!

But arriving in Nice is a shock. Suddenly we are in a lively, sunny city after months since our last city experience in Nancy. But do not worry, we are adjusting, but have to pinch each other to make sure we are not dreaming. We are planning walks around the city, so that we can eat all food from the sea like we had way back in Holland.

We will stay here and rest for a few days and then travel through Italy on our way back to Frankfurt for our trip home. We plan to see our friends Darilyn and Paul in the Slovenian Alps and will report on our travels when we can.

Here are a few photos of our arrival:

Nice and the sea from the GR 5 above the city.



Rhonda in hiking gear sans boots at the beach at the foot of Boulevard Gambetta.



A toast in the cafe across the Promenade Anglais from the beach.

Barcelonnette

Yeah, you are right, we are off the trail. We got into Larche after a difficult downhill and the next morning it was raining and we did not want to chance a wet hike on steep crumbly trails and there is not much in Larch, so we got a ride here.



Barcelonnette is very interesting. It is situated in the Ubaye River Valley and is on the auto grand tour of the Alps. Lots of bicyclists taking advantage of a place where they can do seven big passes and just stay in one town. So it is very busy here, but also very historic. The town is all narrow streets and cobblestones.



There is a big Mexican influence on the area because when Mexico was a colony of France many people from this valley moved to Mexico to start a Mexican textile industry. So they have Mexican style villas, Mexican food, a street named after Porfirio Diaz, a plaque comemorating the Mexican soldiers who died fighting for France in WW I, and even a Mexican souvenir shop.



The weather is changing back to sunshine so we will be back on the trail again tomorrow for the last push to Nice. We even started looking for a place to stay there today.



Here are a few photos:



That is the knife edge Crete des Gittes.

View of the mountains from the deck at Refuge La Presset.

The kitchen at Refuge les Presset. The cook produced crudities, carbonara, fresh pears with chocolatre sauce with wine cheese and bread for 11 people who ate in the same room. By the end of the evening there were 20 people staying at the refuge all sleeping in a single room.

On the deck at i re Magi Refuge.

The three Magi on the ridge above the refuge.

View from Col de Thurs.

Lac Mirrior

Col de Mallemort, and contemplating sore feet going down.

Looking back at the Col Mallemort on the way down to Larche.

Briançon

We are here in the highest city in France enjoying the sights after some great hikes. We have photos, but the computer in this pizzaria is not cooperating. So later for more photos.

The strangest thing happened on the way from Mondane, we encountered dusty trails for the first time. And the weather has been bright and warm in the valleys, although frosty in the mornings.

We stayed a night in a place called Valfrejus, which was very interesting because it is a ski area tht had closed for the fall season. We rented a condo for the night and scrounged for bread and wine. It was a good thing we are packing enough food to last a day in the back country.

The next day we hiked over the the mountain into what was until 1947 Italy. We stayed at the Refugio i Re Magi and essentially spent a night in Italy. The next day we hiked into Plampinent, the antithisis of the ski area towns. It is nestled in a valley surrounded by terraced hay fields that are dry and full of seed pods and seed fluff. It is ancient and beautiful with pathes between the stone houses and a church dating from 1632. The trails are full of grasshoppers and butterflies. Sometimes we see four species of butterflies in a square meter, and new wildflowers amongst the the ones that have gone to seed.

The hike on into Briançon was very interesting. We climbed to Col de la Lauze through wild country. The col is on a knife edge ridge and on the other side it is ski areas almost all the way down the mountain. We hiked off and on through the day with a German couple and two Dutch men. Nice to have company on the col for lunch.

The dry terrain reminds us of the Sierras and it seems that we can almost smell the Mediterrainian.