50. Museo Ferrari - Maranello, Modena

Paul celebrated his birthday on 2 July as we drove across the industrial north of Italy.

Birthday stop No.1 was a little detour to the Ferrari museum in Maranello, just out of Modena.  We had visited the museum in 2000, but it was rather a hurried visit then as we arrived just before closing time, having been delayed by a road accident on the autostrada. 

This time, however, we joined the bus tourists just after lunch. I sat in the very comfortable cafeteria with a book while Paul took his time with the cars.  There were a lot of women in the cafeteria with books!

You may have noticed that there are no photos of cars.  If you'd like some, together with commentary, email Paul direct and I'm sure he'll be glad to share a few or many of the thousands he took.  

49. Promenade des Anglais, Nice

We were driving to Greece, so we needed to cross southern France, cross northern Italy and then follow the Adriatic coast of Italy south to Brindisi where we would catch a ferry to Greece.

Emerging from south west France into the sun at Nice on the French Riviera, we left the autoroute to drive along the corniche, the coast road that hugs the magnificent Bay of Angels through Nice and Monte Carlo.

These photos were taken from a moving car as we drove along the Boulevard des Anglaise in Nice.

It was our first real view of the Mediterranean and our first taste of the summer sun.  The white line markings are the bicycle lanes on the promenade, not the road.

Day 3 of the Tour de France was to be here the next day for the first time trial. It had been newly asphalted and felt as smooth as velvet.

Sponsorship and promotional material was being set up for the best part of a kilometre, maybe more.

This is the famous Belle Epoque hotel Le Negresco, part of English aristocracy's European Grand Tour all those years ago and the setting for at least one Agatha Christie mystery, if I recall.  Can't you imagine Hercule Poirot taking the sea air on the balcony?

The promenade footpath is as wide as this for several kilometres along the waterfront with all buildings on the other side of a six lane road with a very generous green median strip.  It is truly gorgeous with very little retail permitted, only accommodation and restaurants.

The traffic was still flowing as we drove through around 2pm but the signage warned of a partial closedown a few hours later, followed by a full closedown on the morrow.

The retailers never miss an opportunity to sell a t-shirt or two.

While the Velibs in Paris were brown, here in Nice they are appropriately blue.

As we approach the end of the promenade, the road begins to wind around to the port of Nice and we catch our first sight of the ferry terminal where we caught the 6am  ferry to Corsica (French territory) and Sardinia (Italian) in 2011.  And because you have to have your car in the queue at least 60 minutes before departure, we were glad to find some enterprising people selling fresh croissants and coffee in the car park to hungry tourists who had left their beds at 4.30 am.

Winding our way around the port we headed for the corniche along that cliff top in the background.

Up the corniche and, for once, a clear stretch of road ahead. Paul put his foot down.

Looking back over the wide blue arc of the Bay of Angels and the port of Nice.

These brick arches are a very common sight along the cliff top roads around the Mediterranean - they are very attractive.

And right on cue, as we are watching, the ferry heads off to Corsica to bring the Tour de France circus back to the mainland overnight.

They would have called in additional ferries for the large numbers of people and equipment involved.

The huge passenger tour ships, like these two, can't anchor in the main Nice port because of the ferries, so they come into this bay further along the coast where passengers come ashore in little rubber boats and are, presumably, bused into the centre of Nice.

48. Le Bugue and Saint Antonin Noble Val

The destination is Greece but there is a detour. There is always a detour.

Paul is constantly on the lookout for a good deal - it is his job; it keeps him sane; it's what he loves to do, he takes it very seriously.  He digests huge amounts of information daily.  One of his regular reads is the newsletter of a small, Australian business owned by two francophile tragics called French Desires.  Amongst other things, this newsletter lists French properties owned by Australians - for rent or for sale.  So who couldn't imagine themselves in a three storey, mediaeval stone house in a beautiful French village, for 75,000 euros?  Worth a detour?

Le Bugue is in a good position relative to the all of the attractions of south west France -beautifully  picturesque villages along the ancient gorges of the Dordogne and Vezere rivers, fabulous locally grown produce, ancient cities and towns with abundant and accessible histories, and nearby, the very cradle of northern hemisphere civilization, the Lasceau caves.

Unfortunately, Le Bugue shared none of that mediaeval beauty, having sold its central village heart to the car, long ago.  And the property we inspected had little natural light, a suspect staircase and a damp cellar, to boot.  I didn't even take a photo of it.

A day later found us in this cute 13th century B&B which was originally a coach house for travellers stopping in Saint Antonin Noble Val.  The Noble relates to the fact that the King of France stopped here several times and had his own lodging built in case he stopped again, and the Val refers to the valley in which Saint Antonin lays.

Saint Antonin Noble Val is in the Lot region, on the river Averyon, not too far from the big market centre of Cahors.  With a population of around 1,800 it was about half the size of Le Bugue but many of those 1,800 were English refugees who had sold up and moved permanently to south west France. 

This mediaeval town is small and well preserved and lies in a deep valley. It was very pretty to look at, seemed to have a good deal of community spirit but a worryingly large number of properties for sale.

The properties we had come to look at turned out to be a bit too mediaeval for our pockets.

Despite the sunshine in the town square, most streets were very narrow meaning that the houses didn't get much sun or natural light.

On Sunday morning a wonderful local produce market came to town.  This stall sold 101 varieties of olives.

Fresh fruit and vegetable everywhere ...

... and many local varieties of sausage  ...

... and baskets to carry it all home.

But when the Dutch host of our B&B mentioned in passing that in the bad winter of 2010 the temperature in Saint Antonin had sat at minus 12 degrees C for ten consecutive days, we quickly turned East and headed for Greece.

47. A Racey Yellow Car

Here is our racey little car.  It is a Citroen DS3 with a black roof and yellow body.  It is a manual diesel and is getting 5/100km.

I forgot to take a photo in Paris, when we picked it up.  These pics were taken in the carpark of the hotel at Brive La Galliard where we stopped overnight.  It had done 578 km at this point and had only a few squashed bugs to spoil its new-car gloss.

You should see it now, 3,500 km later and after three weks in Greece ... covered in dust and an assortment of small winged creatures despite two hose-offs.

We still have our big car fridge, the one we bought in Paris in 2011.  It works a treat, plugged into the electrical circuit of the car.  And we have an airconditioned glove box as well - great for the water bottles.

We use overnight bags when we are on the road, only taking the two suitcases and the car fridge out of the car for stays of five nights or more.

46. Leros - Dodecanese, Southern Agean

It's been three weeks since we left Paris, and after eleven weeks of disappointing Spring and early Summer weather there, we have finally hit the heat.

Welcome to the lovely island of Leros in the Dodecanese of the Southern Agean, just sixteen kilometres from the Turkish coast.

To get here, we picked up our little Citroen in Paris and drove south-west on L'Occitane, the autoroute to southwest France, stopping overnight in Brive La Galliard to stock the car fridge at a huge supermarket there, and continuing on to La Bugue and then Saint Antonin Noble Val, to look at some property before turning east towards Greece and summer.

I have ten blog posts of photos queued up, waiting for me to write the text and then to post each one to the Internet.  I knew Internet access was going to be poor once we left mainland Europe, but you tend to forget how frustrating slow and intermittent access can be.

This is the view from the front of the Hotel Papafotis.  It is Alinda beach on Leros - a very narrow strip of small stones with crystal clear, cool water and blessed with some shady trees planted by the Italians when they occupied these islands between the wars.

The first thing we always do when we reach a new destination is to acquire a map and have a thorough look around.  Leros was the sight of a major battle in WWII when the Germans bombed and captured the island from the Italians and English.  Once this ancient castle fell, the result was inevitable.

The Greek islands are not green and lush.  They are dry and stoney.  The beaches are rarely sand, most often small pebbles.

After climbing to the old castle we found this lovely beach in a cove at the base and had a beer and a slice of pizza at a table amongst the swimmers and sun seekers.

After scrambling out on a high point to see a quaint little chapel, of which there are dozens on the island, and look at the view, we made sure we shut the gate to keep the trees from the sheep.

Our local 6pm drink spot also turned out to be our local 11pm coffee spot.  Right on the beach, in the shade, feet in the water and feeling the temperature drop from 30 degrees at 3pm to a balmy 24 at midnight.  Beers were 3€ for 500ml of really cold Heineken in chilled glasses and coffee was 2.50€ for an excellent double espresso. 

The third and most enjoyable daytime beach we found on Leros was up north, past the airport.  Crystal clear water, smooth stones, a little flotilla of wooden boats for hire, not too much wind and sun beds for free.

It had a little taverna that did fabulous cold black coffee "frappes"  or beer by the can that didn't hit the sides if you'd been in the sun for a bit.  Plus wifi!

The final beach we discovered was ruggedly picturesque and in high demand because of the excellent cliff-top taverna and restaurant as well as "on the beach" food and drink service for us oldies for whom climbing the cliff steps more than once per day was a bit much.  We had a yellow umbrella as well as a sunbed each and our toes were dragging in the water.

Ah ..........!

Paul's t-shirt says:

GREEK CRISIS

No job

No money

No problem

I had to make him stop wearing it in case someone punched him!