The French riviera, while not the most beautiful of all the places I’ve visited, has a cornucopia of attributes to justify it being one of the best places to live in the world. Its agreeable climate, miles of gorgeous coastline, snow capped coastal range, deep canyons, and pastoral countryside concentrated in such a small geographic area provide a desirable setting for just about anyone. With Monaco, Nice, Cannes, and Antibes, you’re never far from culture, fine food and the energy that cities provide.

The Riviera is not the same kind of beach culture that you find in America. It is a bit more composed, but there is that easy going lifestyle and a more relaxed code of dress than you see in the rest of Europe. Here, for instance, it is acceptable to walk around town in shorts, something usually only done by Americans visiting Europe. There’s something about a warm climate that can’t help but warm one’s disposition. Add to that plazas and streets filled with cafe tables topped with pastries, gelato, fondue, crepes, buckets of mussels, wine and tiny cups of espresso and you can’t really be expected to do anything besides sit around and gorge yourself.

 

The French beaches are as you’ve seen in pictures: narrow strips of whitewashed gravel packed with sun bathers and orderly lined chaise lounges. There’s still a feeling of a class system as most of the beaches are private. You’re not even allowed to walk across the private beaches, but you can access them if you rent a chaise or umbrella for the equivalent of 20 American dollars.

 

There’s not nearly the occurence of toplessness on the beaches as there has been in the past. As with shaving under the arms and using deoderant, I think the French have been cowed into accepting the customs of the rest of Europe. It doesn’t matter much really; as in Oregon, the people you see exposing themselves are the ones you wish wouldn’t do so publicly.

 

Any of the towns I’d heard of before coming to France have been disapppointing. In part because, after awhile, they all begin to look the same. It’s the towns you’ve never heard of before, nestled between their well known neighbors that possess the magic that their older siblings once possesed. Certainly one can be perfectly happy walking the posh streets of Cannes or lying upon the pristine beaches of St. Tropez able to go back home and say they’d been there.

 

There are exceptions, however. The Roman built village of Eze and Monaco with its royal palace and city cascading down vertical cliffs are such places. Eze, I’m sure, looks the same today as it did to the Roman inhabitants who used to walk its streets. And unless you’re resourceful  enough to figure out the local bus that takes you directly to the village, you’ll be amoung the thousands of tourists who mistakenly take the coastal bus to Eze beach and realize they must now hike an hour uphill to get to its entrance.

 

There is also something romantic about visiting the Royal Palace of Monaco where just on the other side of the wall, the Prince could be sipping on tea or deciding which car to drive today. You can also watch the changing of the guard at noon every day, where two stiff armed guards march towards each other as one passes on what must be the utterly dull job of standing stone faced in front of the palace for the next eight hours.

 

The small towns are the ones, though, that leave their imprint. They are are quiter and the only tourists are Europeans who know where to go to avoid the crowds. I think part of their appreciation comes from the accomplishment I feel at having discovered them. These are the towns of Antheor Cap Roux, Ville Franche, and Menton. They are places where people live not visit. Antheor Cap Roux is a unigue place on the Riviera where the cliffs are red instead of the white of the rest of the coast. Jagged mountains rise out of the sea, and I am reminded of the volcanic composition of the Hawaiian islands. Ville Franche is what you expect to see when you read about an old French fishing village. Menton’s old town is like a real life Escher painting where you quickly get lost climbing sets up steps along passagesways so narrow you couldn’t walk through them with an open umbrella.

 

The coast is well designed for exploring by any mode of transportation, and if I return someday, I will rent and tour the coast by bike. This trip, I am satisfied following the waterfront pedestrian paths that link one town to another all the way to Italy for as far as I know. On a previous European trip, I remember the same types of trails linking the towns that make up Cinque Terra. It always thrills me to walk upon a piece of land that only a handful of people throughout history will ever experience.

 

One of my walking trips took me around Cap Ferat, just fiteen minuets East of Nice. The trail started in the small town of Ville Franche and wrapped around the cape, passing a lighthouse at its outermost point and taking me along white washed cliffs that plunged into the water for at least twenty feet down that I could see through the sapphire blue Mediterranean.

 

As I write this, I am headed back to a place I happened upon yesterday. I had done the uncharacteristic thing, for me, of aborting my day’s plans and hopped off the train at a place where the rocks turned to a deep red that you see in the grand mesas of the American southwest. It is the most beautiful place I’ve seen on the coast, designated as a Marine preserve, and something I wasn’t able to take advantage of having not needed a swim suit in my original plans. Today I am returning, with a snorkel however, so that I can plunge my face beneath the surface and see what lies below. Tomorrow I cross the surface to the island of Corsica.