Villefranche

 

We've done it. We've completed the Cote d'Azur!

Okay, that's a joke, there are a lot of towns around here, and so many things to see. But we have been to a lot of places now, having lived here for ten months. And I think we had a loose list of places we might like to check out sometime; Eze and Antibes and Monaco, and the mountain towns, and Ventimiglia, and St. Paul de Vence, and Cannes, and the mall on the beach and so on and on and on.

And of course, Villefranche Sur Mer.

But of all of them, Villefranche Sur Mer was by far the easiest one to get to. Though dating back to Medieval times it is so close to our city here that it is practically a surburb. Albeit a very pretty ancient old town suburb on its own cove with a deep water port.

We can practically walk there.

In fact, we almost did, heading out past our port area one day in the early Spring until we realized you have to walk on the road for awhile more, and we didn't want to.

But still, it's just a handful of miles away, so why bother going. I mean, sometimes when something is easy enough you just kind of keep it at hand.

But even though it's not like we're constantly running out on day adventures, we do occasionally bestir ourselves, and over the course of ten months, in the way of things, we ended up going everywhere we'd thought about going.

Except Villefranche Sur Mer.

I mean, it's so close! We can do that one anytime.

Which turned out to be true, eventually.

Maybe you've noticed this too:

A lot of things that are completely untrue suddenly manage to become true. Or, almost everything that is true starts out as something that isn't true.

So this morning, on a hot Sunday, after Argentina and England qualified to play each other in the semifinal of The World Cup, we got up super early (like, before nine!) and caught the train to Villefranche Sur Mer (at ten).

The train is very close to us and runs pretty often. It was crowded with all the people heading up the coast towards Italy with all those vacationy points inbetween. But we only had to go two stops, one of which is still in our city. And the trip barely felt like we went anywhere at all.

We had a nice time walking around Villefranche Sur Mer and saying how we'd like to live there until we understood we do that everywhere and wouldn't really like to live there. We had a coffee in some shade. We explored the secret undercity of Villefranche. We were hot.

Then we came home. It was early afternoon. It was a nice trip.

Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.

Here are pictures. It was too hot, so I added water to all of them. I apologize if that confuses your understanding of the place.