Day trip to Italy
Trip Start
Mar 06, 2010
1
10
14
Trip End
Apr 26, 2010
Ventimiglia, Italian Riviera, Italy
Friday, April 2, 2010
So taking a day trip drive to Italy for us was great fun even if only to be able to say (posh accent included of course) "We popped over to Italy today, and it was jolly nice"!
Traffic was appalling on the first part of the journey, then we diverted onto the motorway - clearly not a good idea to try to see the views on the coast road along the Cote d'Azur any time after deep winter. Today was sunny and we reckon every Frenchman and his dog was on the road. We did however manage to stop at a roadside park and take some shots down to Monte Carlo, which looks quite interesting.
Once we arrived at the outskirts of the Italian town of Ventimiglia the story was worse. These markets are evidently some of the biggest around so traffic was at a standstill heading into town. Given the lovely day we opted to duck into a paid car park and walk to the markets - turned out to be a good choice as we were there in about 15 minutes and meantime the cars were still banked back and not moving.
The markets are indeed very large, running along the riverside and around to the beach front for at least a kilometre. Items on sale varied but not widely - there was loads of clothes (100% wool and cashmere of course!!), "leather" goods (belts, bags and wallets), jewellery, underwear, and more. What wasn't there was fresh produce, which was in the traditional market hall back in the main part of the town (along with flower markets). There were a few stalls selling cheese and local hams. We bought a slab of parmigiana reggiano cheese - about a kilo for 10euro, which is less than half the price it sells for in France.
Our only other purchase was a few novelty BBQ aprons (Michaelangelo's David, Pretty Woman, and the Godfather - we'll let your imagination work on these and one day you might get to see them in action at an appropriate barbequeing function!).
Lunch was pizza at a beach front restaurant - only average but nice sitting in the sun.
After a little more market wandering we walked back to our car park, with a small detour to the multi-level cemetery across the road. Clearly space is a problem, since more "people" are buried in the concrete "apartment" blocks than in the ground. An interesting approach to the issue!
The trip home wasn't as bad as the way there, but there was still lots of traffic particularly as we got closer to Grasse. We couldn't stand to live around this part of the world in high summer as it would be a total nightmare with the volume of traffic and the narrow roads. Today was exacerbated (we think) by it being Friday with the Easter weekend coming up (only Monday is a holiday in France - today, on Good Friday it was business as usual!).
So (posh voice again)... "Italy darlings, you simply must pop over to the Italian Riviera if you're on the Cote d'Azur"...and we did...so there's another box ticked!
