Lamborghinis and jumping off rocks: Southern France, Monaco, and Italy

It’s been a few days of contrast for us since our last post. From the flat French mediterranean coast, up into the mountains, down into the Gorge du Verdon that cuts through said mountains, and then down to Monaco, along the French coast to Genoa, where we camped in the hills amongst redwoods. We spent last night and today traversing the Italian coastal towns of the Cinque Terre, and their accompanying vineyards terraced high above the sea. We moved onto a campsite outside of Florence, which also happens to have a section of cabins that belongs to the Contiki tour company. There are three bus-loads worth of pre-drunk 18-35 year old Australians swarming the place, but luckily the campsite owner told us where to park so that we can’t see or hear them, and it works. We did a half-hearted tour of Florence (it was hot and we were tired), and now we’re sitting by the campground pool in Siena.

Adventure Sports Time

I don’t consider myself a particularly brave person when it comes to heights, so when I jumped off of a 6 meter (18 foot) rock into shallow water not once, but twice, I admit that I was quite chuffed with myself. It was peer pressure that made me do it. Backing up, the Gorge du Verdon in southern France is a spectacular, you guessed it, gorge that is up to a kilometre (800 feet) deep at some points. It’s crowning feature is the Verdon, which is a magical green/blue river that runs down the middle. Luke and I decided to explore it in two ways: By hiking and canyoning.

For the hike, we started at the top of the gorge, walked down to the river, and back up again, an elevation change of 460 metres each way. We cheerfully joked as we descended that it was really going to hurt on the way back up. It did. I would like to brag that Luke ran the last 20 minutes up, just for some extra fitness. I went slower and tried to have conversations with the lime-green butterflies (they said to say hi.) But the gorge at the bottom was well worth it. See photographic evidence below.

As for the canyoning: for those of you who haven’t previously been annoyed by our repetitive canyoning stories (we’ve done it twice before), canyoning is basically just walking down the middle of a river/stream that’s in a canyon. It involves jumping off rocks, sliding down waterfalls, swimming, some abseiling, and general silliness. We wanted to canyon down the main Verdon gorge, but unfortunately the power company upstream had let water out the dam off schedule, flooding the river dangerously. Instead, we canyoned down an equally beautiful tributary. There’s no photographic evidence of this journey, sadly, but suffice to say the canyon was made of lily white rocks (limestone!) and crystal clear blue/green water.

We took to the canyon with 8 friendly French people, including our guide. We found friends in the most adorable teenage sisters, who giggled when they saw Luke braiding my hair, and then insisted on helping me get my wetsuit on. They took it upon themselves to translate everything for us (“Log underneath here!” “Jump to the left, there’s a rock to the right!” “Careful, slippery!” “Only small people through this waterfall running through the slit in the rock and under some boulders, Luke must climb over and jump!”) When we got to the 6 metre jump, I thought about chickening out. I did it, though (as did Luke of course). It feels like you’ll never hit the water. Just as I thought I was done, triumphantly swimming towards the clapping group, the adorable sisters called my name to clamber up the rocks with them and do it again. I was peer pressured. I did it again. (To be fair, it was really fun.)

Finding ourselves

Luke didn’t do the stereotypical “finding yourself” European backpacking trip in his 20’s like I did, so we joke that he’s doing it now. We’ve decided he is on a real, bonafide journey of personal exploration now that’s he’s wearing Moroccan linen (he bought it in Granada.) A person can’t find themselves without earth-tone linen tunics.

As for me, I “found myself” when I saw my heritage reflected in a fun conversation with a bunch of Italian rock climbers at a campground in La Palud sur Verdon (a small and non-touristy town in the Gorge du Verdon area). I got into a discussion with them because the woman had bright fuchsia hair. Turns out she’s a hairdresser from Bologne and, fun fact, married her husband (also present) at an Elvis chapel in Las Vegas that is now a supermarket. Anyway, they group got into a discussion about where we should go in Italy. Things got dramatic when they started to discuss wine. It was all in Italian, but I could understand them shouting, “Chianti!” “Multepulciano!” “No, Chianti!!” “No, no, no, Multepulciano!!!” while waving their arms in the air and tsking loudly. This sort of thing happened frequently in our lengthy conversation.

Other fun characters we have met along the way include a befuddled-looking Czech walker who I first met when he absentmindedly wandered into our campground, his phone dead and having taken a wrong turn. I helped him find his way (he promptly went the opposite way of what we had decided), only to run into him again two days later in a mountain village about 80 kilometres away. He said he reached it on foot. I expect to see him somewhere in Kyrgyzstan or Laos, having lost his socks or gotten stuck in a telephone booth.

Pretending to be James Bond

We did a big driving day to get from the Gorge to Genoa, Italy. It was our most diverse and probably most beautiful day of driving. We decided on a whim to pop into Monaco, as we were driving fairly close by anyway. For today’s geography lesson, we’ll learn that Monaco is

the second smallest nation in the world (after the Vatican), it is not part of the EU (but uses the Euro and doesn’t have border checks), and has enough Lamborginis and Ferraris to make the BMWs, Audis, and Porches pedestrian and unexciting. It seriously lived up to its glam hype. We didn’t eat anything or spend the night, but I could feel the money being sucked out of my pores when we passed the Monte Carlo, the famous casino that seems to cover half the country. Luke enjoyed driving on the twisty roads, pretending he was James Bond and our car was something other than a dusty Pajero with a bag of stinky laundry in the back.

Also, the drive from Monaco to Genoa, along the French Riviera: I totally get why it’s a toll road. It’s either tunnel or dizzyingly high bridge, without any normal road, for about 100 kilometres. It passes over a valley, barrels straight into the next mountain, and pops out over another deep valley. I’m happy to pay my €8,70 if it means that bridge doesn’t send me flying into the ritzy village below. Also, there are a lot of terraced greenhouses. We have learned that they grow a lot of basil, which goes into Genovese pesto, which we are binge eating.

More about driving

An Italian stereotype we were aware of prior to entering Italy was that the drivers are insane. So far, our experience has only confirmed this. According to Luke, there are two types of Italian drivers: ones that do double the speed limit, and ones that drive at half the speed limit, swerving erratically, talking to passengers or on their cell phones, gesticulating wildly with both hands (“like they are tossing a salad”, Luke says).

Shhh, they don’t want you to know about this

In closing, I would like to let you in on a conspiracy. Some devious mastermind, for unknown reasons, has been teaching all Europeans to say “funny” when they mean “fun”. Seriously, even people with otherwise 100% flawless English. We don’t yet know the goal of this widespread and mysterious conspiracy, but I’m sure it has something to do with world domination.

Entering France, and the Gorge du Verdon (including the villages of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, Annot, and Entreveaux)

Our first campground in France, literally on the beach. We did indeed get sand in our bed.

We happened upon a walled Medieval city on our drive.

And just did a little touristing before moving on.

An uninspiring photo, but a lovely place. The Camargue, a national park on the Southernmost Mediterranean coast in France

A beach in the same area. We were beached-out and did not stop. (15 is my limit on beaches, baby)

Incredible lavender fields in Provence, France. It smelled so good it almost smelled bad.

A close up view, so that you can’t see the hordes of Asian tourists in white dresses getting their Instagram photoshoots on. Seriously, that was a thing.

We learned the danger of beauty when one of the multitude of bees flew in the car. I screamed incoherently while Luke calmly pulled over and shoo’ed the bee outside.

IMPORTANT! Look at the star hanging in the middle of the canyon. Can you see it? It looks like a yellow fleck in the sky. It’s about a meter wide – and, get this – it’s been there for at least 1,000 years and no one knows how, or why, it got put up there. It’s suspended on a chain from one mountain to the other. (This is the lovely village of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, the Western entry to the Gorge du Verdon)

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie. A small quiet area in an otherwise lovely but touristy town.

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie and me.

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.

Luke at the campground.

Dinner up the hill from our campground in Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, gotta love that golden hour.

A view of the artificial lake at the end of the Gorge du Verdon, near Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.

A first glimpse of the gorge.

Hey look, we gonna hike!

The view that was obscured by our gobs in the last photo

On the way down, laughing at my future self for the sweat I will produce.

The building on the hill is where we parked.

Uh oh, it’s a high footbridge over the river.

Kick in fear of heights. There’s gotta be one in every one of our posts, doesn’t there?

look at my face though

I made it over the bridge and felt safe enough to take artsy photos of the bridge.

Luke looking taller than the gorge

The Verdon

Just before turning around on the hike.

Luke rescued a butterfly from the hot car, but it didn’t want to leave his finger.

Back up out of the gorge, in the quiet and non-touristed town of Palud-sur-Verdon.

Driving along the Gorge

A lake in the mountains

More of that Lake

And more

The village of Annot, where we stopped on the advice of our canyoning guide. We seemed to be the only people there other than a few people hanging out their laundry.

And this guy.

Annot

Annot had fountains fed by mountain springs scattered throughout the town.

Annot

And this one, we just happened across! Look up there, that ain’t a mountain folks!

And once you turn the bend around those pointy rocks, you see this. It’s a medieval village called Entreveaux with a little bit of tourist infrastructure, but not much.

Entreveaux

Entreveaux

Entreveaux and one of its residents

Entreveaux

Monaco and the drive to Genoa

Fancypants apartments

More fancypants apartments

Fancypants house

Fancypants boats

Fancypants people on even fancierpantsier boat

Literally the entire nation of Monaco.

This is once we exited the freeway and drove below it. All the bridges were this high.

Checking out the boats. Also a good hair day.

Italy: Genoa and Cinque Terre

Amenities at our campsite in Genoa. It’s just so pretty. And it was shaded by redwood trees and fern-covered hills on both sides.

But otherwise Genoa: “Faded glory” is the phrase we kept thinking of. Apologies to any of my ancestors who enjoyed walking these fancy streets.

We had binged on pesto here in this very spot.

Look at the Italian businessman judging us in the background.

Church in Genoa.

Same church.

The lion guarding the church looks sad.

But then there are these houses. These were actually houses. Now they are a UNESCO world heritage site and office building, but in the 1500’s they housed Genoa’s crazy-rich merchants and royalty, who would take turns hosting foreign dignitaries in them.

This is someone’s entryway.

And someone’s grand staircase.

And someone’s facade.

When you see this interior courtyard just remember that it was someone’s house.

This is probably the house I would choose.

An odd choice of structure for one’s front door.

Sitting in the ruins of the convent next to the house where Christopher Columbus grew up.

And, welcome to Cinque Terre!

Cinque Terre is a group of five villages without car access that were built on the side of mountains rising above the Mediterranean. This one is Manerola.

And there are terraced vineyards all around them.

We went for a nice long hike from one village to another (Manerola to Consiglia)

Scenic tomatoes!

Such a nice hike

These are gonna make a yummy sweet white wine

Views of the Mediterranean

Crazy clear water

The village of Manerola (we took the train there)

Prettiest hiking trail ever.

The half way point in our hike – a tiny village with about 6 houses, one convenience store with cold drinks, fresh pesto, and focaccia, and of course a church

There was a small forested area

And our destination – one of the Cinque Terre villages, Consiglia

Consiglia

Consiglia

Someone’s lovely path in Consiglia

Back in the campsite in Levanto, near Cinque Terre. Luke attempts to be enthusiastic for the photo.