Old Town and vineyards

On Saturday, we went into the old town and had a look around. Then we walked along the Promenade des Anglais, which runs along the sea front for miles. We walked down to the Hotel Negresco, which is a really posh hotel on the sea front. We intended to go in for a hot drink (as we were once again freezing). However, it was a lot posher than I had expected and we were way under-dressed. So we gave up on that idea and wondered around the back streets for a while.

Then we meet up with Gerry and his girl friend Françoise, who was visiting for the weekend. We had lunch at a creperie (something I intend to do more of as it is really nice food).
Then Gerry drove us up into the hills to the Bellet wine region. This region is still pretty much in the Nice city limits and contains numerous little vineyards. We got there quite late in the day so only managed to see a few.
We were lucky to see the first one. The man who owns it was just leaving as we got there. He turned around and went back to open up for us. He is a retired Theatre Professor and now runs the vineyard. We tried 4 wines: 2 white (one was very dry), a rose (Mom's favourite) and a red (my favourite). Mom and Dad got a bottle of the rose and I got a bottle of the red. We had to wait for him to put the labels on one of the bottles. This place was pretty much his garage. But the wine was lovely and not something you can get in the supermarket.

Garage Vineyard shop.

The second place we tried was more commercial. We had a look around as it was very pretty though a little soulless after the first place. However the wines were really expensive and we had to pay for a wine tasting. We did not stay.

Expensive vineyard...

...but has a great view!

The last place we managed to get to was another little family run vineyard with a very sweet yet ugly dog. He looked a bit like a staff bull but with very big ears. Still he was very sweet and sat with me during the wine tasting. (I tried to get a picture of him but every time I tried, he moved.) We had a quick look at the vineyards, as the sun was setting. The sunset across the Alps was beautiful.

Sunset over the Alps

Really beautiful

Then we went inside and tried a few of the wines. We tried 2 reds (one was really dry and Mom couldn't drink it so I got her share), one white (very light) and a lovely rose. We didn't buy a wine from this place, but I had brought one of their wines from a wine shop in Nice a few weeks ago (though I have yet to drink it) so I didn't feel bad about not buying one. (And I paid more in the shop for it!) But we did buy some of their home-made fig jams. Fig jam is very popular here and very nice. By this point, I was happily merry.

The wine we brought

On the way back, we stopped for a hot drink in St Laurent, a port just West of Nice. It was very pretty and crazily expensive, so we did not stop for food. However, when we got back to the car, someone had double parked behind us. (Double parking seems to be a speciality of the French.) It took a little interesting manoeuvring and several curse words before we managed to squeeze out.