There’s just… so much.
And I am… so tired.
Haha. This is going to be piecemeal, and not chronological either, but just me remembering things out of sequence–that’s about all I can muster.
For starters, though, an overview. After the last update as we were leaving Lauterbrunnen, we drove beside the lake to the east of Interlaken, winding up into the mountains as the road eventually twisted and turned it way up to 2224 meters (~7500 ft). This was the Sustenpass and was a desolate place except for the lonely rest stop and what appeared to be a research station perched on the dip between the peaks. Very little vegetation–just rocks, frozen lakes, snow, and some multicolored mosses. From there the road wound downwards and eastwards into a valley on the other side of the divide, where we took a 15 km tunnel into the Italian-speaking portion of Switzerland.
We were waved across the border by a very nonchalant-looking Italian border guard, and stopped for lunch in Como, at a park on the lake. After walking around a little (this was to be our only experience in Italy this trip outside the car), we drove south around Milan, through Lombardy, met up with the coastline of the Mediterranean, and made it to Nice.
After some difficulty with the directions towards our lodging, we found it, and discovered (a bit to our surprise, I think) that the owner was planning on leaving the next day for about a week (this is the family of one of Aaron’s triathlon acquaintances). So we had a moderately-sized French villa completely to ourselves for four days, complete with swimming pool and beautiful view of the Var (river) valley and surrounding country from the patio, where we ate all our meals. After making dinner and receiving last-minute instructions from the owner, we headed back down into Nice in search of Elyse and an internet café. Found the latter first, where we discovered that Elyse had arrived earlier in the day and was waiting for us at the train station. I rushed out immediately to the train station, picked her up, and we all drove back up to the villa and retired for the night.
The next day we went to the beach, experienced the perfect weather and water temperature (and the lovely stones on the beach instead of sand), and Aaron, Donald, and I drove up to Vence and ate at the Pêcheur de Soleil (little tucked-away pizzeria) for dinner and walked around for a little bit.
Sunday the 27th was a picnic on the rock at Monaco for lunch, a walk around the old town, and the obligatory (for us guys) drive around the Formula 1 circuit that takes place on the streets of Monaco every May. Ducked back to Nice for a few hours, then headed back up to Vence for a dinner with my neighbors from my time there, the Pignols. Dinner was stellar–probably the highlight of the whole trip for me (for divers reasons), and the Pignols were beyond friendly and hospitable.
Monday was a relaxing end to the trip with a little shopping trip through the pedestrian streets of Nice, a jaunt out to the beach, cleaning the villa and an over-filling gnocchi dinner (Aaron the master chef comes through again). Finally, yesterday was a whirlwind of travel, as we got up at 5:30 to catch our 7 a.m. flight from Nice to London, and enjoyed lovely conversation with an ex-pat Yugoslavian cabbie during our ride from Luton airport to Heathrow. We had time to spare when we arrived at the gate, got on the plane, didn’t sleep a wink the whole ~8 hour flight (it was midday no matter which time zone we chose to abide by), arrived in DC at Dulles, rented a car in order to pick up our car in Baltimore, drove up, and had to wait several hours for the keeper of the keys of said car to return. He did, we returned the rental car and I drove the five hours through the night back down to Chapel Hill. Thank goodness for caffeine pills and giddy conversation. Almost everything (outside of the US, at least) happened as perfectly as it possibly could have–we made all the connections, and nothing was delayed or canceled. It was amazingly blessed.
That’s the framework… Stay tuned for vignettes, snapshots, to appear between the lines.