La Turbie - L'observatoire

Route of the day



View of Monaco from La Turbie, c. 500m above sea level



View of La Turbie, with the Trophée des Alpes visible



Closer-up view of La Turbie & the Trophée



A topiary Nessie on the road between La Turbie and the Col d'Eze



View of Eze from the Col d'Eze (not a match)



View of Eze-sur-Mer from the Grand Corniche



Everyone's probably sick of the words 'Cap Ferrat', such is its ubiquitousness on my walks, but I liked the way it looked kind of like a head with a really long nose from up on the Grand Corniche.



The boxy Acropolis conference centre in Nice - with a little rainbow if you look hard



Statue in front of the Acropolis


Today, we have sunshine, hurrah! So I got up earlyish - last night I went out to an exhibition opening and then watched a movie at a friend's so was back quite late, but didn't want to waste the day - and took the bus to La Turbie, another of the towns in the hills above the coast. This one seemed to have a bit of a modern strip going for it as well as an old town. Didn't see much of it - basically climbed up to see La Trophée d'Auguste, aka La Trophée des Alpes aka a triumphal arch erected in 6 AD to commemorate Augustus' triumph over the native tribes. Once there, I discovered it cost 5 euro to go in and look at the thing: hence, all my photos of it are from a discreet distance. Ha! Learning for free, take that!

After that, I started off on my walk with a 'chicken' sandwich purchased from the bakery in La Turbie which was quite expensive and turned out to be using deli meat chicken, not real chicken. Disappointing! I expect better from French bakeries, frankly. But anyway, I was intending to walk to Eze, which is apparently about 6 km from La Turbie, however, I came to a junction where I could either go to Eze village or Col d'Eze. I kind of knew Eze village was the right choice, but I thought the road to Col d'Eze would just take a different route but wind up in the same place, and the road to Eze village had no footpath, so I thought the one to Col d'Eze was safer. It had no footpath either, but at least had a cycle path. Fun fact - I realised en route that the Paris-Nice cycle race will be going along this way tomorrow, if anyone in the world ever watches a cycle race that is not the Tour de France... Lucky I didn't attempt this route tomorrow, at any rate!

Anyway, turns out the Col d'Eze is actually not all that close to Eze proper at all, and instead of taking the Moyen Corniche (the middle road) I was on the Grand Corniche (the high road) - as you can see on the map above. This was all well and good (although for the most part there weren't actually great views) but no bus ran along most of the route, so once I was committed I basically had to keep going. So as you can see on the map, I walked much further than my original plan, but it was still only a 2 1/2 hour walk and I only gave up and took the bus once I rejoined the bus route because I was dying for the loo. Looking at the map, it probably would have been almost as quick to cut across to C-mizzle as to take the bus down to Nice Riquier and then back up, but I didn't really know where I was at the time, although I stopped near the Nice Observatory, which was quite cool because you can see it in the distance from round about my flat, but I never knew exactly where it was before...

Anyway, that was my outing, tomorrow is the start of the F1 season and I am très excited, so Go Button! (Despite being only in I think P7, boo)

PS Photos of the Eglise Jeanne d'Arc from the other day in the post below