Heading to the beach
Today is the 4th of July. Yay – Happy Birthday, America! No one over here seems to care, though, Well, we decided to spend the 4th of July at the beach. Villefranche has a very cute and accessible beach and the owner of our apartment has done an excellent job providing beach provisions. We have three umbrellas and five straw mats for the sand. So after breakfast, we put on our bathing suits and packed up our beach-ware and headed to the beach. It was another lovely day on the Côte d’Azur – pleasantly warm, but not hot or humid. Magnifique!
Jill sheltered under the umbrella
As we are all pretty fair, not to mention concerned about skin damage, we all lathered up with sunscreen and mostly huddled under the umbrellas. Nevertheless, we had no trouble spending a delightful three hours or so mostly reading, but also dipping our toes in the balmy Mediterranean and getting in a little people watching.
From our beach location we had a pretty good view of the village of Villefranche-sur-mer, as can be seen in the photo. We are really quite pleased with our apartment. The beds are comfortable, there are two full bathrooms, the A/C works great, we have everything we need to be comfortable and the location is within very easy walking distance of numerous restaurants, shops, bakeries, the grocery and the beach.
From the beach towards our apartment
After the beach, we returned to the apartment for lunch and we watched a bit of today’s stage of the Tour de France. Both Rich and Henry Warner are interested bicycle riders, but we all enjoyed the scenery presented on the Tour. France is a beautiful country and all the Tour cameras do a good job of capturing the cute towns, the idyllic countryside, the chateaus and the general ambiance. As the Tour today was going to last about four hours or so, Henry Warner took a break to do some more Villefranche stair running. This time, Jill volunteered to film me in action, just for the record. I can guarantee that 30 minutes of charging up (and walking down) these stairs will get your heart fluttering.
Jill and Dawn dipping their toes in the sea
Lovely bougainvillea bordering the beach
Henry Warner, Rich and Dawn after the beach
Twilight stroll on the promenade – Jill and Henry Warner
I feel out of breath just watching that one!
After 25 ups and downs – I was DEFINITELY out of breath!