On Day two of our trip in the French Riviera we headed by train to the city of Menton, a town that some consider to be the "Pearl of France." To be honest, I think there are a lot of Pearls in this region though. Pearls, gems...definitely precious stones of some sort.
Menton is located in Southern France along the coast of the Mediterranean. It's situated to the East of the city of Nice, after Monaco and near the border of Italy.
We took the train there and it was absolutly packed, even the standing space. Luckily most of the people were heading to Monaco as most people got off at that location. Monaco is another very popular destination in the region for obvious reasons, but that will be a post for another day.
The spot in the photograph above is located in front of the old town of Menton and is a nice spot to view the water. It's a bit of a hike from the train station but I'm sure there are busses if you don't want to walk the 20-30 or so minutes to get there.
But I recommend going to that part of the city and walking through the old town. I'd say that its a must do if you travel there.
It's definitely very colorful and has a lot of character. Look a gorilla!
Somone painted a face on the crumbling stone, which of course I thought was spectacular. Maybe I'm just easily impressed?
The old town is still lived in. The shops and restaurants are mostly along the outer edge near the water and the residents homes appear to be more towards the center.
I really liked the color palet in there. The bright oranges and yellows of the buildings went well with the pastel greens and blues of the shutters. It definitely gave it a tropical Mediterranean feel.
The colors sort of change too depending on how the sun hits them which was kind of cool.
I'm also a pretty big fan of narrow cobblestone streets as you probably know if you follow my blog.
And flower boxes in windows I might add.
A new feature for me to see in this part of the country was people hanging clothes outside their windows.
I know that it's a super common thing to do, especially in cities in Southern Europe but this is one of the first times that I've seen it done in such numbers.
It's good for the environment of course and saves money, but I imagine that its mostly done out of necessity. I'm sure the apartments are quite small inside so I doubt anyone has room for a clothes dryer.
In France in general, I've noticed that clothes dryers aren't as common as they are in North America.
It can be hard to air dry clothes in a country that's cold for 6-7 months of the year like it is in Canada, but also, North America generally just really loves to burn energy. Rough estimates suggest that it consumes around 25% of the world's energy despite having a population that makes up under 10% of the world. That means that it has a very high rate of energy consumption per capita. In other terms, its a pretty bad habit and from experience, it one not easily broken.
As you can see I don’t exactly plan out what I'm going to say in a post, I go where my mind takes me, even if it's off on a tangent. But, I know I know, I need to get back to the destination. In my head I sometimes like to think that my audience comes for the photos but that they stay for the rant. 😆
I didn't do much research on the city prior to our arrival so we mainly just wandered around.
But we eventually stumbled on this spot that was a true Pearl within the city. It's a staircase leading up to a small square that houses the Basilica of St. Michael.
The photos are fine and all but I don't think that they actually do it justice.
The color and the grandure of the staircase and square were actually really incredible.
Even the details in the tile walkway were impressive.
The spot was kind of a mix between old and new as well. The buildings and architecture were old but you could tell that they were all newly renovated.
The plaster work and paint seemed quite fresh, definitely less than a decade old I would imagine.
I obviously took a lot of photos of this spot, as you can clearly see.
Bird hats are the new fashion.
Seagulls always find good places to sit in the sun.
Views from up here were also very nice.
The staircase looks out at the harbor and bay of the Mediterranean. It a good spot for a pause if you need a break from climbing the stairs.
After we hung out in the square for a while, we eventually moved on to other locations.
We wandered around some more and basically saw the entire old town. Nothing really compared to that staircase but the buildings and residents were were still very nice.
One last interesting thing about Menton is that the city is known for producing lemons and citrus.
There are lemon and orange trees growing all around the city, including along busy streets and in the backs of people's yards. The city also puts on a lemon festival in February around this time of year and it's sort of their unique version of Carnival, but perhaps I'll leave that story for another day.
After wandering around the old town we headed back to the train station to go to our next destination.