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We rarely have cocktails in France because nobody knows how to make them. Not so at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo.

From Cap Ferrat we took an easy bus ride to our 25th and final destination of our personal Tour de France. The 45-minute bus ride took us east, passing through Monaco just before reaching our destination. In fact our hotel in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin was so close to Monaco that we walked into that principality one evening for dinner. I can’t recall ever walking to another country for dinner before.

This was mostly a beach stop for us. We stayed at a pretty posh resort with gorgeous views across the bay toward Monaco. That’s a nice way to end this journey. The good news is that the French Riviera is just stunningly beautiful. The water is so blue and so warm and wonderful. It’s close to heaven — but with a downside.

The view to our beach and across the bay to overbuilt crazy Monaco

Relaxing at our beach resort in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin

Like our last stop, things here are a little TOO upscale for our taste. There is no shortage of really fancy restaurants, but we have a much harder time finding our sweet spot — small bistros serving extraordinary food at reasonable prices. France has really spoiled us!

So one night we just embraced this gilded corner of the world and booked dinner at the very fancy restaurant at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, the upscale neighborhood of upscale Monaco. Our table was on a lovely terrace overlooking the Place du Casino and the famous Casino de Monte Carlo. The square was just packed with excited tourists, who seemed to just be taking in the scene of all the fancy people coming and going from this hotel and the casino.

But what really riled up the crowd was the roar of the Ferraris and Lamborghinis that would pull up. It seemed pretty silly to us to hear these cars go “VROOM VROOOOOM” as they moved at snail pace through the choked traffic. But that’s Monaco for you — 38,000 people with crazy hordes of money packed into a country of less than 1 square mile. As a result the place is so overbuilt it’s actually just kind of ugly.

Fancy dining in front of the Casino de Monte Carlo

…and the Place du Casino

So now we say goodbye to the Mediterranean and to an incredible summer journey that touched so many corners of this amazing country (France that is, not Monaco!) I feel a tinge of sadness as it comes to a close, but of course home is always nice, too.

Lunch at a well researched, lovely restaurant on the other side of Roquebrune

That little restaurant featured a bathroom with crazy animal art — and recorded animal noises!

From Roquebrune, looking east to Menton, the last city in France before the Italian border

St-Paul de Vence, clustered tightly on its hilltop

The elegant, narrow streets of the town

Me in those streets

From Moustiers we drove a couple very stressful hours southward — almost to the Mediterranean — to reach the postcard-perfect hilltop town of St-Paul de Vence. This was once a normal medieval village perched on a hill with beautiful views to the sea. But then it was discovered by Pablo Picasso, and endless streams of artists and celebrities have passed through since.

About that drive: For the first half or so we were on mountain roads so ridiculously narrow that it seemed two cars could not possibly get past each other. Yet cars kept coming from the other direction, instilling dread as we would slow down to try to squeeze past them without scraping the car on our left or slipping off the shoulder-less cliff on our right.

But once we got out of the mountains we started to sense the magic of the Mediterranean below. We connected onto the highway that runs along the Côte d’Azur, watching the iconic place names go by: St. Tropez, Grasse, Nice, Cannes. But before settling on the coast itself we turned inland from Nice a few miles for this stop at St-Paul de Vence.

Here we spent three wonderful nights at Toile Blanche, a beautiful boutique hotel just outside town. This place got everything right — amazing contemporary design, beautiful gardens, good food, wonderful service. This was a close to perfect stop.

I was concerned beforehand that the place was a bit removed from town — nearly a half-hour walk. And I knew we would never want to use the car once we were settled in. And yet my concerns failed to account for the fact that the walk into town was also a seriously steep uphill climb. So after two journeys into town and back we found ourselves pretty content to just stay in the beautiful hotel. In fact, I was genuinely sad to leave this little slice of heaven.

Who needs to go into town when the hotel grounds look like this?

Lunchtime dining at the hotel

…and dinner

A little vineyard on the grounds

A cemetery juts out over the Mediterranean from one end of the town

The painter Marc Chagall rests here with his wife

Dinner one night in the town

Our room had a private pool, for when we got tired of the two beautiful public pools

Lush Mediterranean foliage — that even matched Jim’s outfit

One last look at this amazing town

The Téléphérique climbs up to the Fort de la Bastille above Grenoble

Jesus watching over us in one of the churches

Finding great food, despite all the closed restaurants

Back in Paris, when we were going over our itinerary with a friend, she sneered when we mentioned Grenoble, pointing out that it was very industrial, or something along those lines. That might have given us a bit of pause, but our itinerary was pretty baked in by then. And Grenoble did help break up our travels from Chamonix toward Provence. And we like to see different places even if they are not always perfect.

So we made a short stop here anyway, getting a glimpse of the most populous city of the French Alps. Grenoble offered a few charms, but it did feel like a place whose heyday was in the rear view mirror by half a century or so.

The remarkable 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris have had quite a presence throughout our trip here. And we just left Chamonix, which was celebrating the centennial of the first ever Winter Olympics there. So it was fitting to stop in Grenoble, where the Winter Olympics of 1968 are still quite a point of pride. Maybe even the heyday that has since been elusive.

Our hotel was something of a monument to those heady days of ’68. Memorabilia was everywhere. The Olympic cauldron was just steps outside the front door, at the entrance to a somewhat shabby park.

The rest of the city did have a bit of a run-down look. It didn’t help that we were here on a Sunday and a Monday. It’s frequently the case that French cities are super shut down on Sundays. And restaurants are often even closed on Mondays as well. But here in Grenoble, practically everything seemed to be closed even all day Monday. Made the place feel like a ghost town. I’m not going to insist anyone put Grenoble on their must-see list for a holiday in France. But we managed to find a few nice spots and put away some good food. So now we’ll head into Provence, glad to have made a brief acquaintance with this alpine capital.

Looking down at the city center

The historic center of the city had some elegance, though it was weirdly quiet on a Monday morning

It wasn’t easy to find a lunch spot on a Monday, but we ended up in a friendly place on a square that had kind of a shabby chic personality

Jim at work in our hotel room, which was loaded up with memorabilia from the ’68 Winter Olympics

Just outside our front door was the Olympic cauldron, at the entrance to a park that was a little run down

Grenoble has more than its share of this kind of 60s urban renewal kind of architecture

Something prettier — octopus in a fresh pea sauce with hazelnuts

And there’s old world charm to be found

An elegant park in the old part of town

Riding the Téléphérique

The Isère river and the mountains that ring Grenoble