GARDENS of COTE D'AZUR and TUSCANY
September 16 – 26th, 2006
 

I arrived a day before the tour started just to make sure all was in order for the group. It is also a good idea to do this for all trips so you are rested and ready to go when the tour starts. Since I had a wonderful free day to wander around I took a walking tour with some friends and had a ball going through some of the older parts of Nice. There was a park not far from the hotel with a carousel. One of my friends back home works in the office at Conklin Shows and would have appreciated seeing this one. We saw some wonderful architecture including the old theater and right across the street the most fantastic sweet shop…just look at the interior and the bottles of fruit and the candied fruits! I took a walk along the promenade and then to the old market where I took some photos of flowers and just had a really nice day. Our tour officially started the evening of September 16th with our welcome dinner at the 4 star Le Meridien Hotel in Nice. After meeting and having dinner it was off to bed…this is also the hotel that we will be staying at for the 2007 tour. I don’t usually put the same tour on two years in a row, but this tour was so popular in 2006 that I had to say no to some guests wanting to book and decided to run it again in 2007.

September 17th after breakfast we boarded our coach for the short trip out to Eze. You can see from the couple of pictures before getting there that the scenery is wonderful. Perched in an "eagle's nest" at the height of an imposing and superb cliff, the village and its light ochre church can be seen from afar. Once there, you will discover a small Provencal village filled with charm and colourful window boxes, offering a panoramic view of the sea and coast-line. Small narrow roads, archways and superbly restored stone houses, shady squares, refreshing ancient fountains... you will soon be seduced by the marvels of Eze. The village is so beautiful, it's hard to keep your mind on the fact that you are here to see the gardens... The numerous small arts and crafts boutiques are hard to resist... some of them are like tiny caves dug out of the rocky hillside. The streets of this medieval village have witnessed its historic past. The two look-out towers at the entrance, the door-way and the gun-boat all classified as historic monuments. Eze’s ‘petit jardin exotique’. suspended some 429 metres between sea and sky, the exotic garden offers the visitor the most breath-taking views of Eze and the surrounding area. The garden itself contains over 400 species of plants and cacti, surrounding the ruins of the castle along a maze of little paths. There was an incredible sculpture display throughout the gardens, I hope you enjoy looking at some of the pictures I took of the ladies….just gorgeous. And oh, the plants were gorgeous too! On 2007 tour. Back down the hill we all walked and across the street to Galimard, the famous perfumery.