Roussillon to Villefranche to Chamonix

                                               We walked around Fontaine-de-Vaucluse                                                                                                                         and its noble plane tree.

                              ,

The village also has a fountain of sorts.  It's one of the most powerful springs in the world, 

rising out of an abyss the foot of a 1000' cliff to become the River Sorgue.

It's hard to represent the volume of the water that appears within about 50 feet, 

Petrarch's chateau had a nice view of the spring.

This is the river 100 yards downstream from where it first appears.


                  En route to the Riviera, we stopped at the Gorge de Regalon

                               

                It required scrambling 

Tough drive to Villefranche but the Hotel La Flore had a balcony

with a view of the Celebrity Ascent

a nice breakfast room

Driving in the tiny mountain roads with city-scale traffic was hair-raising.  

We could have used one of these.

I think we hated the Cote-d'Azur, but Villefranche had some nice streets.

What the hell is that...

Also hate it when someone tell us to....

Cap-Ferrat is where the really rich people live.

They provided a promenade so we could see how nice their place was.

We climbed up to an old fort to see the Cap from above...

... and met a German cat on a leash

          It took us an hour of confusion to extricate ourselves from the gravitational sway of Nice

        and then 7 hours on perilous high-speed roads to get to, and then over, the Alps to Chamonix.

           We got a room with a view of the Grandes Jorasses, a cup of coffee, and free cake                                                                                     

Chamonix is really tucked under the brow of Mont Blanc

More Chamonix to come