If We Had To Live In France…

Villefrance, French Rivera

Everyone is always asking what our favorite town, village or city is. It is an impossible question to answer because most of the places that we have been visiting are all special in some way, be it beauty, character, peacefulness, people, or one unique experience. But if we had to choose a place to live in France, the answer would be Villefrance / Cap Ferrat. These two small towns share a beautiful bay. The hills are lined with exquisite houses (mansions) overlooking the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It is stunning, and remarkably unspoiled. The area was described in the early 1900’s as “the escape hatch from Monaco for those burdened with taste.”

We headed to Villefrance to sit out some approaching bad weather which came in the form of strong winds and a day of rain. While it was nice to get Berkeley East washed by the rain, it made for an uncomfortable day and night as we rolled at anchor, waiting for the storm to pass so we could go on land and explore.

The town of Villefrance is a jumble of buildings, nestled tightly together into the hillside. From the water, it looks like a charming painting. On the shore it felt comfortable. It is small and took less than an hour to see.

The next day it was off to Nice, by bus. This is always a challenging event because we have to determine what bus goes where we want to go, find a bus stop, figure out how to pay (on the bus, in advance, at a local tobacco store, etc.), then we need to determine where to get off the bus. We usually get the last one wrong, but the walking never hurts.

Nice was nice. It was a larger, more of a small city then a town or village. We walked around the old town markets, along the beach, up Castle Hill (which doesn’t have a castle), around the port and then back to the bus. In Nice, we started to see Italian influences, it was still French, but there was more pizza and pasta in restaurants, and people were speaking Italian. We could feel that we were getting close to a new country.

On our trip back from Nice, we decide to go into Cap Ferrat to visit the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. Set high on a hill, with unbelivable views on both sides of the point, this is a palace, filled with a collection of porcelain, tapestries, 18th-century paintings and furniture. Even better than the interior are the gardens, including separate Japanese, Spanish, Florentine, Provençal and rose gardens – all with views of the sea (and Berkeley East at anchor below).

We walked back to Villefrance along the Boulevard Napoléon III, admiring the mansions we had seen from the water, but from the street side this time. We were even more impressed as we looked through the mammoth gates, adorned with gold, that opened onto unbelievable gardens. We understand that Cap Ferrat’s current residents include Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and theatrical composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. We think we could fit in nicely in this village.