One way to get a good local experience when traveling is to hire a local guide. If you also hire one who drives, you save on a rental car AND you don’t have to drive on terrifying mountain roads. So, we met Cici this morning outside the hotel around 8:00 am.

Cici was was taking us on an all-day tour of “the Grand Canyon of Europe” – the Gorges du Verdon, which is the largest canyon in Europe. It is about two hours away from Nice, so Cici filled us in on Nice and the region as we drove along on the highway, until we got off in Grasse, which is known for being the first place to produce perfume:  perfumes have been made here since the 1700s. It is lesser known for the roads that go up and up into the mountains surrounding it. Beautiful views – glad I was not driving.

We continued along before stopping in an adorable little village, Castellane. The funny thing about Castellane is that it is the “big town” of the very rural area. It had a few places to eat, so we grabbed some tea and hot chocolate and used the bathroom. We did not have time to climb up to the ruins of the castle, or the even higher church built on the edge of a cliff above the town. Mer and I explored the in-town church and then ran back into the group as they explored the town. With its being March, the place was mellow and cute. Cici told us that in August, it is almost impossible even to move in the town, since it is the gateway to the Gorges.

We piled back in the van and got on a winding road that was hugged between a river and the mountains. Sometimes the mountains overhung the road. The van had a sunroof, which was fun to look out of, up the side of the cliffs. The river dropped away as the road kept rising, and then Cici took us down to a parking area where we could get out and walk down rock stairs to the river itself. The path down was dwarfed by limestone mountains, and the path continued on for miles. We took it down as far as the river itself. We did not test it out, as the warning signs told of how the river could rise quickly as the nearby dam raised and lowered the water level, but Cici told us it was very cold, as it was all melt water from the mountains, some of which still had snow on the peaks. The climb back up the stairs was tricky and induced some strained breathing in the group, but it was worth it.

For balance, since we had been to the bottom of the gorge, Cici took us to a viewpoint called Point Sublime. Walking out to the point was eerie – mostly bare limestone with some scrub brush clinging to it, with looming mountains all around. It felt almost alien. The point was okay for me – a good, solid viewing platform with good handrails. I stayed away from the edge, but was otherwise okay. Mer loved it, of course. Victoria went with us, but the others decided to hang out on a rise of rock part way along the Point Sublime trail.

Cici was then going to take us to another cute villiage for lunch, but it turned out the road was closed until Saturday for road work. So she improvised and took us to the village the long way around, which was how we were supposed to go back home – through the mountains and over the second highest bridge in Europe. I was sitting on the passenger side of a high-up van, so I could see down into the gorge. Usually straight down. I suddenly found the view of my lovely wife, sitting beside me, to be intoxicating. I could not take my eyes off of her. When we got to the bridge, I was slightly ill at the height of it, followed by a climb out of the bridge area. Ugh.

Happily, the landscape calmed down some as we pulled into a small village for a late lunch. We had a great meal in Aiguines. It was a very welcome break from the overwhelming drive.

We finished the touring part of the day in an amazing little town called Moustiers-Sainte-Marie. The town was pushed up against some cliffs, with a small river running through the village. Partway up the cliff was a small chapel, and way above the chapel, strung on a wire between two massive rocks, was hung a star. Tradition holds that a knight said that if he came back from the Crusades, he would hang a star between the two cliffs. Nowadays, the star is put in place by helicopter.

We had about forty-five minutes to explore the town, so Mer and I checked out the twelfth century church in the main part of town, before seeing if we could climb to the chapel on the cliff. Mer was kind enough to let me go ahead, and I made it up the switchbacks to the church in about fifteen minutes, which gave me about ten minutes to pray inside. Mer came along then; I was very proud of her for persevering. We walked down together and got back to the group only a couple minutes late. The others had explored the shops in the village and had seen us making our way down from the chapel.

Cici then drove us back to Nice, which took about two hours. She dropped us off about 6:00 pm, having done a really excellent job of driving and narrating and answering questions. Getting a guide was really the way to go.

After a thirty-minute rest, all of us walked over to the old section of Nice, where we had supper at a pizza place owned by actual Italians, and we followed that with gelato in the old town. We went back to the hotel, where Mer and I retired to the room around 9:15, while some of the others went back to the seafront to check out the main classic hotel in town, the Hotel Negresco, where you are allowed in if you visit the bar for a drink or some food.

It was a day of highs and highs, as it were, but well worth it.