Copyright PS
Old Ventimiglia above the Roya river.
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"...into the perched old town with tall campanile towers against the sky...."
A New Zealand architect makes a day excursion from Nice in the south of France.
Friday:
The Saracens are Coming!
On Thursday night I checked at the station for trains to Italy’s Ventimiglia the next day. No buses went there from Nice, just one train in the morning, early. So it was up at dawn, and a ticket in hand, only to read the monitor displays conflicting with the official time-table. That one train was now going no farther than Menton — they'd taken the opportunity for a snap strike. Determined, I caught it to Menton, sparkling in the sun, and asked at the coach-station there for a bus to Ventimiglia. No such service, their official assured. Italy closed!
Fortunately I learned elsewhere that it might be possible to take a small wiggle-bus to the border, walk across at Pont San Luigi, and find an Italian equivalent. So with that trick I got into Liguria despite the strike. Only a few of us Saracens managed to push into Italy from the corner of France that day. The question was, had we entered a one-way lobster trap?
In the past I'd only known Ventimiglia as dreary railyard and motorway toll-delays on the way to exciting places. Largely so. But Friday is the big market day. The covered market, in Via Repubblica, sells all the Mediterranean goodies, suffused with Italian colour and smells to trigger memories for a lifetime. Crowded and noisy naturally. And outside stood stalls for bric-a-brac and bricolage.
Openly roofed over, this bazaar has been a traditional food-fest for many years: fruits known and unknown, many varietal olives, spices, salamis and sausages, sea-squirts and fish, aubergines and figs, cheese wheels, carnations and lavender, apricots and limes, pesto and anchovies, peppercorns and paprika, hogs' heads, zuccini flowers, and socca for a snack.
Then across the bridge over the River Roya, and up steep alleys into the perched old town with tall campanile towers against the sky. A labyrinth of lively decrepitude.... cont'd ............>
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Tags: PS peteshep Travel writing Architecture Alpes-Maritimes France day excursion International Writers competition The Saracens are Coming Ventimiglia copyright photo
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Copyright PS
"... A labyrinth of lively decrepitude....."
...........High up rose the 12thC church San Michele — wonderful townscape, but physical failure otherwise. And of course those visual surprises of life in the alleys, despite their condition. A sense of time and multi-layering pervaded. Chiaroscuro shadows, catenaries of displayed washing, and echoing lanes, suddenly burst with kids skittering pell-mell past............>
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Tags: PS peteshep Travel writing Architecture day excursion International Writers competition The Saracens are Coming Ventimiglia Italy
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.....It was tricky catching the bus back to the San Luigi border — running late, too late for the only French Connection long gone. So I embarked on a hot walk through Garavan (Mansfield country) and along that popular coast feeling its best, to Menton's Old Town. Past ochre compositions, I clambered up to the townscape multi-level grouping of baroquefied churches.......>
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"....Then through flower-bedecked back-alleys..."
....Then through flower-bedecked back-alleys and down into civilized Menton — a graceful old friend. Urban orange-trees, blue sea and sky, and that postcard promenade basking in the sun.
The brilliant coast was jam-crowded as I caught the bus west to Villefranche and surrealist colours of the Free Port. Just east of Nice this deep-water harbour lay cradled between the peninsulas of Cap de Nice and Cap Ferrat; the town sat at this mooring, facing the sun and backed by an amphitheatre of soaring hills......>
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Coastal Mediteranean settlements grew around their harbours, so that the nucleus of such a town was its Veille Ville, the Old Town, with its wiggling alleys and Middle-Ages stonework. Much modern development sprawled along this coast, but the core of this once fishing resort remained with some pre-17thC flavour. All houses and cafés on the waterfront were coloured with stucco coating containing earth-yellows or powdered terracotta. Green shutters and orange tile roofs added character. Though Italian in spirit, they were also a local response at this water‘s edge.
Tags: PS peteshep Travel writing Architecture Alpes-Maritimes France day excursion International Writers competition The Saracens are Coming Villefranche-sur-Mer copyright photo
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