Dreamy captures, the south looks beautiful whatever season. So nice to see the author behind the blog.
"Separating the church and cemetery is a really nice stone courtyard with a garden path and of course, another viewpoint."
It's a great resting place being high up as well as family members visiting their loved ones. Connecting it to an elevated botanical garden is sweet as well.
Yeah the region is probably very beautiful in the spring and the months when all of the trees and flowers are in bloom. It was quite nice in February though as well so it's kind of a nice place to go year round I think. It may be even better to visit in the off season because I know the area is super busy with tourists in the summer. A friend went in August a while back and said it was insane. He said there were so many people and that it was too much.
I see. I have never been to this part of France. Whenever we were there during the summer, the family always declined traveling there during August. It's a place I wanted to visit at least once in this lifetime.
Yeah it's not an easy place to get to either. For us it's like an 11 hour drive from where we live. We haven't tried taking the train with the dog yet but are going to give it a try later in the month.
The good thing is that if you do a vacation there one day, you can see a lot of the Rivera pretty easily by train. Most towns are close together along the coast.
I'd like to try vacationing via train. We always traveled with a car because some sites are difficult to get to with a train alone so it's cool to have towns easily linked together. As per your experience being there which one is more cost effective? Traveling via train or car?
Yeah cars give you access to many more places for sure and a major downside of trains is that you end up wasting a lot of time as well. They don't come very frequently, they make a lot of additional stops and you often end up waiting like 30 minutes or so on the platform. You really have to time them based on their schedules if you don't want to loose addition time of the day. France is also notorious for transit strikes and even worse, canceling trains without warning or notice and without refunds. Last weekend friends of our had that happen. A commuter train to Paris was canceled, which made them miss their train from Paris to Germany so they had to drive all the way to Stuttgart Germany. And the first train line wouldn't refund their money because they didn't buy refundable tickets but it seems so ridiculous to me that they want you to pay extra just in case they randomly cancel the train for no reason. They were out the cost of two trains plus spent the extra money on gas and tolls.
Its hard to say which is more cost effective as well. Until recently the trains seemed way more expensive to me and in a lot of cases didn't save any time. Some trips required us to pay an extra 30€ or so to save like 30 minutes on a 7 hour journey. So it hasn't been worth it for the most part, unless it's a major hub that has a high speed rail (Paris to Marseille or Bordeaux for instance). But in France gas and tolls are getting really expensive as well so I've revisited the train and have found some to be cheaper. In the end it depends on what day you are traveling (weekends are a lot more expensive) and how many people you are traveling with (3 train tickets is often more expensive than gas and tolls).
Sorry for the huge response but it's kind of a complicated question hahaha as you can see.
Thanks for answering my question. I thought so too during a brief time we lived in France for 5 months, it really depends on where the destination is. We lived along the west coast and were stuck around the region throughout our time there. We did take the train from the airport because it's the most convenient but sometimes I found trains more expensive unless, of course, it's within the city with a day pass or something to avoid parking fees, tolls, and traffic, but as you said, there are also unexpected strikes. At the time back in 2019 when there were the Saturday gilets jaunes strikes, we had to ditch some train stations and walk instead because they were closed with unavailable metro connections. Luckily, those were short distances but it's great you shared the difficulties if they're not refundable tickets. Well explained, thanks again for sharing the pros and cons.
Yeah that's another mark against trains - almost all leave from Paris so you typically have to take a train to get there first and then another one to your actual destination.
Enjoy you weekend!