Blog Route Napoleon

The journey is the destination

This year we had a special kind to reach our holiday destination. We are living next of Osnabrück, and since 15 years we are friends of the Côte d'Azur. Each year, we drive down to the cost between Toulon and Nice, its a wonderful coastline, where we can recover from work and find lot of places for my photographic hobby.

As always, we had booked our home on the Côte d'Azur, but we decided to create not the hasty drive on the highway in 14 hours. We stopped first at Freiburg to get the first few hundred miles behind us, there we ate a delicious dinner and rested for one night. After the impressive breakfast we passed through Switzerland to start into the French Alps. The next overnight destination was Sisteron, so we followed the N85 from Grenoble through the foothills of La Mure, Corps and Gap, a road with beautiful views, which only has, unfortunately, not enough parking facilities to capture the landscape. On the rare places where finally are some parking spots, too much tree growth is around, but we knew this being the same in Germany.

For the first pictures, I stopped at the first hills, where warm weather and sunshine snow-capped mountains in the distance, clouds and crowns at the tips felt all ready like holiday.

Then we visited some places, unfortunately I have not written down where I had photographed the church, but it was most likely Gap because I have been too busy stunning at the great shopping street.

In the afternoon we arrived at Sisteron, where first the hotel formalities were done, afterwards it was confirmed that it was a good thing, because an hour later, all rooms were gone. In the evening, we took the time for a detailed walk-through-tour in Sisteron. Alone the rock is terrific, I wanted to climb to its top, but I had not really enough time as I was in town and the Castle is already plenty to look at.

Eventually we reached the hills decending to the sea side, where we have encountered on the road a the small abandoned train station. There are the signs indicating only an hour's drive to Grasse.
Here you can also see that the N85 is also known as the Route Napoleon, but usually  the foreigners know more about it than the local French.
We spent much more than one hour, because we have preferred to stop at some sightseeing places, yet finally we crossed the last hill overlooking Grasse and that's were I was able to stop at an attractive place and take these two welcoming pictures.

Of course, you can smell already the surrounding grasses and trees, the perfume city of the world is welcoming you. Anyone who comes here for the first time, I can only recommend the Fragonard Perfume Museum and visit the old town. Who wants to buy reasonably priced perfume should not do it in the Museum. Fragonard has also converted an old factory in the suburb area to an art museum and selling area. Guided tours are offered in several languages that explain the distil techniques something that the museum in the old town does not show that well. The signs of this Fragonard are all over the places as naturally as the highway information signs.

So much for Grasse, which we already know well and therefore had gone out of there quickly towards final goal, which was then another 2 hours to go. Arrived at our destination we bought some freshly caught fish, then at our organic winery some red wine and finally check in.
Finally we filled our pre-cooled refrigerator, well, all that comes later I have probably not to tell, else I too much feel like going for the next vacation again.

From our home on the coast between Toulon and St. Tropez one is always fast in the backcountry or at one of the many the seaside towns and their ports. Here I show a typical picture of the port of Cassis, which is where the famous liqueur was invented.

The image with the cyclist was a coincidence, my wife wanted the map and I was just focused and triggered when the Biker shot through. This took place in Collobrieres, a mountain village, with about 6000 inhabitants. Here they celebrate once a year the big chestnut party when up to 50,000 visitors a day stop at the village. Chestnuts roasted fresh, chestnut jam, etc. are offered at many booths and a few souvenir shops.

About the pink church with the yellow hat, I don't need not tell anything, there is much more exciting motives in St. Tropez.

I hope you liked the pictures which show a little bit of diversity of the area.