Saturday June 3:

We had a very full day today. Breakfast consisted of things we picked up at the local casino (grocery store): yogurt, cheese, rolls, and jam. It is much cheaper to do this than to pay almost 15 Euro to eat at our hotel. We took it back to our hotel to eat on the terrace and were informed that no eating was allowed! It can make a mess; understande, No? Ouie, we did understand and went to eat in our car in the parking lot. We thought it was weird.

We then went on to Grasse, walked the old, somewhat dirty town, and then drove on up into the hills more to see some caves. The caves were amazing. Apparently a farmer that owned the land found the small opening and over a period of a few years opened it up some and built stone stairways down, and down, and down....the cave has an assortment of stalagmites and stalagtites and other rock formations and colors. It was very interesting.

From there we went back down to Grasse where we kept our appointment with the Galimard institute where we created our own fragrances. I loved that. We measured out various base notes, mid notes, and top notes. It was really fun and I'd like to go back sometime and make another one. We can order our fragrances again anytime.

After our sweet time in Grasse, we meandered back down towards the Riviera and into Cannes (pronounced Kahn), where they just finished up the annual Cannes Film Festival. This town looked very lively and was even larger than St. Tropez, and full of even more money (wasn't sure that was possible). It reminds me of when we walked around Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive years ago. You can see the wealthy (and not-so-wealthy) walking among the expensive shops, coming off of mega yachts in the marina, and generally trying to look impressive to anyone watching; mainly Mandy and I and hundreds of others eating along the promenade.

We left just after sunset, around 10:00 p.m., and drove back to our hotel in St. Aygulf - dead tired after our very long, very fun day.