Our trips frequently include boat rides of different varieties, and this stay on the French Riviera was not an exception. On one of the days in the area, we planned to spend a few hours on a sailboat going up and down the coast between Nice and Monaco. For reasons outside of our control, that excursion got canceled less than a day before, so we rejigged our plans to make do with a shorter trip in a motorized dinghy.
Here is the view from the entrance of the Port of Nice towards Castle Hill.
Assorted perspectives of the coastline.
The skies exhibited different features throughout the trip.
A swimming stop, complete with jumping into the water from the boat, is an essential part of any such excursion.
And this being a smaller boat, one happy young traveler got to captain it for a while.
The shorter boat ride afforded us an opportunity to visit another attraction that was originally on the tentative “if-time-permits” list. In the village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer, an archaeologist and French statesman by the name of Théodore Reinach in the early 1900s built a faithful recreation of a Greek noble house, known as Villa Kerylos. His designs were informed by the findings on Delos, which we visited a few years ago. I have said in the past that archaeological sites often leave me underwhelmed, since I apparently lack the spatial imagination required to see ruins for more than what their present state suggests. (Delos was actually one ancient site where a bit more architecture survived in reasonable shape.) Being able to step inside an ancient building – even a reconstruction of one that is augmented by quite a few modern luxuries – does have a significant attraction quotient for me.
The villa is organized around a peristyle – twelve columns in Carrara marble surrounding a large inner courtyard.
On the ground floor are the state rooms, while the bedrooms and bathrooms are located upstairs. Here are a few fragments.
And assorted decorative elements.
The gardens and the terrace complete the ensemble.
As happens to me with annoying regularity, when the best exterior perspectives are to be found offsite from a distance, I end up with nothing of note to share. Something to keep working on in future instances.
And this completes the series of retrospectives of the summer stay on the Riviera.