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Menton, France

April 28^th 2023

We drove to Menton from St. Tropez, an easy drive on excellent roads hugging the coast. Menton lies minutes from the border of Italy on the French Cote d’Azur. The Old Town lies nestled near the sandy beach that wraps around a small, very beautiful bay with steep, heavily wooded mountains soaring behind it. The cobbled streets, many cafes, boulangeries and plazas have an Italian feel and on our first night there we passed a couple of street entertainers singing wonderful arias from the opera. The tenor, a young  man wearing a fedora, began singing and was joined by a young woman who appeared to be pushing a stroller. Their voices were clear and powerful and well trained. People were wandering by with their dogs and kids, and many open-air cafes were thronged with the locals and visitors there for the May Day holiday.

Our hosts, old friends from my husband’s childhood in South Africa, took us to a seafront restaurant where the service was excellent and the food sublime. Neither of us have had seafood platters of that size or quality that we can remember. The portions were huge and very reasonably priced. My plate was the size of a basin, with huge prawns, different kinds of clams and mussels, whelks, calamari and squid in a simple yet subtle tomato-based broth. We were able to both eat a good dinner the next night from the leftovers!

The next day we drove  up the mountain to the village of St. Agnes, which is the highest coastal village in Europe, 800 meters above the Mediterranean. It is a tiny cluster of old houses lining narrow, winding cobbled streets dating from the 12^th century. The current population is about 1300 and they seem to have a large tourist trade with many restaurants and inns. It was a rainy day so we were literally up  in the clouds but could look over the valleys to the mountain tops beyond, the vineyards on the slopes, farmhouses, villages, and the incredible bridge spanning the valley.

The village is the site of the famous Fort de Ligne Maginot, part of a line of defensive bunkers built before WW2 to protect the eastern border of France. It is a vast complex of concrete bunkers, minefields, fortresses and gun batteries, stretching 280 miles along the German border. It is like an underground city,  with what were state of the art facilities like plumbing and heating and  hospitals. Larry took the tour of the fort at St Agnes, which lasted two hours. Unfortunately, the French strategy failed as the Germans broke through the gap in the line which was a wilderness area that the French assumed would be impenetrable, but they were unprepared for the new “blitzkrieg” strategy of armored vehicles that the Germans used. The term Maginot Line has since come to mean a strategy that inspires a false sense of security.

Our visit to this area was auspicious as the May Day (International Workers Day) observances are held this weekend. We attended a small ceremony to honor the French deportees and all those murdered in the German concentration camps in WW2. The Marseillaise, The French national anthem,  was played and flags lowered and many wreaths laid at the foot of the memorials in the old city center. It was very moving and painfully sad, remembering  how the Jews of France were rounded up by the Vichy Government and the French police, and how many hundreds of thousands of French Resistance workers and others were betrayed by collaborators and lost their lives. Of the approximately 350,000 Jews in France at the beginning of the war, 75,000 were sent to death camps. Only a handful survived.

The climate here is Mediterranean with verdant vegetation including orange trees and lychee trees laden with fruit, rubber trees, banyan trees, strelitzia, bottle brush and more. Our friends live quite high up the mountain, accessible only by steps or a very narrow, vertiginous road that snakes its way up. The apartment has a sweeping view of the coast and although small, is beautiful with lots of wonderful artifacts from their travels all over the world. We spent a great couple of days together. Today they took us to the tiny village of Ez where one can climb a path up  the mountain that is like a fairytale, each turn brings another amazing picture perfect view of ancient doors, worn steps, wisteria and geraniums, and views that were too high up for me to manage but I am assured they are breathtaking! We could see the mansions of Monte Carlo on the hillside opposite.