Villefranche Sur Mer, France

As promised, I am doing some back-tracking to get the posts in chronological order!  Let's go back 6 weeks to the beginning of my self-imposed sabbatical. As some of you know, I typically do a long (usually 3 week) vacation every year to some exotic, far away locale.  This year the vacation planning never really got going, so when my good friends Jason and Frank told me they were doing a short trip to the South of France I decided to convince my friend Sue we should tag along and just add some additional stops on the back-end.  She's always wanted to go to Croatia and Delta seemed bound and determined to make us fly back to the states from Portugal, so a plan was born and the details of the trip fell into place!  As luck would have it, the trip started 2 weeks to the day I gave my notice at Intuit which gave me a really great distraction on the day I had to turn in my equipment and said good-bye to many great people after 11+ years.  Tears were avoided which was a small miracle.

Our flight to France departed out of the brand-spanking new International Terminal at Hartsfield Airport and after an entertaining ride to the airport with Jonas, we had the easiest check-in of all time - arriving at the gate approximately 2 minutes after passing through the TSA security check point.  Sometimes things just work out...

To kick off the trip, we rented a villa in Villefranche Sur Mer for a week.  The villa seemed really nice online and booking something on such short notice left us with only a few options to chose from.  With our fingers crossed, Sue and I called Jason and Frank on Friday (they arrived a day before us) to see if the reality of the place met the online representation.  PHEW!  Not only did it exceed expectations aesthetically, but it was in an absolutely perfect location; 5 minutes to train and beach, on a pedestrian only street with loads of cafes and shops and in the middle of the all the places we wanted to do day trips: Monaco, Italy, Cannes, Nice, Eze, etc.  Again, sometimes things just work out...

View from our living room / balcony 

It was absolutely gorgeous and with the exception of the fact that the restaurant directly below us used duck fat to cook everything on their menu, the indoor/outdoor living was ideal.  

While in Villefranche Sur Mer we enjoyed lots of day trips:

Cannes Casino (where film festival is held)

Carlton Hotel Cannes

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Eze, France

Eze, France

Eze, France

We enjoyed great company, delicious food, good wine and Jason committing Facebook suicide (SHOCKING) before it was time to move onto Croatia.  A favorite moment was Frank protecting his delicate Puerto Rican skin with a parasol like a geisha as we awaited our taxi to the Nice Airport:

Frank the Fair-Skinned Puerto Rican

More on Croatia and Portugal to come.  Must take a lunch break and (perhaps) beat my Mom at another game of Words with Friends.  Ah the life of a woman on sabbatical!