DAY 47 - TUE 4/16 - Beach & Garmin

Yesterday was good and bad...we got answers to our questions at Apple but they weren't what we had hoped for. Today we need to work on the Garmin GPS map issue, but first we need our breakfast and some fun.

Off we go to the Gran Cafe in centre ville Beaulieu, now our new "ground zero" cafe. We get a good parking place again and walk over to the cafe, and lo and behold, Corrine and Annie are there having their morning Chocolat Chaud (hot chocolate). We of course greet them with the traditional kiss-kiss on each cheek, and join them for breakfast. Maurizio, the owner, greets us with a big 'Hello' and knows already that we get 2 cafe cremes and one croissant avec apricot (with apricot jam)...we're regulars now!...we're in! We chat for a while and Corrine says she is going to take her walk around to the nearby village of St. Jean Cap Ferrat, a most beautiful and extremely wealthy area just the next town over. We all leave and we go to buy our paper map...it's almost embarrassing that we have to resort to that! 

Nearby is a fabulous upscale bike store that Marty had spotted over the weekend, and it is open today. So he goes in just to browse, and ends up buying a snazzy French riding shirt to add to his collection...he just couldn't resist! Julian, a store worker, is unbelievably good looking and speaks excellent English having spent a year in the states as a professional cyclist. He tried helping us with our Garmin but, with our luck with technology on this trip, nothing he tried worked.

It's now 2pm, we walk past the local supermarket, and get to our car.  We decide to go and visit St. Jean Cap Ferrat to see what everyone is talking about. 

From the minute you follow the first sign to the village, the scenery is lush with luxurious villas and vistas. We see a sign to the Plage Passable (beach)...we decide to park on a narrow winding street and walk the rest of the way, following the path down down to the sea.  It's already lookin' pretty spectacular!

We walk down to the bottom of a windy, descending walk way and immediately find a magnificent crescent beach and a vista of the Mediterranean appears...it's breathtaking! 

And as if that isn't enough, there is a beautiful restaurant right there with tables in white linens on the terrace as well as out onto the sand. We HAVE to have lunch here!

AND, as if that isn't enough, there is a couple right in view from our table and the woman is topless! All we can we say is...it's a picture!  A perfect picture!!

We try not to ogle too much...it's not like we haven't ever seen such a sight...Jill used to go topless whenever she could back in the old days...but it's just that we haven't been exposed (no pun intended) to this in many years. There are a few other topless women on the neighboring beach area adjacent to the restaurant. Eye candy for the guys...and Jill too...she loves the naturalness of it all!

    

You can also ogle the cruise ships docked in the baie...

We order lunch...one of Marty's favorites of bresaola with shaved parmisean and arugula, and a wonderful shaved raw artichoke salad for Jill.  Our lunch is wonderful and light....very Italian, in fact...reminds us of our days in Italy on the beach just outside of Rome at Fregenie.

    

Here are some more views of the local area...

We linger for a while over our cafes noisette and then decide to return to Beaulieu.  Marty needs to get a haircut, so we decide to go to Carol, one of the ladies we met at the Birthday BBQ out on the dock in Beaulieu a few days ago who has a shop right along the harbor.  She's delightful, and Marty is very satisfied with her styling.

    

We then need to get back to solving our Garmin problem.  First we need to locate a cable to hook up the Garmin to a PC.  Store after store in Beaulieu tells us they don't have any such cable.  But Marty then gets the idea that a local camera store might have one, since that's how digital cameras interface with computers. Bingo!  12€ later we have our USB-to-micro-USB cable.

But, minor problem, we don't have our PC with us.  So we call Jean-Luc and Silvie, our apartment owners, and they agree to come after work and bring jean-Luc's PC to the apartment to help us...how  nice is that!

On our way back to our car, after we bought the cable, we decide to have a look at tonight's restaurant selection, a Michelin two knife & fork place called La Raison Gourmande. We are greeted by the known chef, a skinny, weird looking dude, wearing a pony tail and heavy eye makeup...yes he was male. However, the menu was fixed price only at 65€ per person, meaning you had to order the three courses offered. Jill said she couldn't eat that much, no a la carte at dinner, so we ended up canceling, much to the chef's dismay.

Back at the apartment, we prepare for the visit of Jean-Luc and Silvie to help us with the Garmin.
They arrive at 6:30 and we get to work. We ran into a brick wall and decide to phone Garmin France for help but they had closed more than an hour ago. What to do? Marty decides to call Garmin USA technical assistance.  And for the next hour and thirty minutes they work on resolving the problem over a long distance phone call. No extended explanation here, but suffice it to say that the new Garmin unit did not arrive in user-ready condition, something we will take up with them upon our return.

    

Jean-Luc and Silvie decline a dinner invitation and they leave. They are the sweetest couple and very unassuming....wonderful people. 

By now it's 9pm and we are hungry so off to the port we go for a light snack. This time we try another restaurant, Cafe del Mare, and it's perfect. A hamburger and some pasta and we are satisfied. As we drive home we realize that we have already mastered the local street patterns. We're feeling like locals all over again. 

 The night sky is simply mesmerizing, and the flickering lights all around the crescent coastline are amazing. But even more spectacular is that if you look straight up the mountain from Beaulieu you see some lights that seem to be restaurant terraces hanging over the cliff...we think it's the village of Eze, which we will visit, but not at night! It's all dream-like!

Bonne nuit, tout le monde.