July 25, 1976
Dear Mom and Dad,
Hello, sorry to hear that your weather hasn’t been all that great. We must be getting all the good weather.
The course in Cannes hasn’t been exactly what we expected so we’re going to Paris for August to take a course either at the Sorbonne or the Alliance Française. You can write to us there:
c/o Alliance Française
101 Blvd Raspail
Paris, France
We’ve enjoyed our stay in Cannes and there have been good things about the course but one month is enough. The excursions and activities have been excellent and we’ve met some really great people. However, most of the profs leave much to be desired. I guess I’m a bit spoiled after having Monique.
We had an excursion to Monaco and Monte Carlo last Sunday. Very, very pretty. Unfortunately it rained so we didn’t see that much; however, we did see the changing of the guard at the palace - a very colourful and elaborate process.
Last week we went to another art museum (an artist called Léger) at a neighbouring village called Biot. The teacher who does the art is very good and he comes along with us to these museums. As well, at this village, there is a glassworks factory that we visited. All the articles here are blown by hand, individually, and the process was very interesting. We bought some large champagne glasses and had them shipped to Canada. It makes for a practical souvenir as they can be used for any type of wine.
This morning we went to Nice to pick up our visas for Poland. We are really looking forward to our stay there. On our way, we’re going to stop off in Germany for a few days. That should be interesting too as we’ve never seen that country. On our way back to London we’ll be stopping off at Amsterdam and seeing that city with our friends from Holland. September promises to be an interesting month but I’m sure by that time we’ll be tired and ready to come home.
Tomorrow we have an excursion to the villages inland that are “perched’ on the mountainsides. They are supposed to be quite spectacular especially Vence. We’ve made all our arrangements for Paris and I hope we’ll find a course there that suits us better. At any rate, Paris is always an exciting place to be!
Love,
Jim and Janice
We visited Vence again on this past trip to France and these are the pictures we took in 2005.
This picture was taken in 1976 and I'm not sure which of the perched villages it was.
This picture was taken on our 2002 trip. We had only just arrived in Nice and we were enjoying the fabulous view from our balcony at the Hôtel Suisse on the Promenade des Anglais. We were very jetlagged but the view and the wine revived us. Thanks to Monique for recommending this hotel. Don and Elaine stayed there too when they came to visit us in Carqueiranne this past year...they loved it too!
