VilleFranche-ser-Mer page 4

     It was early morning when our ship set anchor in the bay, off the Coast of France in a place called VilleFranche-ser-Mer. From there we took a tender boat from the ship to the shore. We'd signed up to take a tour bus from the harbor to go see the town of Nice and another town named Eza.  We were now officially on the French Rivera.

   The village of VilleFranche-ser-Mer is beautiful with it's colorful, sunny houses and their terracotta roofs. All stacked up along the mountainside surrounding the bay.
     Since our bus tour didn't start until noon, we had a couple of hours to explore this charming location. Philip and I walked along the shore. We took a lot of pictures and basically took in the morning sun. I spotted a small beach and instantly wanted to go there for some beach sand. For those who don't know me, I collect beach sand and have samples from a wide region of the world.
At the beach, Philip took off his shoes and waded into the blue waters of the Mediterranean. As I gathered a zip lock bag of sand, I happened to notice a woman take off her top and put on a bikini top - or maybe she layed down on the sand to sun her back. I really stopped looking after I noticed her topless form. I thought to myself "This must be how things are done in France."

 

     I didn't think much of it as I was suddenly mesmerized by the beach sand, which was not sand at all but small, tiny pebbles, the size of minced garlic. All colors of rock in bits. Our bus driver / tour guide later said that the beach sand was from the rivers and streams coming into the bay. Little bits of France at our feet.

   
     I took out my camera to take a picture of the sand, when I noticed a young, blond haired girl of about 10 or 12 who had taken off her swim clothes as she changed into her regular clothes. There she was, a blond nymph standing naked in the morning sun. I put my camera away.
     It made me uneasy. Her mother (I reckoned it was her mother) laid on the sand beside her, wearing a swim suit and a blond girl of about 8 sat topless beside them.
     Later, as Phil and I made our way back to the place where we were to get on the tour bus, I mentioned seeing these things and Philip said he never saw any of this. We were on a topless beach and didn't even know it.

 

   We did have some time to explore some of the shops. One lady, who had a shop in the town and made unique clothing items, said her sales were half of what they had been because of the tradegy in Nice, last year, where a terrorist had driven a truck into a crowd, killing 84 people.

 

Later, we headed to the tour bus and headed on to Nice, France.