28.01.2006, morning

The plan for Saturday morning was simple: get up early, eat breakfast, then go to Monaco. But Fran's idea was to take a very long detour, going all the way around through the mountains. Sounded perfect to me, so there we went.

Well, we're talking about the Alpes, not just some little mountains. I was indeed impressed. At first, the road was crossing a big plane, pointing straight at the mountains, that looked bigger as we approached. When we reached them, we were swallowed into a deep valley with a small river running through it. The road followed the river path and the enormous mountains surrounded us on all sides.



I felt trapped and small and soon came to the strange realisation that I have a small irrational fear of mountains. Nothing crippling enough to make me want to get out of there, but a weird uneasiness, a feeling that the mountains were closing in on us. My wild imagination kept seeing them wake up, feel itchy and squash our tiny little car like a bug. We kept stopping for me to get out of the car and take a few photos, but nothing can really capture that overwhelming scale.

Finally, the road managed to leave the valley at the bottom and start climbing up. Weirdly enough, the mountains stop being scary for me as I got higher and higher. I don't have a problem with heights at all, and being on top of a mountain is even exhilarating. I guess I just don't like the mountain to be on top of me...



We passed some postcard perfect little vilages lost in the middle of nothing, and I kept asking to myself... who wants to live here in this strange isolation? The snow was more and more abundant, but there were quite a few cars driving past and the roads were in really good condition. We were really enjoying this change of scenary. However, the road started climbing even more, twisting and turning on the mountain slope, and as we got higher, ice was making the road more dangerous.



At some point, it stopped raining and it was snowing furiously. Everything was white, and it was just the perfect image of winter. But the road was covered in ice and snow too, and at this point we realised we couldn't possibly go on... it was too dangerous. The mountain had won, we had to admit defeat and resign to go all the way back down. We put on the Lord of the Rings soundtrack (which only made the valley seem scarier to me) and got back to civilisation.

We were back in Nice for lunch and decided to head to Monaco by an easier route in the afternoon.