Saorge, We Make A Rare Find,
An Old Tired Perched City
Today we are off to Saorge, a perched city northeast of Nice near the Italian border. We will be taking a train and it will take about 90 minutes.
Here are a couple of shots on our walk to the train station.
This is our "go to" bakery. We get fresh croissants and baguettes almost everyday and they are awesome! Susie already knows all the workers & they know her by name :-)
Here is a look inside... if you are hungry, please skip to the next section :-)
All of the wood is walnut! Amazing work!
Here are a couple of reliquaries (containers for holy relics) that date back to the 1400's!
(the second one is pretty weird)
The dining area for the monks.
At the back of the monastery you will find a beautiful terraced garden.
Some of the goods from the garden.
Some amazing views from the garden... Note, Italy is just on the other side of the mountain in the middle.
A lucky shot :-) There is a lot of honey sold in the area.
A shot of the monastery from the gardens.
Here are a couple of shot I had to take. They look like perfect trees. What do you think??
(Yes the grass was that green)
A few more shots from the monastery. There were lots of paintings in the cloister.
They had a display showing how they are restore the buildings. Here is how they restore the walls. First there is the foundational bricks. Next is a coarse layer of mortar, followed by medium and fine grit layers of plaster.
After our visit to the monastery we had a nice lunch at THE restaurant in the town :-)
Here are a few parting shots as we left Saorge.
Here is the old public bath... I really dig the ancient disco ball hanging above :-)
A local artist had some of his work display in the town...
We took the train back to Nice & had a quiet evening. I worked feverlessly on the blog, hoping to catch-up.
Cheers,
-jj
Here are a couple of shots on our walk to the train station.
This is our "go to" bakery. We get fresh croissants and baguettes almost everyday and they are awesome! Susie already knows all the workers & they know her by name :-)
Here is a look inside... if you are hungry, please skip to the next section :-)
Here are some shots from the train along the way to Saorge. There were lots of tunnels and some pretty nice views.
After 90 minutes we arrived at the Saorge train station.
The train station services both of these towns.
The tour book said we had about 15 minute walk from the train station to Saorge. What the tour book didn't say is the 300 yard (meters) tunnel we had to walk though...
The tour book also didn't mention we had to share the tunnel with cars, busses and trucks :-) YIKES!
We made it through the tunnel and had about a 10 minute walk to the town. Here are a few shots along the walk to Saorge.
We came through this tunnel on the train.
A Prehistoric Find :-)
Here is a well preserved ancient ping-pong table dating back to ~500BC. This thing is made of solid rock! Looks like ping-pong is not too popular with the natives :-)
Here is the town of Saorge... I get the feeling that we probably won't be finding a McDonald's here :-) FYI- the population in Saorge is 434!
The town is a little rundown, but there were lots of interesting things to photograph.
Here are a few shots along the main street.
There were many very narrow streets along the way.
Although the town is pretty old & tired, there were splashes of color in the town...
At the far end of the town, about a 10 minute walk, we found a nice monastery founded by the Franciscan monks in 1633. The monks left in 1914 and the state turned it into a historic site.
Before we go into the monastery, here is a nice shot of the town of Saorge from the monastery.
Note all the white dots are actually satellite dishes.
OK... here are few shots from the monastery ...
Here are few shots from the church...
First a couple of the side altars.
Here is an old-school confessional.
Here is the main altar.
All of the wood is walnut! Amazing work!
Here are a couple of reliquaries (containers for holy relics) that date back to the 1400's!
(the second one is pretty weird)
The dining area for the monks.
At the back of the monastery you will find a beautiful terraced garden.
Some of the goods from the garden.
Some amazing views from the garden... Note, Italy is just on the other side of the mountain in the middle.
A lucky shot :-) There is a lot of honey sold in the area.
A shot of the monastery from the gardens.
Here are a couple of shot I had to take. They look like perfect trees. What do you think??
(Yes the grass was that green)
A few more shots from the monastery. There were lots of paintings in the cloister.
They had a display showing how they are restore the buildings. Here is how they restore the walls. First there is the foundational bricks. Next is a coarse layer of mortar, followed by medium and fine grit layers of plaster.
After our visit to the monastery we had a nice lunch at THE restaurant in the town :-)
Here are a few parting shots as we left Saorge.
Here is the old public bath... I really dig the ancient disco ball hanging above :-)
A local artist had some of his work display in the town...
We took the train back to Nice & had a quiet evening. I worked feverlessly on the blog, hoping to catch-up.
Cheers,
-jj
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