In which Sid and Doris fail to keep a new resolution only to stay in the nicest hotels.
As I mentioned at the end of yesterday’s entry, we were in Sanremo which is only 24 hours drive in a Mini from the UK if you don’t use motorways, or possibly as little as 15 hours if you did. Assuming you were able to talk and think afterwards.
Opting for sanity, we have mostly gone for the “no motorways” option although there are times when a strategic lift is useful to move the journey forwards, for example when you want to get from Sanremo to the other side of Nice in less than four hours. We then turned inland and picked up the Route Napoleon through Castellane, which we reached via the Col de Vence. “Pass points” are only awarded for passes over 1,000m (another of our various driving games) so sadly no points were gained for this one, but the views back towards the coast and the limestone scenery were spectacular.
Meanwhile the WhatsApp group was chattering away as everyone made their way home – 18 of the cars were going back on transporters but several crews especially those that lived less than 900 miles from Sanremo were driving home. One crew went via the area of washed-out roads that would have been yesterday afternoon’s route and posted a picture showing that there was an awful lot of damage still present. There had been 181mm of rain in an hour (over 7 inches) and 900mm in total over 24 hours (nearly 3 feet).
14 days staying in Very Fine Hotels found and organised by other people has given Sid and Doris a taste for the good life – having those little linen mats carefully spread out by your bed every night is really rather charming. So while Sid drove past his childhood French Exchange area near Sisteron, Doris put a four star filter onto booking.com and identified a grand hotel in Grenoble called, usefully Le Grand Hotel. Grenoble was a Winter Olympics city and so has a variety of hotels, which is just as well because the central pedestrianised area proved to be a bit of a b*gger to navigate. As we went past a dealer in second-hand books for the third time, Sid asked “are there any other hotels in town?!” “Oh yes”, said Doris, “That one just there.”
And so we ended up in the Okko hotel which is very cute if you are the size of a hobbit. The bathroom has an achingly cool design where you walk through the shower bit to get to the loo/basin bit, which works extremely well until you want to have a shower. After that everything gets a bit squelchy. Bizarrely it also qualifies as a 4* hotel which shows you that Mr Okko has worked out how to game the star system.
Anyway it was in the university district which as well as second hand bookshops had many many studenty bars, cafes, brasseries and restaurants. Beer and soup dinner, yo ho.