Haut de Cagne

Yep, I'm back! I had a wonderful time in France, and would definitely recommend Nice and its surroundings to others thinking about a European vacation spot.

Our trip started out in Haut de Cagne -- one of the medieval "perched villages" that sits on one of the hills above the Mediterranean to the west of Nice (the website link is in French, but you don't need to speak French to enjoy the lovely pictures of the town). We stayed at a bed and breakfast "Les Terrasses du Soleil" and were treated to an extremely pleasant and peaceful start to our vacation.

The Bougainvillea that you see in this picture was a hallmark of Haut de Cagne. Everywhere we went in this little village we found huge sweeps of vivid magenta and green.

The picture on top of this post is the view we had from the large terrace attached to our room. I got to work on Charlotte's Web, inspired by this view. Here's how far I got on Charlotte while we were there:

Actually, this is how far I got on Charlotte during the whole trip. Most of the work was done in Haut de Cagne because we did a few long walks and touristy things, but mostly focused on relaxing. For me this meant Charlotte, for John this meant a lot of Civilization III: Play the World.

I'll should probably mention now that that John and I are not very good at remembering to take pictures on our vacations... so if you want to see more of what things looked like where we stayed, check out the links I put in.

But we did do more than knit and play video games. Here's a picture of me (with my wonderful daypack) trying to work out my rudimentary French skills in the Chateau Grimaldi -- a castle/museum that was built ~1300 AD that is the center of Haut de Cagne:

Here's a link to some 360 degree panarama shots provided by the tourism council (just click the orange button at the top of the page that says "visite virtuelle". Select "Chateau Grimaldi" from the pull down list to see some more interior shots of the castle.

And here's a shot of John sitting on a wall overlooking Cagne-sur-Mer and Le Cros de Cagne next to La Chapelle Notre Dame de Protection, a 14th century church that was literally next door to our bed and breakfast.

We stayed in Haut de Cagne from the 29th until the 4th and would certainly go back again. There's not a lot of things to see he Haut de Cagne (after you see the castle), but there are a number of good restaurants and the views are spectacular, and you feel like you've walked back into time. I'll put up some of our pictures in Nice and Monaco in tomorrow's post, since we have a lot more of those!

Finally, you migh be wondering what happened with my Brilla tank top. I got it seamed and started doing the crochet edging around the neck and armholes. It's one row of single crochet followed by a row of reverse single crochet. But I found that it didn't really have a nice effect and left off of it to deal with when I got home. Here's a picture of the whole top:

Which fit me quite well without any edging work. Here's a detail of the top where you can see the crochet edging around the neck (single and reverse single) and one armhole (single crochet only because I really didn't like the way the fabric was pulling and rippling with the single and reverse single together.

It is not completely obvious, but the crocheted armhole edge is rolling up. I'm thinking I may try to block it to see if I can get it to lay flat. I'm very tempted to rip it out completely, but I am thinking I will probably need something there to support the structure of the garment. Any opinions, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!