Notre Appartement

Dear Friends,

We have a wonderful apartment in the middle of la vieille ville of Villefranche-sur-mer with a wonderful view.  To try to orient you, here is a map of the general area.

As you can see from the map the Bay of Villefranche is one of very few natural harbors along this coast of the Mediterranean Sea which is why Villefranche played such an important role in naval history.  Villefranche is about 5 miles from Nice and about 10 miles from Monaco.  The train runs right along the coast to all the cities shown as do roads with great bus service, so it is easy to visit most places without a car.

The vieille ville of Villefranche is quite small and nestled in the southwest corner of the Bay of Villefranche. Here is a map.

If this map continued north and east, you could see the rest of the bay which is enclosed on the other side by Cap Ferrat.  The purple streets just west of Port de la Santé are all the streets in the vieille ville.  The hill slopes rapidly up to the west from the water.  If you look closely at the map you can see that the streets run mainly north and south and there are primarily stairs that run east and west that will take you up the hill from the water.  There are very few streets where cars are allowed.

Our apartment is on rue Baron de Brès.  If you start counting the streets that run north and south from the water, it is the third street from the water.  As you can see the church holds a very prominent place in the town.  There is a street that runs from the top of the vieille ville to the bottom just north of the church, rue de May.  Rue de May is stairs only.  Our apartment is just a few houses north of the intersection of rues Baron de Brès and de May.

This picture is Jane standing in front of the door to our apartment building.  You are looking north.

This picture is taken facing south.  The plants that you see at what appears to be the end of the street are the plants in front of two little restaurants at the intersection of rues Baron de Brès and de May.  One restaurant is quite fancy, very good and a little expensive.  The other is more casual but with very good food including a pizza named after Minnesota that has hamburger on it.

Our apartment has a wonderful view of the bay.  This panoramic picture was taken from our balcony.

Here are some pictures of the apartment.  The living room is very light and airy and is 1.5 stories high as you can see there is a loft with an extra bed and bath.

The kitchen is wonderful with a great stove, lots of counter space, a dishwasher and large refrigerator.

The bedroom is also very roomy with great closet space and a wonderful bed with great linens.  The windows face rue Baron de Brès and if you need it, they will provide great cross ventilation with the living room windows that face the bay.

The bathroom is great with two sinks, a shower and a bath as well as a toilet.  The only problem is that, as in most of France, there is no door on the shower so water gets on the floor which you clean up with a squeegee.

You can see more pictures and get more info about our apartment on the website of the landlord (here).  Our apartment is the one called "Chez Nous" and since it is new (just started renting in May) the information is not as complete as for the others that the landlord rents.

So as you can see not only are we living in paradise because we are in Villefranche, we are living in paradise because notre appartement est très joli.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal