Nice And Les Gorges du Verdon

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Nice

Nice actually turned out to be a much nicer town than the beach holiday tourist trap I was expecting. The castle on the hill allows you to get wonderful views over the city and there is at least one really nice park (and probably many more that I didn't see). At the time I went, they were deep in construction of a new tram system, so some places are a mess because of this. I expect it will be nice when it's done, though.

The church I saw from my hotel balcony	Another view	Construction of the new tramway
A big statue by a nice park, with a ferris wheel in the background	The sea and beach	Looking along the cost towards the castle
Looking back away from the castle	Nice colourful buildings set in front of rugged rocks	Looking at the bay after the castle
A view over the city from the castle	Weird stone hut thing by the castle	Yeah, I like my satelite dishes!
The city	The sun shines through the trees	Tall and (I think) shaped trees
A nice waterfall	A bigger waterfall	The city as the evening starts to draw on
A similar shot	The park again	The ferris wheel by night
A rush hour traffic jam as the sun starts to set	The beautiful sunset	The sunset colours the sea
Looking out to sea	Another shot of the sunset as the orange becomes even more firey	Along the sea front

On The Way To The Gorges

The journey there was somewhat interesting. On the way up to the mountains, we passed through a fairly thick layer of could until we were above it, which we feared would spoil the view. Happily, there was nothing to be seen of it over the gorge itself.

Looking down on the cloud	More cloud	Hills cast shadows
Taken as we drove along	Really craggy rocks	Passing by a small village
The chapel on the hill at Castellane	Castellane Church	Both of Castellane's churches
Looking through an archway	Castellane's picturesque town center	The beautiful river running by Castellane
Same again, but portrait	A different angle on it	A bridge over the river
Looking the other way down the river

Les Gorges du Verdon

The gorge carved out by the Verdon river constitutes the second biggest canyon in the world, after the grand canyon. Like the grand canyon, it's a pretty incredible sight and hard to capture the scale of. We drove all along the north rim, down into the canyon, over a bridge at the end of it as the river feeds into the lake, then back up and along the south rim.

Our first stopping point on the north rim, a little way from where the gorge starts	Plants growing by the river	Twisting and turning
Looking down the river one way...	...and the other.	A similar shot
Beautiful reflections	A bridge over the river	Me by the river
Another one of me	A final glimpse of this beautiful area from another angle	Our second stopping point, in view of the start of the gorge
Rugged rocky scenery	Looking an the start of the gorge	Another view into the gorge
The same place, from another angle	More nice plants and rock formations	Our third stopping point, along the gorge itself!
The walls fall pretty steeply	The rockface is pretty rough	The same with nearby plants, to give you an idea of the scale
Looking along the gorge again...	...and down into it.	The last shot from this point.
Our fourth stopping point on the north rim, and the highest	From the viewing platform	The near-vertical rock face down into the gorge
The hills behind the rock face	After some scrambling, taken from the very edge of the rock face	Another shot from on the edge
The rocks I was scrambling over...	...and distant hills behind them.	Another shot of the river from the edge, but further along
Looking back down into the valley	A similar shot	Me sat on the edge of the canyon...
...which is a long way down...	...a very long way down!	Looking back on the road we travelled along the north rim
A similar shot, captuing the full height of the rocks to the left	The lakes at the end of the gorge	The bridge at the bottom is the one we were to cross later
Looking back down the gorge	A similar picture	The lakes
Final shot of the gorge from the north rim	And a last glimpse of the lake before we headed down towards it	We stopped down by the lake just before the bridge
Looking out over the lake	The bridge again - notice the colour of the water!	From the lake shores
Up on the south rim	Looking further to the right	The shadowy gorge
More rugged rocks...	...making a very tall gorge wall!	Beautiful
The river running through the gorge	Looking through a rock formation	The last glimpse of the rocks...
...and of the river.

The Return Journey

Strangely, the cloud we'd seen on the way up the mountain was still hanging in the same valley on the way back. I managed to get a few shots from the car of the sunset - I wish I'd had time to stop and take something a bit better, but we wanted to be off the mountain raods before night fell.

Hills poke out of the thick cloud	Sunset over a hill	Cloud between hills
Another hill just poking above the cloud	You call it blurred. I call it abstract art. ;-)

Thanks!

I am very thankful to Peter from the Computing Laboratory in Cambridge for telling me about the gorges, which I never knew existed, and inviting me on the trip. However, neither of us could have got there if Per, from a university in Sweden, hadn't been willing to join us and do the driving. Thanks, guys! Also thanks to the many friendly people who made my trip to Nice and my time at the POPL conference an interesting and fun one!