Life on the gentle side of the Riviera

The gentle coastal area of France’s southeast has been known since the 1800s, as the Cote d’ Azur, but to most Europeans and North Americans, its most common name is The Riviera.

It includes small cities, towns, and restful countryside; Italy’s Riviera is next door. Ever since the mid 1800s — when trains became very popular — it’s been a primary choice of British travellers, and ironically, the upper class of Russia. (In one city, Nice, there’s still a Russian Orthodox Cathedral.)

My wife Barbara and I like it. So in recent years, we’ve often spent a few winter weeks there. We chose Menton — a very old town claiming origin in the 1200s.

We chose it for various reasons, first being its microclimate, helped by sheltering Alps, assuring well over 300 sunny days a year (along with a February — March Celsius temperature ranging from the high mid-teens to mid-twenties).

We’re also drawn to its preserved “old city” of cobbled hills, towers and steeples. Then there’s its numerous beaches, about six in all. But, as much as any of these, we like its location: it’s virtually on the France-Italian border, less than 1,000 metres distant. Thus Menton is ideal for day trips here and there in both countries. (As always in Europe, we use a Eurail pass one allowing 15 days of travel during a two-month stay.)

Menton isn’t big. While some refer to it as a city, it’s really a town, with about 30,000 residents and anytime we’ve been there, it hasn’t felt crowded. It took me just five or 10 minutes to walk to the town’s centre, from our apartment each morning to get the International Herald Tribune.

We chose the apartment-hotel we’ve always stayed at, deliberately and for practicalities: location, space and cost. It’s a member of a Paris group, Pierre & Vacances, and while it has no ambitions to luxury, our accommodation, on the small side, proved adequate enough for us to choose it each time we’ve gone.

Menton appeals. It’s not only a tropical town, but a town with a remarkable historic centre: an ornate baroque church rising high above the climbing cobbled streets and their ageless sun-brown villas.

Moreover it has an easygoing pace and gracious manner — the clerks soon get to sense you as a familiar face and are invariably courteous. The traffic is calm and even though there’s a casino five minutes from our hotel, nightlife is never raucous.

All this may be due to a simple fact of history: for many years, starting in the middle 1800s, Menton was the choice of affluent British travellers who, in their day, were very well mannered, given more to sedate courtesy, than racy nightlife. So they helped shape its personality. It’s not a place for life in the fast lane. For that and those who helped make it so, I am grateful.

A few years ago, a horticulturalist in Menton said: “Our city is a garden.” He was inspired by the glory of its numerous, almost countless, flowered spaces, tended for a century by either those early British settlers, or later its native born citizens.

The gardens not only give beauty and fragrance to Menton but draw many visitors who are gardeners. For example, consider just a few exotic examples: Serre de la Madone garden, stretching almost seven terraced hectares with a highly rare collection of Asian plants; Val Rahmeh Botanical Garden, from 1905, with over 700 species of tropical or subtropical plantings, and most famous of all, the citrus garden of the Palais Carnoles, which, according to an official document, has the largest citrus fruit collection in all Europe: 700 specimens from 100 distinct species including orange trees, grapefruit, lemon, kumquat trees and many more.

If you’re in Menton at the right time you’ll see a spectacle unmatched anywhere: the Lemon Festival when 145 tons of oranges and grapefruit and lemons are used to construct gigantic figures and buildings that are striking. The festival draws 200,000 people on opening day. It’s on from early February to early March.

One morning, a smooth hushed train ride of little more than an hour, took us across Italy’s border into a small shaded town called Alassio, on the waters of the sunny Ligurian Sea. About 11,000 people live there.

We go each time we visit Menton, not by habit, but drawn by the broad blue umbrella of sky and the unending silent roll of sea. We walked here and there in the little town spending much of our time on its main street in the historic neighbourhood, and the crooked alleyways running from it, or on the broad and almost endless sand by the sea.

But, as before, we ended our afternoon beside a wall that is an echo of more recent history: the Muretto di Alassio, a brick wall, with signatures of hundreds of noted personages who have come to Alassio. Some people claim Franklin Roosevelt’s autograph is there, but we’ve never found it. One you can’t miss is its most famous: Ernest Hemingway, whose ceramic likeness is set in the wall. He came more than once drawn, we hope, not by the bars, but the serene beauty that draws us back to this pretty and quiet town, made for walking and reflecting.

Kenneth Bagnell’s rail travel within Europe was supported by ACPRail, a Canadian company based in Montreal, which markets rail passes for most countries of the world. www.acprail.com

If you go

We flew from Toronto to Milan and next day with our Eurail pass, (covering 15 days out of a 60-day stay) took the four-hour trip to Menton, where our apartment-hotel, Pierre et Vacances, is within a walk of the train station. It’s not luxurious but efficient, immaculate and affordable — 780 Euros for a week in March. Prices vary with season. Check: www.pv-holidays.com/gb-en