Summer 2008 : Provence,Cote d’Azur, Alpes et Al

I’m back.. Not from vacations but back to posting. I’ve a lot of things I wanted to post about, mostly about ActionScript development.

But now it turn to share some photos of some beautiful places I was fortunate to go recently and maybe encourage you to go there!

In early August, me and Liliana, made a great roadtrip on the south of France.

Here is the grand tour and the photos.

First, below is our road-trip in France. Here is the GPS Data with the KMZ with GPS data. Open it on Google Earth.

 Mont Blanc 3D

Using my shots taken near Mont Blanc and Microsoft Photosynth (they are doing really creative and innovative research.. finally) I was able to create a 3D scenario of Mont Blanc. Photosynth basically takes our photos, finds linking points between photos and generates a 3D space with them, arranging the photos so that we can navigate and feel like we are in a 3D environment.

If you have Windows and some time, download Photosynth and enjoy this. It’s worth the time:

Spain | Madrid

It didn’t start as a roadtrip, first we when to Madrid, Spain capital, and enjoy a 5 day stay there.

It’s a royal city, with great buildings and culture, but there are far better Spanish cities to visit. Madrid is nice to go there, but one time is probably enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

France – Provence

 Provence was a really good start a france. It’s so green and with so much herbs freeing fragrances and and colors throwout the landscape.

Lyon was much better than what I expected. The city as a great old town and great historical places. Also, a BIG  thanks to Caixa Geral de Depositos (a bank from Portugal) for helping us there and being so professional and nice to us.

Palais de Papes (the Popes Palace) was a really imponent ad grandious place to visit in Avignon. This is this town highlight, but it as such a nice ambience and a night live (more an evening live with happy people and great palces to be. It also has the famouse bridge of Avignon.

We also visited Aix-en-Provence, wish is a great town with much live, beautiful streets and fountains and great places to rest and have a drink. Try to go there to the Spa places, they must be great.

Other small towns were also great with their characteristic architecture, colors and vegetation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

France | Cote D’azur

 Cote d’Azur was just amazing. It has some really great beaches and I’m hard to impres, being Portuguese! The blue is so intense and on some places it even has much sand. The water is also on a nice temperature, which is a big plus.

Marseile was big but a bit messy.. although we got there at rush hour. Near on the south, we visited the “Calanques” (rocky formations) and a amazing beach down there. The place was just unique. See some pictures below.

Cannes seems to be a really great place to be. Great beach nearby and great town. We did the coast from there. Some beach, wine “Chateaux”and sweet small towns. Nice and Eze Sur Mer is also great. There is a bay the is just amazing (see photos).

Monaco was maniac, suddenly we passed  from some hill house to a immense number of high buildings on the hill. It’s a great place, with fast cars, nice palaces and well, I was able to do a bit of the F1 Grand Prix Circuit

Finally, we went to Ventimiglia and  San Remo. They were messier, but with a great blue sea line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

France | Alpes

 For me, the Alpes were one of the biggest highlights of the trip and it didn’t let me down. We started with a sweet lunch in Limone. Limone is a small town on the Italian Alpes site, a tipical Alpes vilage with beatifull houses and the hill on background.

We travel throwout the  mountains getting as high as 2.5 Km. There was a lot of amazing places to stop the car and just enjoy the “out of this world” landscape.

We stayed in  AlbertVille, eat some frogs and drink some Genepy!

Finally we went to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. It’ the nearest town to Mont Blanc and is just as beautifull as it sounds. After visiting and knowing that the telepheric had a 2 and a half hours waint quee, we went to a close telepheric and up the hill till 3.4 Km high. There I as able to see all the mountains and had a best view of Mont Blanc, just in front of us!

The Alpes are just unique and special and Mont Blanc site is breath-taking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Swiss | Geneva

We stayed um Geneva and enjoyed as the town was celebrating. This is a tipical Swiss city. Organized, clean, clear, with small building and great living and urban standards. There, I got soak by the “Jet d’Aeu”, but it was so sunny that is was refreshing and so pleasant.

Getting to Geneva, we turned on the radio and there is was, the first radio station was all portuguese! With Pimba Music (popular music). There are a lot of portuguese living there and maybe may relatives visiting, so we could hear portuguese all arround.

 

 

 

 

 

 Well, hope this photos help you make up your mind on what to visit if you are set to go nearby. It was a great vacations.