Expat Life in the South of France

An hour’s drive into Italy from Vence, is one of our favourite destinations for a day’s excursion.

 Vallebona, the jewel-like Ligurian village on the Italian Riviera, rises up in the luminously verdant hills behind Bordighera within easy distance of the Mediterranean.

Valebonna

  This medieval village of arches, buttresses and “carugi,” the long, steep, narrow alleys, is a strange mixture of spooky and quaint, straight out of a gothic fairy tale. Coming from France where we live, we are used to seeing beautiful old villages so “touristified” that very little of the original flavour remains.  In Vallebona however, the twelfth century practically seeps through its pores. The open air laundry, old bridges, ancient fountains, asymmetrical arches and moss covered stone walls all vividly recall past traditions and a way of life that is still linked by a tenuous thread to the twenty-first century.  And best of all, apart from ourselves, not one camera toting tourist in sight! 

A Carugi

 We were on our usual cross-border quest for parmesan cheese and Italian wine which we decided to combine with some leisurely sightseeing.  We naturally assumed there would be plenty of family run grocery stores even in a small village; this, after all, was Italy, where food is really  serious business.   It took almost a half hour of trudging up and down the stone “carugis” till we found a dimly lit, miniscule store.  The little old lady owner stood mutely behind the counter, eyeing us rather suspiciously; tourists didn’t often stumble upon this place.  As our eyes got accustomed to the darkness, to our delight we found ourselves in a gourmet paradise brimming with cheeses, olive oil, wine, porcini mushrooms, proscuitto and fresh vegetables.  Mission accomplished, we ambled aimlessly through the village just soaking up the medieval atmosphere, and poking into nooks and crannies. We felt the exhilaration of believing, rightly or wrongly, that we had beaten the tourist hordes. So this is what Christopher Columbus felt like, I thought!

  The undisputed jewel in this little forgotten village is the church of San Lorenzo the Martyr dating back to the 12^th century, containing the body of San Benedetto the Martyr and built on the ruins of a temple dedicated to Diana, the goddess of chase.   To enter this church, is to hold your breath in awe, not at its grandeur, but its incredibly gentle, peaceful beauty. It’s almost too much for the eyes and the senses to take in, in one visit.  We needed to sit and meditate for a while to really immerse ourselves into the spiritual peace we felt arising all round us.

Church of San Lorenzo

 It was now lunch time and on the way down to the restaurant, a rather quirky, if enchanting place,  we stopped off at a promontory looking out over the flower filled hillsides.  The mild climate and the low altitude makes for lush vegetation - brilliant yellow mimosas and peach blossoms in the spring, together with “ginestra” (broom), pines, olive and lemon plantations with views to the not- so- distant Mediterranean, make this a magical paradise.

 Only an hour by road from Nice, but an aeon in time, it should definitely be on your itinerary for your next visit to the Côte d’Azur.