Arrived back in Barga late last night to discover there had been a thunderstorm whilst we had been away and the electricity had gone off and freezer full of food had gone off as well - literally! Veg are doing well at last, and grass needs strimming. Weather still not settled and today the sky was a dark grey, impending rain but did not materialise.
Just above San Remo is the old village of Bussana Vecchia. An earthquake struck in 1887 totally destroying the village but in the 1960s it was taken over by hippies from several European countries, repairing the houses to a reasonable state and creating an artist colony. There have been several attempts by the Italian government to evict, the last being in 1997 but so far they have succeeded in staying. I like the village a lot. It has a creative atmosphere, lovely to stroll around and see what these inhabitants have done with very little money on improving their homes.
Menton on the Cote D'Azur is famous for its lemons so while I was here I felt compelled to do a sketch of a lemon coloured building with a palm tree, so typical of the area!
If you drive 20 minutes inland from Ventimiglia (Italy) you will suddenly arrive at the French border in the mountains. Only a few French signs tell you this. No passport control, no buildings apart from an old hut. Just around this bend in the road is another country, another language, another culture - amazing!
The Italian Riviera became well known in the 19th century when the British and Russians came to the area during the winter months due to its mild climate. Tourism developed and to this day it's still a popular destination particularly for Italian holidaymakers. It's not quite as affluent as the Cote D'Azur but almost as beautiful, a painter's paradise, even Monet came to paint here in Bordighera. This is a view looking through pine trees with a glimpse of the blue sea.
The village of Airole like many thousands of villages throughout Italy is built on a hillside. What is incredible first of all is how they built them with no modern building equipment and secondly the planning - did the villagers have some kind of master plan or was it all haphazard. Anyway, some have survived due to investment from people from a variety of European countries. Airole for example, from the 1960s onwards saw the arrival of Dutch, German and Swedish (and a few British) tourists who bought holiday homes, making Airole a very international village and everyone seems to get on very well with each other.
Like many of the resorts on the Cote D'Azur, Villefranche started as a small fishing village years ago and over time became a tourist resort, although it is one of the resorts that has kept its character. Whilst wandering around it became obvious that a cruise ship was moored nearby and the village soon filled up with passengers, mostly British looking for a few souvenirs to remind them of their time on the French Riviera. As I walked around I came across little glimpses of the blue sea so I wanted to capture that moment in today's Daily Sketch.
