Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

On Monday we visited the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, which is a large estate on the isthmus of Cap-Ferrat that was constructed for Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild in the early 1900s.

Here's a nice view of the harbor below...

It is now a historical site and well known for its nine gardens, each with its own theme (Florentine, Spanish, Garden à la française, exotic, stone, Japanese, rose and a garden de Sèvres). I’m not much into flowers, but the gardens and general views allowed for some very nice pictures.




















Here are close-ups of some flowers...



















And the inside of the house itself was pretty incredible as well...





























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Around noon we had to leave for the airport and this led to a bit of an adventure. Given that we didn’t want to drive through downtown Nice, we backtracked towards Menton in order to reach the motorway that leads directly to the airport. However, after nearly a half hour of driving and a couple of turns of “faith” (we didn’t have a map or GPS) we had yet to find the motorway.

As a quick aside, I’ve come to learn that there are two schools of thought when it comes to arriving at the airport prior to a flight. One group – which includes me – likes to arrive with ample time in order to clear security, etc. and relax before the flight. The other group – which includes Emilie – views every minute spent sitting at the airport as a complete waste of time and prefers to arrive as late as is feasibly possible (albeit with no margin for error – such as getting lost on the drive to the airport).

To make a long story short, we ultimately found the road and made the flight with no issues (in all honesty it wasn’t even that close). Nonetheless, there were moments during the drive where we all thought that missing the flight was at least a possibility. And, no, I have not been converted and maintain my preference for early airport arrivals (at least in unfamiliar environments).

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One last thing…The carrier that we took was Easyjet, which is more or less the Southwest Airlines of Europe. The flights are generally relatively cheap (provided they’re booked far enough in advance), but you get what you pay for in terms of service, etc.

A major pain is that they have (by far) the most restrictive carry-on policy that I’ve ever experienced. Only one piece of luggage is allowed and the dimension limitations exclude pretty much any roller bag in existence. Unless you bag was purchased from the children’s department and has cartoon characters on it, it’s probably not compliant with the carry-on size restrictions.

And to make matters worse they charge you to check a bag…any bag. Thus the seemingly cheap ticket that you bought typically goes up around 20% once you check your bag. And oh yeah, they also charge an additional amount if you pay by credit card. So basically that’s a guaranteed add-on charge (another 10% of so) as well since there’s effectively no way to get out of that one (when’s the last time that you bought anything online with cash or check?).