Antibes

Days pass and entire new worlds enter into our experience. From Brussels we went back to Paris, stayed one day and then drove down to the Riviera in Oliver's red Rover. We left in the morning and arrived at night. We are now living in a house in the hills above Antibes. I have no idea how Olivier pulled this out of the hat, Divine Intervention no doubt. (In pursuit of important trivia, Antibes is where the yacht of Bill Gates is anchored...)

We are a few minutes from Cannes, 30 minutes from Monaco and 35 minutes from Italy.

Yesterday our friend Mireille invited us on a tour to Triora, in Italy, a place famous for the many witches that lived there and were persecuted there, too. On the way to it we picnicked on top of a hill overlooking Monte Carlo. Then we drove on to Triora in Italy. There are no more borders here in the new United Europe, so we simply drove into Italy without stopping.

We spent several hours in Triora. It was high in the mountains. The views were spectacular and the feeling was pristine. Triora was a place where many women were persecuted as witches. Today this showed in many little shops that sold witch dolls and many other witchy little items for tourists. The persecuted witches of yesterday became the attraction of today.

It is estimated that over a course of five hundred years 4-5 million women were killed by the Vatican's Inquisition, accused and tortured as witches.

Regardless of the tourism that was alive in the town, there was also a feeling of mystery interblended into the area. It was as if one would not be surprised if a Unicorn would step from behing a tree to say hello.

Toward the evening we drove back and stopped in Nice to have dinner with Philippe and Sandrine. Philippe is an amazing sculptor and I hope to show some of his work here.

We got back around midnight. Raylene was very happy, having had such an astounding taste of the riviera and Italy all in one day.