I did not realize how close Villefranche was to Menton. Many of the places that are easy to go to are the same ones that we planned on going to on our vacation. So I decided to go to the Var region for a change. We do not have many plans on visiting this region so it would be a good opportunity to visit someplace different.

I did my speech on Seattle and I talked about the Museum of Glass. The village of Biot is similar. It is an artist community with glass blowers and pottery. Perfect.

At first I was going to take the train but it seems to run only once an hour. Plus they are working on the track between Nice and Menton so it would not be running in the afternoon. So I changed my plans from taking the train to taking the bus. I had stopped earlier in the week at the tourist bureau but didn’t get much help. I stopped in again and the woman who gave us a tour of the city was working. She was so much more helpful and gave me a bus schedule. You have to take the Cannes bus and then a smaller bus to the village.

It took about 2 hours to get to Biot. It was pretty easy with the schedule. It lists all the stops so you can keep track of where you are and ring your stop. They also have the stops posted in the bus. I got off at the train station and then walked across to get the local bus. I had a pleasant surprise – it was free today.

The village is on a hill and over looks the valley. It is a medieval village that has a few remnants of when the village was a home to Templiars. I walked around the village and stopped in a few of the art shops. The glass blowers are out of town as is a museum that I wanted to see. I happened to get a historical walking map but it was time for lunch. The one restaurant that looked really good was closed on Saturday – Darn. But another restaurant was open in the main plaza so I had a lovely lunch underneath the plane trees – spicy raviolis, dorado with rice and haricot verts and a coupe of sorbets. Yum.

After lunch, I headed off to walk the historical tour. There were several interesting buildings which had walls from the 1600’s. A lot of the population left the town in the early 1900’s but after the war, it was repopulated. It is not as charming as St Paul de Vence but if you slow down – it will charm you.