Eze Village (Back to the past)

Unreal, is how I would describe this medieval village on the French Rivieria. It deserves some special attention. I had read up on Eze village while I was looking at the interesting places to visit around the area (though the very best thing to do may be just sitting on the beach in Nice), and I couldn't wait to visit the place. It came as a surprise that none of my friends were aware of this place. Eze village was an easy 30 minutes bus ride (bus 82) from the Vauban tram stop pinpointed as location 'A' below.

The area around Eze village was inhabited from early as 2000 BC (oh gosh!), and was a fortified stronghold in the 14th century. It is now made up of mostly shops and restaurants, with a couple of hotels (wished we had stayed there!). Two famous french perfumeries, Galimard and Fragonard, have shops there as well, which supposedly offers a relatively good price. While Eze village has become a tourist attraction with just a handful of local residents, it wasn't really that crowded and we had plenty of space to move around. I was totally immersed in the place and couldn't help imagine what it was like living in this pretty village. It was a complete turnaround from the glitz and glamour of the major cities on the french riviera. Situated on the top of a hill with a 12th century castle right in the middle of this stone village, it had a fantastic view of the mediterranean sea.

The village was small, but we took our time to slowly walk through the place as we really loved it. I think we spent at least 4 hours checking out the area. So we went to the bus stop where we alighted to catch the bus to Monaco. You could catch the same bus 82 back to Nice from a stop down the hill close to a bridge. Our next stop was Monaco, so we checked the timetables for the buses (number 100 or 112) and turned out that we had just missed the buses and the next ones were only coming in about an hour or so. While it meant that we had lesser time to spend in Monaco, we were also glad that we got to spend more time here, so we just sat on the perch near the entrance and enjoyed our remaining time there.

Fun fact: Did you know there used to be a property tax (window tax) based on the number of windows in a house that people had? So the people then covered up their windows and painted it over. Check out the photo below!

Interesting piece of history we overheard from a tour guide nearby!

I can never get enough of this place!

YJ