Sword of the Samurai

Description

Nice to Nice

Stage 2 - Sunday, 30 August - 190 km (118 mi)

The Stage

Wait, another Nice-Nice? Yup. But this one is bascially the traditional final stage of Paris-Nice. Who has the punch to break away on the Col d’Eze and stay ahead of the chasing peleton those last 9 km? Julian Alaphilippe seems the logical answer.

Winner: Julian Alaphilippe

Tour Touristique

Mercantour National Park
In the heart of this setting of vertiginous summits, lies a gem listed as a Historical Monument, the famous Vallée des Merveilles, the aptly named "valley of marvels". At the foot of Mont Bégo, climbers can admire some 37,000 petroglyphs dating back to the Bronze Age, representing weapons, cattle and human figures that are sometimes very mysterious.

Walkers may easily glimpse a chamois, several thousand of which live in the park and may often hear the whistling of marmots. The ermine is rarer (and more furtive), as is the ibex and the mouflon, although with a little luck you may be able to observe them during the coolest parts of the day in the summer. There is a tremendous variety of wildlife in the Mercantour: red deer and roe deer in the undergrowth, hares and wild boars, partridges, golden eagles and buzzards, numerous species of butterflies and even about 50 Italian wolves (which migrated there at the beginning of the 1990s).

Èze
"There is nowhere else a more exotic, more unusual place, more suspended in a vacuum ...", wrote Jean Cocteau about Èze. The poet is just one of the many celebrities to have enjoyed this hilltop and fortified village above Nice. The "Nietzsche path", starting from the seaside, winds its way down a steep slope to the hilltop village. It is said that Nietzsche, living in Nice at the end of his life, sick, used to walk up the path and was inspired by it to write the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Villefranche-sur-Mer
Former military port of the House of Savoy, which had no other access to the sea before the construction of the port of Nice, Villefranche-sur-Mer has retained a nautical know-how appreciated by lovers of maritime heritage. The city is today a renowned seaside resort where many celebrities reside or have lived. Rock stars Elton John and Tina Turner had houses there, while the Rolling Stones recorded their most famous album, Exile on Main Street in Villefranche.

View attached image.