PARIS - Americans may think we invented the road trip, but we're not alone. There is a long, proud tradition of car tourism in France and Italy. Europeans drive less than Americans, and their cars are smaller; on the Italian highway, one quickly becomes accustomed to seeing hatchbacks that would fit comfortably in the cargo bed of a midsized pickup truck. Still, it's not a coincidence that the most prestigious restaurant guide in the world is put out by a French tire company. The Michelin Guide started as a way to get people to explore France by car, sampling the gastronomy of the country's different regions and, presumably, wearing out their tires in the process.
Eating up miles, drinking in scenery, motoring from Nice to Tuscany
That's a bit of what we had in mind when we found out that one of our friends was marrying a French woman in Paris in June, and another marrying an Italian woman in eastern Tuscany. With only two weeks separating the weddings, why not, we thought, simply spend the time making our way from one to the other, from the sun-glutted Côte d'Azur through the cliff-top towns of Liguria down into the Tuscan valleys of Chianti and Orcia?
The Monday after our first wedding, we took the high-speed train from Paris to Nice, the starting point for our drive. We checked into our hotel, our room overlooking an un-picturesque pedestrian street lined with chain stores and vendors selling windup toys, knockoff bags, and spray-paint art. Only a few blocks away was the grand Place Masséna, the main square of the city, wide and rectangular, lined by palm trees and coral-colored, porticoed buildings, with a dramatic fountain at one end.
For visitors who are so inclined, there is no shortage of enchanting spots around Nice worth a day trip: the sculpture gardens of the Fondation Maeght, the aristocrat and millionaire playground of St. Jean de Cap Ferrat, the town of Grasse, perfume capital of the world. We didn't do any of that. A little more than $20 buys a day in a comfortable chaise longue at one of the many beach clubs that line Nice's Baie des Anges, and we spent our day in town reading, sunbathing, and accumulating an impressive tab: Rouget with niçoise vegetables and a salad with giant sweet langoustines, plus a half bottle of rosé, rang in at around $52. Behind us was the famed Promenade des Anglais, with its phalanx of grand hotels and casinos. Toward sunset a team from a French fashion magazine showed up on the beach to do a photo shoot, the model wearing something that looked like a belted pink curtain with a collar.
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