Die erste Nacht in unserem Apartment hatten wir ganz gut hinter uns gebracht, da starteten wir ganz früh mit unserem Mietwagen in Richtung Verdonschlucht. Wir dachten ja, dass uns erst dort eine atemberaubende Landschaft erwartet, doch war schon die Fahrt dorthin einfach toll!
Castellane - starting point for our tour along the Verdon Gorge
To start our tour along the French Canyon (one of the largest in Europe), we drove to Castellane. The wild Verdon invites you to go rafting, among other things, and so there were already a few boats down by the river. We observed the preparations from a small bridge at the entrance to the town. Unfortunately there wasn't enough time to see them take off.
It started with the round trip through the 21 km long and up to 700 m deep canyon. First we headed for the viewpoint “Pont de Solleil”. Small but nice. At the beginning it should be said that you don't just have to stop at the designated points. Sometimes just a small pull-out at the side of the road offers the much more interesting view!
Sublime Bridge (Verdonschlucht)
Then it went a bit off the main route to the “Pont de sublime”. Various hiking routes also start from here. Since we don't just travel, but are geocachers, we also looked for caches nearby. Lo and behold, there is even one at this vantage point. So off to the undergrowth next to the road. The search ended at a rock face about 100 meters high. Oh wait, how are you supposed to get up there? None of us can climb like this. So we trotted off again - without the found cache. When we were back on the circular route by car, we found that there was still a parking space for the “Pont de sublime”. According to the GPS, the cache was very close again and we started hiking. This time it worked because we were now on the cliffs and we lifted the cache right on the cliff. The view from up here was just amazing!
After this success, we continued with a lot of enthusiasm. A very special route is Route 23, which leads directly along the canyon. There are so many vantage points here that one could stop constantly. In midsummer, these roads are very busy and the parking capacity is quickly exhausted. In any case, you should drive carefully and be patient.
At one stop I looked along the gorge and thought to myself how cool these walls must be for climbers. At the same moment the first was in sight. Wow… these people dare!
As we drove through the tranquil village of Palude, we came back to the actual main path. We continued towards the reservoir near the town of Moustier. About halfway we saw a waterfall from afar. In general, the water just fell off the slopes above us. The waterfall was more of a water fall along a cliff crevice and right off the road!
Moustier
Moustier is a nice little tourist town. In the middle of the city center, a river rushes down into the valley and creates wonderful little pools by slightly damming the water just before the waterfall.
For our way back to Nice we took the path along the other side of the canyon. Here you don't see quite as much of the wild Verdon, but this route is also highly recommended.
In the direction of Grass, which you have to pass to get to Nice, we drove through a military area. When we saw huge halls, we absolutely had to stop and photograph them: tanks and army vehicles as far as the eye can see.
The return trip took a little longer than planned. Driving through the suburbs of Nice was quite an adventure to avoid ending up on the toll highway. Some traffic rules were disobeyed, but that doesn't bother the French anyway.
Are you still looking for a suitable hotel on the Côte d'Azur?
You can find a hotel that suits your budget through the various online travel agencies such as Agoda, Booking.com, ebookers.de, Expedia, Hotels.com, lastminute.de, opodo, otel.com or Venere.com.
For us, the Verdon Gorge is definitely a "must see". On the internet and in travel guides, the Verdon Gorge is always compared to the Grand Canyon (USA). I personally don't think this comparison is right. The vegetation and rocks reminded me more of Yosemite National Park east of San Francisco.