The Citrus Village

If you have the chance to visit the south of France along the french riviera and want a seaside village with brightly painted old apartments, a laid back vibe and a promenade that stretches for kilometres along the beachfront - this is the place for you.  We stayed in the old village, and a quirky little apartment that I'm assuming must have once been attic space for the building.  I say this as the main area of the lounge is ok to stand up in, but the kitchen is where the roof starts to slant, and the bedrooms - well you can’t stand up in them if you are Zach size and up.  They had put these kinds of skylights into part of the roof though, so you could open a window and be looking straight out along the rooftops of Menton.

The village has everything you need, and maybe because we stayed right before the school holidays start - the streets weren’t packed, every shop was having a massive sale (the cutest Tommy Hilfiger wedges were 50% off!!) and plenty of room to move about in the shops.  And the shops are deceiving in the sense that the store front is small, but once you go in, the shop itself seems to stretch into an entire block behind it.

The beach itself I wouldn't give you a thank you for. Its chalky rocks, so after sitting on them we all had white chalk bums for the rest of the afternoon. They did however inspire some pretty awesome rock art until Gareth had to get all competitive to see who could build the tallest rock tower. I'm happy to report Kaia won that challenge as she put a lot more time and effort into her foundations and basically built a pyramid. Gareth's was a shabby one rock on top of another job.

We picked up some souvenirs from Menton, they specialise in citrus so we have limoncello in the suitcase for when the limit of patience is reached with the kids.

Menton felt like our holiday away from our holiday.  We got up late everyday, we didn’t really plan much, we walked, ate, talked to a local artist and made up our own rules to the card game we all play everyday now - Rummi.  In Portugal we picked up a pack of cards, but now by Menton they are well past their use by date.   We play cards every night as a family, and I’ve really come to enjoy it, and I look forward to playing.  I also love the fact that there is no mercy shown to any player no matter their age.  It's the first game we can all play together where there aren’t temper tantrums from anyone losing.