Last stop for the day is Saorge, probably the most famous of the villages on the Roya Valley. The reason is its location perched precariously on the mountainside. Even getting here is an adventure passing through an one lane tunnel and following the narrow street to the village entrance and then driving the very steep switchbacked road to a large parking. From here we can see our first goal, the Saorge Monastery quite an impressive building even from afar.
The views are impressive from basically the top of the village we can see why it is called the most Tibet-like village in the Alps.
We walk through the village passing by stone houses and old fountains as we try to keep the same elevation and not to descend too much given that the Monastery is also quite high on the mountainside.
As we approach the monastery we look for interesting birds but even though we hear some we do not see any unfortunately.
The views from the Monastery are quite impressive, for certain it seems that the best views are from here. You can see the whole village laid out in front of you precariously clinging to the mountainside.
Now it is time to descend into the village proper following the narrow streets and getting lost exploring the winding lanes.
The streets are quite empty with most people congregating near the couple open restaurants. In fact even though we pass a few times we cannot find any places in either so it seems we will go hungry this evening.
Saorge is one of the villages where Google Maps is mildly useless. Even though it might show that you are right on top of an attraction the attraction might be a level higher or two levels below and out of sight. This is most evident during our search for the Église Saint-Sauveur de Saorge which we circle for quite some time before finally noticing it.
And while searching we notice a pizza place that is takeout only and is less popular and this means we won’t go hungry as we expected. It is open for only 2:30h from Thursday to Saturday so it is a small miracle that we find it open but at least the pizza is quite good and made out of local ingredients that we enjoy as we eat it in the parking lot before going back to L’Escarene. We survive the switchbacks and tired go directly to sleep as tomorrow we have another full day planned in Monaco.
