Cap Ferrat Walkabout

We had a walking day and explored Cap Ferrat on foot.  It was nice after many days in the car!
We started on the top left corner of the map and got to walk down as far as St. Jean Cap Ferrat.  It was a beautiful sunny day, which is a treat compared to gray Brussels!

We got a kick out of seeing random orange trees and even picked some the night before!

The girls and I stopped at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild, while the boys continued to the beach.  The villa was constructed between 1905 and 1912 by Baroness Béatrice de Rothschild, she was an heiress to a banking family.  She had no children but built a beautiful villa, and filled it with all kinds of things.  Here is a writing desk that belonged to Marie Antoinette.  It said it had a hidden compartment too..this one is for you Joyce!

 She was a bit eccentric about her pets, she even had a wedding between two of them.  They played a snippet on the audio tour from a Boston newspaper describing the wedding between the dogs...here are the dogs chairs from one sitting room.

 I thought Mary Houchins would get a kick out of where this vase was from!

 Her house was smack in the middle of the isthmus, and very high up, so from all of her windows she had gorgeous views!

It's not only the Bodenhoffer house in Norwood that has a Loggia...she had one too! It overlooked her incredible gardens.  Here is the view from the Loggia..

The gardens were designed to look like a ship, she had taken a cruise once and wanted it to remind her of that. 

Kelly and Katie thought it would have been great to be one of her friends as she had great parties and the guest room had the most beautiful view!

View from the guest room window-not too shabby!

Katie crossing through the stepping stones in the large fountain...it even had a water show!

 Under a cool old tree in the garden...

Here is her fancy games table...I think we need one for the New Hampshire house!

The view of the house from the garden.  I think what was most incredible about it all was that it was still fully furnished with all of her treasures. It seems like many grand old homes in the U.S. that you can tour are empty or have replicas of the furniture they used to have inside, this one had it all!

 Here is how we found Charlie at the beach!

 Now you can see why all the movie stars buy houses here...look at the views!

A cool whale's tail bench overlooking the boats!

We had to take a picture of this boat...a long way from home...just like us!