EAT SLEEP ESCAPE REPEAT: The Best Place In The World...

This place came as an absolutely beautiful surprise as the second to last stop on our summer travels. Ellie (travel bud) and I arrived in Nice one early morning in August. Nice was errrm Nice but we were not there to stay, but merely to wait 8 hours until we could catch one of only two coaches a day to the beautiful mountainous national park Mercantour. After a long day of waisting time Ellie and I finally jumped on the coach costing only €2 from Nice station. We had booked to stay with a lovely French couple on AirBnb a few months before leaving to go travelling, so apart from an address we had overlooked what kind of place we were to be staying at. We honestly assumed that we were going to be staying just outside of Nice, however the directions we were given by email a few days before arriving in Nice told us to stay on the coach for almost two hours (thank god we bought snacks). The coach slowly edged its way out of the city through the traffic and then went past the airport and through the rather industrial looking suburb area of the city. Ahead of us we could see mountains approaching and to our relief the coach kept going through a passage way that took us deeper and deeper into the valley. After a slightly treacherous coach journey edging along a crumbling cliff side road we were dropped off at a small bus stop next to a river which was sandwiched between mountains. One of our hosts was waiting for us with a van (probably the only occasion when getting into a stranger's van is acceptable). It was another 15 minute drive until we were up the mountain. From here we had to walk 10 minutes to get to where we were staying. It. Was. Heaven. Nestled 9,000ft up in the mountains were two idillic converted shepherd's barns. There was also a sauna, small pool and amazing garden all overlooking the rolling mountains on the other side of the valley.

We were staying in the area during their "festival" season; meaning that every weekend one of the surrounding villages would host some sort of party or gathering. Lucky for us we arrived on party day, so accompanied by our amazing host (and adoptive French mother) we got to experience community at it's finest. The party was in a small village on the opposite mountain to ours and for one night only they were hosting a disco. Everybody knew everybody and being two young British girls we were quite the hub of attention. Everyone was so friendly even though we spoke no French and they could speak little English.

As you can imagine, our days were spent hiking and enjoying the beautiful sunshine and scenery and in the evenings we would be savouring the fantastic homemade homegrown meals from our hosts. They even made their own wine and liqueurs.

Whilst we were staying in Mercantour; several people had mentioned that there was a shepherd who lived another 5000ft or so up the mountain that we "just had to meet"! Taking this great advice we climbed further up the mountain on our final day to go and meet this famous shepherd. After walking for an hour we spotted his house, he was however nowhere to be seen. We decided to take a break and have some lunch (that our new French mother had packed us). As we ate our lunch we began to hear the sound of a flute or whistle. Like something from a movie we turned around and saw the shepherd sitting 100 meters behind us with his whistle and his two dogs. We immediately stood up and walked up to him. He was Awesome! We had both pictured a somewhat more rugged shepherd wearing a flannel shirt, however the guy standing in front of us was the complete opposite. Ripped jeans, Doc Martens, long brown hair shaved on one side, sharks tooth earring, no shirt, tan, abs...! ... (honestly i'm going to stop drooling over this guy, he was HOT but he lives up a mountain in France...literal heart break). We tried to get a selfie with him but as we couldn't say selfie in French and if it's at all possible he spoke less English than we do French we had to just settle for the brain sort of memories. He invited us to join him again that evening for coffee after he was done being a hot shepherd for the day but sadly we had to decline as we had to catch the bus back to Nice that evening in time for the train to our next stop.