Baltimore (CA 68) - Naval Cruise Book

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The buses were queued up all along the beach front at Cannes, and it looked as though the entire Sixth Fleet vas about to move overland. However, it was only the tour party for the trip through the French Riviera, one of the most popular tours offered to naval persoimel. The drive to Monaco along the shore was inspiring, but the world-famous Casino was somewhat disappointing, inasmuch as no dice were rolling and no roulette wheels spinning at that early hour. However, the idea that the little principality on Monaco could flourish in the midst of great European states was intriguing. Taking the mountain route back to Nice, we passed signs screaming GO HOME U. S. N., which seemed strangely contradictory to the friendly welcome we had found everywhere in France. Vie stopped at a village high over the sea long enough to have a quick snorf and to enrich the local merchants. We stopped for lunch in Nice at the . merican Club, and then took an hour to browse along the promenade by the beach, taking in the deluxe hotels as well as the Bikini bath ing suits. On the buses again and off to Grasse, the perfume center. A tour through the perfume factory ended with everyone loaded down with little silver dow overhead)! flasks of perfume or at least smelling sweetly. Back to Cannes after a thoroughly enjoyable day, dampened only by a determina- tion not sit down again for a while.

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CANNES THE RIVIERA We had long looked forward to La Belle France. As we moved into our anchorage, we marvelled at the greenness of the hills and the long stretches of white beach. On shore, we found the people wonderful - the food won- derful - the wines and liquors wonderful. Beautiful yachts were tied up at the quays, large hotels lined the promenade along the bay, smaller buildings were colored pink, yellow, or blue, and flower stalls were everywhere - (We felt at first rather like Alice in Wonderland.) Our first mass experience with the Bikini bathing suit came on Cannes ' beaches, where most of us spent our after- noon liberties. The young French misses welcomed our admiration - which was pretty obvious - but they were too sophisticated to fall for a line, and we all wished we had paid more attention to our French lessons. We stocked up on perfume, our best buy here, at the boulevard shops which displayed all manner of fascinating and expensive items. Night life was varied, but many of us were content just to wander around and «take in», the fairyland that is the French Riviera.

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SWITZERLAND Early Friday morning, a select group of one hundred left their ships at anchor in Cannes to begin a four-day visit to Switzerland. One of the best parts of the tour was the trip up and back, through the Alpes Maritimes and the hill country of France - where tiny villages popped up from nowhere when the bus rounded corners on the hairpin roads that we travelled. We especially remember the tour through Old Geneva, with its impossibly narrow streets. . . the morning at the League of Nations Peace Palace (where every room had been built and furnished by a different country)... the lakeside drive to Lausanne and Montreu.x, with a stop-off at Chateau de Chillon. a 12th century castle-fortress, one side of which faced on beautiful Lake Geneva and the other looked up to the snow-covered majesty of the towering Alps. The food was an experiment which proved 4.0 for us all - we never quite got over the seven courses and the vast array of silverware. Maxim ' s - though expensive - was the focal point of our night life. Geneva is deservedly called the Swiss Riviera and the Little Paris... its cosmopolitan atmosphere (we could hear ten different languages spoken if we stood ten minutes on any corner) blended with its beanty to return a franc-less but happy group to their ships. Chateau ChilJon on Lake Geneva ff V