By the time we reached Vallauris it was pouring buckets complete with flashing lightening and rolling thunder. The longest thunder roll we had ever heard rattled the car windows. We stepped out into a virtual flash flood. Water was gushing up out of man-hole covers and cascading down the streets like rivers. We had one umbrella between us and we sloshed our way down the flooded sidewalks. Most of the stores were closed with their awnings rolled up still we splashed our way along peering in at the beautiful ceramics through the dark shop windows.

We eventually escaped into a cafe and ordered cappuccinos and chocolate crepes. We sat down at a little booth, removed our wet coats and watched it pour outside. The waiter brought us our delightfully warm coffee and crepes and plunked an entire jar of Nutella down on the table between us. We lathered our crepes liberally with the gooey goodness and sipped our cappuccinos which were made with Illy Caffe–our favorite! We were still slightly damp but warm and happy and we hated to leave, but the day was wasting and we had ceramics to find. As we dashed out of the café it hardly seemed possible, but the rain picked up a bit, thankfully we found our car at the car park right away which is an unusual occurrence for us. We sat in the car shivering with our noses dripping and our feet drenched, in fact, my shoes never recovered and squeaked the remainder of the trip. No ceramics for us in Vallauris, at least not today. The sunny Riviera, my soaking foot!