Veteran traveler offers top-down tours of French Riviera
Dirk Dominick’s connection to the south of France goes back to his childhood, when his family would vacation in Europe.
“I just have fabulous memories of being in France and Germany,” said Dominick, who lives in Homewood with his partner, Westcott Shaw, and two children. “I just remember being profoundly affected.”
That love for the area grew, with his mother owning a small apartment in the quaint village of Bar-Sur-Loupe from 2000-15.
“During that 15 years, I would go over for a month at a time, and I loved exploring and driving around,” said Dominick, who graduated from Homewood High School and Auburn University and works in commercial site preparation.
Dominick is now trying to spread that experience via his Riviera Driving Tours, a 10-year-old venture in which he leads group driving tours: a convoy of travelers driving sporty Mini Cooper convertibles, traversing roads of France and Italy and enjoying the sights, food and wine of the Riviera.
“I love the fact that you can spend the morning on the coast and then have lunch in an isolated country village in the back country,” he said. “During the winter, you can have lunch in Nice, and you can be skiing that afternoon. It’s very diverse geographically and culturally. There’s a lot of ground to cover and a lot of variety in a very short distance.”
Dominick tries to do one or two tours a year (you can check the schedule at rivieradrivingtours.com), and his customers have included folks from Mountain Brook, Homewood, Birmingham, Colorado, Georgia and other locations. He develops and leads an itinerary — every vehicle is equipped with a two-way radio — but participants have a GPS and are free to explore on their own, too.
A typical day would be a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, a brief overview of the day from Dominick and then driving routes that Dominick has researched and mapped out. “We travel great roads with beautiful scenery, interesting villages and great food,” he said. The convoy will stop for lunch or a wine tasting or other event, and then it’s back to the hotel to prepare for a group dinner at a restaurant that Dominick has selected.
“I have not done one tour that is the same as any other because I keep finding really cool things I want to share with people who take the tour,” he said.
That includes famous sites, including the spot of Princess Grace Kelly’s fatal accident and locations Alfred Hitchcock used in the filming of “To Catch a Thief,” the 1955 film set on the French Riviera and based on a book by David Dodge. Dominick is somewhat of an expert on the movie, having written an e-book about the locations. He also appeared on a BBC radio show devoted to searching for the villa Dodge lived in while writing his novel.
The six-night Riviera Driving Tours trips are $4,000, not including airfare.
“Once you land in Nice, everything is taken care of, including meals, accommodations, the car, fuel, insurance, everything,” Dominick said.
“I suppose the Riviera Driving Tour is just an extension of my love for driving around the beautiful roads of the south of France, enjoying the scenery,” he said. “I really do love the area, and I really do love driving there. It truly has been a labor of love. I really enjoy driving around in cool convertibles in the south of France. It’s a cool gig.”