Nice

Hi Friends!

Thanks for all your emails and comments! I'll be trying to post every few days to avoid mammoth ones like todays...

N and I decided to take a road trip of sorts before settling in in Fonty.

We foolishly made the decision to try to make it to Geneva the same day we landed in Paris, last Friday. It was a long day. A day of that magnitude will never happen again. It took a good 4 hours to drive to our hotel, on top of the flight, train and bus rides that day. Our hotel was right by the airport. It’s a good thing that planes stopped flying at 11 pm because we could hear every take off and landing. That’s going in their Expedia review.

Geneva is beautiful, really clean and extremely expensive. But it made for an enjoyable day. There was a city festival on, so we walked along the banks of Lake Geneva and then made our way to the city center. Downtown was an assortment of banks and watch stores. I have never seen so many purveyors of time pieces in my life. You almost expect the bankers walking down the street to stop and push up their sleeve to reveal a forearm covered in watches, set to New York, London and Tokyo times. They’ve probably mastered simple addition and subtraction though. I still can’t manage to figure out what time it is at home.

An aside, they too have a Swiss Chalet restaurant. It’s not the same, but still.

Sunday , dubbed “Toll Day”, we drove to Nice. The drive was supposed to be about 5.5hours. After about 4 hours and 70 Euros (about $120 Canadian) worth of toll roads we decided to take a secondary highway. Secondary indeed. We wove in and out of France and Italy. The roads got narrower and windier and a lot slower. But you take the good with the bad because the views were amazing. Our drive was prolonged further by my frequent bathroom breaks. Without a doubt, the nicest stop was Cuneo, a small Italian city near Torino. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I was single-minded about my purpose there. N parked and I did a mad dash into the streets, sticking my head into every shop with an open door (it was a Sunday, so there wasn’t much open) trying to find a bathroom. I finally found one of those self-cleaning robot toilets and was terrified, TERRIFIED of getting locked in. After doing what I needed to do in record time, I ran back to the car but stopped for a gelato, since I had felt traumatized enough to deserve a treat. And so we got back on our way and made it to Nice about 3 hours later.

Nice is, well, nice (a ubiquitous yet apt statement). We spent time at the beach (not so Nice...rock beaches), wandered the boardwalk and ate (our faces off). We are staying at a B&B and are treated to lovely breakfasts in their garden, Bambi the kitten keeps us company. The owner makes me a giant cafe crème each morning. This benefits both N and I, I am much more agreeable after some caffeine in the morning. Yesterday, we were treated to the most delicious and buttery croissants we’ve ever had. (The former probably had something to do with the latter). I think we might eat more that their other guests. Cough. Today we had crepes, croissant and a baguette. So, I’ll be avoiding jeans for the next little while here.

We took a trip to Monaco on Tuesday. On the bus, for one Euro! It is a very pretty city but was incredibly hot and crowded. The Palace is beautiful and it was fun to see the changing of the Monegasque guard in their white uniforms. These guys aren’t getting dirty. (It is supposed to be one of the safest places in the world). We also went to check out the casino in Monte Carlo. It was quite something to see all the Bentleys and Ferraris parked in the front VIP section. There was a Rolls Royce jam (yes, a traffic jam caused by and involving other Rolls Royces). Not to mention all the yachts docked outside. High Rollers. I was constantly on the lookout for celebrities. Fail.

Milan tomorrow!

Jen