Chapter 1ne: Back Again

Back Again

On the first of March, 2017, we returned again to France: terminally married - Happy, Healthy, and Hurting a little more. We do not practice agism, so on the other-side-of-the-mid-sixties, walking on old world streets and roads, up and down rocky and root-entangled trails, and ancient stairs - many and steep, often bearing the weight of luggage or supplies from the market, we forge ahead.


My last Blog on France, In France with Friends, posted in 2012, is still getting a lot of hits.

We returned to France for a short stay in 2015, but 2017 is the year of the big one - one hundred thirty days. 

That's just over a third of a year! Actually, we will interrupt le grand voyage with a week or so in the lands of our ancestors - Norway and Germany. Some space will be reserved in the near future for a little saga and Geschichte, respectively.

not the Hotel Trocadero

NICE

Nice, as always, is nice, especially at the end of a long travel day from Vancouver via Paris without sleep. Air France was really good to fly with - better than average in-flight cuisine, good looks and smiles from the staff. 






The bus from the Nice airport dropped us at the train station which is a five-minute luggage haul to our stay (2 nts) at Hotel Trocadero. A good, clean 3-Star, could-not-swing-a-cat in-the-salle de bain-size, accommodation, but we are on a budget, after all.


We highly recommend a product to stave off jet lag. It really helps us when we fly across several time zones. In fact, it is called No Jet Lag, a chewable tablet, every two hours. Odd though, I don't know why it works so well because you have to stay awake to get the dosage every 2 hrs, then another 20 min. to chew it down???

Maybe that's why I had no jet lag in Nice. But I stumbled around the old town a lot, not very clear-headed, just taking photos with abandonment.

A lot of people-watching - addicted as always by the wealth of images of regional France. 

 

We have been accused of being foodies. Guilty as charged. This journey is most definitely about eating, and drinking too. I will share some wine likes and maybe dislikes, and some other special cullinary finds in the weeks ahead.

In Nice, we chose not to eat at the Pasta Bastard, tried to eat at Chez Juliette, one of our favourite restaurants, but alas, they were closed - holidaying in Canada, huh.

We settled on a superb restaurant, a few blocks northeast of the old town, the VINGT4.

I expect to have enough material for every blog posting, to give special attention to what I will call Lost In Translation. Here is my first one. Did the T-shirt designer mean BITCH I'M THE BOSS?

credit for this photo goes to the brilliant photographer whose name is bottom right, 
if you can read it

The day we left Nice, we just followed our noses, and some of the other travellers in life, to the train station, where the SNCF hangs out, bought a couple of cheap tickets for the 40 minute train ride to Menton, a quiet, regal city on the Mediterranean, so close to the Italian border that one could almost spit Prosecco at it (swishing it around in my mouth as I write, actually), unravel a couple of kilometres of spaghetti to the Franco/Italiano frontier, or just yell really loudly, "Cement is here!" and you'd stop a church wedding.

Okay, maybe the Italian Riviera was not that close, but from any beach in Menton you can see Ventemiglia, the city on the other side of the border.


See next posting about Menton and environs ...

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