It took four trains to get to Nice. Having left a somewhat dreary and rainy day in Lucca my arrival into the station at Nice-Ville was all the better for the late afternoon sun, warmer temperatures, and, of course, hearing all of the French. I’d felt a similar relaxation, warmth, and good cheer on our trip to Briançon back in July. An academic year in Caen in college and teaching the language ever since perhaps had something to do with it. It was good to be back in France. It felt familiar. When you’re living in a new country for an extended period of time, sometimes that’s just what you need.
Having less than twenty-four hours in the city, I set about exploring as the sun set. The moon rose over Place Masséna, an enormous square decked out in giant arrangements of Christmas trees, a large ferris wheel, a maze of trees frosted to look snowy despite temperatures around 50F, an artificially chilled outdoor skating rink, dozens of wooden stands housing vendors selling arts and crafts or specialty foods, lighting displays, statues changing colors on top of tall columns, holiday music playing, quiet trams passing by now and then. The kids would’ve loved it. When I crossed down into the old town it was quickly apparent that business that night (Monday) was very slow as the host of every restaurant I passed tried to stop me and convince me why theirs was the best choice for dinner.
The next morning I headed to the sea and the Promenade des Anglais. I was rather surprised to see a guy in a speedo and swimcap down by the water, it being December and all. He put hands to his hips to survey the surf and strode confidently in, seconds later beginning a relaxed crawl parallel to the beach, with no shivering or hyperventilating apparent from my vantage point. I decided to take a chance on my bad knee and climb up several staircases to the Colline du Château to take in the views of sea, city, and, as I found out as the sun just struck them, the snowy mountains in the distance. After heading down (and lucking out with the knee) and buying a fresh pastry and fruit at the marché on the Cours Saleya I began checking out bookstores. This is always a dangerous proposition due to realities of both time and finances.
I was late to check out of the motel and late for my appointment to pick up our leased car at the airport and had another sizable debit on the credit card but also a healthy stack of books that would make a great addition to my resources for teaching French. They didn’t have the Peugeot 207 available so they gave us the 207SW at no extra cost, a model just roomier enough to fit my skis! And it came with GPS! I’ve never had GPS but was quite glad for it on that day since the detailed map of southeastern Provence I’d bought for this trip was still sitting on a table back in Lucca. I decided to test out the GPS with a side trip to Monte Carlo, Monaco before making my way through the eighty-some coastal tunnels on the return trip. I walked right into the main Casino past some entry guards but to access the actual gambling hall it looked like I would actually have to spend some serious euros so I instead toured the bathroom (free!) which featured the most high-tech self-cleaning toilets I’d ever seen.
So now we have wheels, motorized wheels. It changes the dynamic a bit for us. We’d gone five months with no car, felt pretty good about it, but also were feeling a bit limited beyond just inconvenienced. It turns out the Italian love affair for the automobile is just as great as the American’s (only the average vehicle here is quite a bit smaller and more fuel efficient), so maybe our relenting and acquiring a vehicle wasn’t so much our “American-ness” showing through as our becoming more Italian. Maybe. I’ll let you know in six months.
In any event, we now don’t have to buy groceries every day, can buy heavy items, can drive kids to and from school when it’s pouring rain, and can explore. One day Lauren and I drove around south of here for a little while, eventually turning around after the road got quite steep and almost too narrow for even one car and the GPS showed it eventually petering out. There was the birthday party Ingrid attended in Nozzano Castello. Another day we took Niko twenty minutes out of town to a dentist who wasn’t there (another one of those “pre-holiday” days off) but then were able to get him to the emergency room where the dentist available had another twenty minutes before vacation and thus enough time to drill off the top half of the nerve and fill the tooth with cement, removing the agony of Niko’s previous twenty-four hours. And then there was the sunny day Thursday when we just wanted to find some park, some nature preserve, something away from the city and the cars. We found it! Lake Massacucioli, best known for Puccini’s home at Torre del Lago, where a summer festival is held every year. On the opposite side of Torre Del Lago we found a small Nature Preserve with museum (closed), but boardwalks open. We ventured out into the marsh and went into the small wooden structures along the way that hid us as we looked out at the lake and the birds. Very peaceful. And then at the turn around point we heard the inevitable children’s plea “I have to go now, really bad!” The return walk was significantly faster than the first half of our journey.
So having a car will be nice. We’re almost to the halfway point of our stay and we’re looking forward to exploring some more areas off the beaten track. Next up, at the end of the children’s vacation, we will head up for a few days to the Dolomites, hopefully getting in some skiing if there is enough snow. Things are getting a little stir crazy around here after so many days without school. Being home is nice, but sometimes the best antidote to too much time together is not being away from each other necessarily but rather a break in the routine. And for us, with the help of our Peugeot, we hope to break up that routine when we can and go exploring.
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