A La Prochaine - Until Next Time

Our trip is finally at an end.  Tomorrow we fly home.  It has been six weeks of food, fun and foibles, as promised!

We spent our last day packing, and sorting through the small mountain of ticket stubs, booklets, brochures and receipts, hoping to narrow the pile down a bit.  Our luggage was full when we arrived 6 weeks ago, and there wasn't much room for souvenirs at the end!  Rick left a trail of paperbacks around the country as he finished the books he brought to read.  (We always appreciated having some reading material left behind by others, so we hoped it wouldn't be a problem.)  That had created some room in his suitcase, which I quickly filled.

We had our last dinner in Villefranche at La Serre, where we had eaten before.  This time the weather was cooler, so unless you were a smoker, sitting inside was preferable.  Once again we had a great dinner. 

I had heard a couple near us speaking English, so I leaned over and asked where they were from.  They were from Colorado, and were at the mid-point of their trip. They mentioned that my accent gave me away as having grown up in the midwest.  No way, I said!  I've lived in Washington for 35 years!  I don't have an accent!  I guess I still do have a little of that Illinois accent, and I'm found out on occasion.  I always love recognizing other travelers who are from the midwest though too.  And, I can usually nail their accent too!

We compared travel stories, and laughed about the washing machines and toilets - each one different than the last, and in the case of washing machines usually at least a 2-hour cycle. 

After chatting with them for a few minutes, another couple in the vicinity made a comment to us in English.  When I said I hadn't realized they were English-speaking because they'd been talking so softly, they said, We're not speaking English!  We're from Scotland!  And honestly, we could hardly understand them sometimes.  We did have a great chat with them about their travels, and the trips they've already got plotted out over the next two years.  I was impressed!  I said we didn't have any trips planned at all.  The wife said we'd have to plan something right away just to get through the Post Trip Blues.  She's right!

The Colorado couple had gone, but Rick and I were still enjoying talking to the Scottish couple when our cute waitress asked if we'd all like a limoncello, on the house.  We would like one, we said, and we did enjoy it.

The Scots weren't looking forward to their climb up 105 stairs to their apartment.  It was on the ground floor of their building, and had a great view, but their building was way up the hill.

We said good night, and hoped we'd run into them when they were in California in a few years.

Our flight wasn't leaving until noon on departure day, and the airport in Nice is small, so we didn't need to be there much in advance.  A cab would be picking us up at 9:30.

One of the instructions at the apartment, and really at all of our rentals, was to empty the refrigerator when we left.  They didn't want any perishables left behind, although sometimes we'd leave coffee or spices.

I thought about the elderly couple downstairs.  They were really the only French people we'd interacted with who hadn't been business owners or employees.  Would it be an insult if we offered them our leftover milk, butter, fruit & veggies?   I was inspired to try it by Michel, from the blog Our House In Provence, who always takes leftover groceries to an elderly neighbor as they head back to the U.S.

So there I was with two bags of food, hesitating at the neighbor's door.  A woman happened by on the street and started talking to me in French.  I said, Je parle seulement un petit peu français!  Je ne comprend pas!  She said, Donner? (Give?)  Oui!

She rang the bell for me, let the lady of the house know what I was there for, and went on her way.  Our neighbor was in her late 80s, at least, and was about 4-1/2 feet tall.  We hadn't seen each other until now.  Her husband, who had visited us on two occasions, wasn't home.

She came out to greet me with a big smile.  She said lots of things in French, which I didn't understand, and I let her know I didn't speak much French.

She kept saying trés gentile (very kind, very nice)
Between the few words I understood, and a little pantomime, she told me she'd heard us upstairs.  She wondered if we were the proprietaires (owners). Non.  She asked - loué? (rent?). Oui.
I indicated it was trés belle, or is it trés beau here - the view, the village.
Conspiratorily, she leaned toward me and asked if the apartment was trés cher (very expensive).  I said non.
We talked about the rain dripping into their place. I said c'ést terrible.
After a few minutes I said, à la prochaine, which means, until next time.  She brightened up.  She said la prochaine année (next year)!  She counted off the months that would be great times to visit.  I nodded.  She kissed me on both cheeks as I left. 

Madame, I truly hope we'll be back.  You can be sure we'll stop by to say hello if we are.  That conversation was the most fun I've had trying to communicate in France.

We bid our little apartment good-bye and took one last look at the bay.

Our flight home was uneventful - and that's saying a lot for me!  Maybe a little bumpy, but all-in-all a good flight.  I love watching the little plane on the Trip Tracker on the movie screen at my seat.  I like to keep track of what's going on in case the pilot needs a "heads-up" for any reason.  I can tell you we were flying at 36,000 feet, 585 miles per hour.  Our flight from London to Seattle was 9-1/2 hours long.  From the time we left our apartment in Villefranche until we got to our door on Camano Island, it took 21 hours.  In the flash of an eye, we had left the cafés, the croissants, the sailboats and the sunshine thousands of miles behind us. 

But, you know, I always leave a little part of me in France, waiting to be found again.

Today's Three Cs - Cruise Ships, Chandeliers and Cliffs

There were two cruise ships in port when we awoke on Saturday, one of them a huge Royal Caribbean ship.  The weather was overcast and raining some, and I felt bad for the visitors.  They'd probably only be here for the day, and wouldn't see much through the clouds.

We stayed around town and did some shopping.  We bought quiches at the bakery for lunch, and afterward walked down to the waterfront.  When a cruise ship is in port there are merchants set up all along the water selling souvenirs and local products for the visitors to buy.   Plus the Saturday farmers' market was going on higher up in town and the visitors were enjoying that too, although they wouldn't have needed produce on the ship!  The merchants are always happy to give tastes of their cheeses, mustards, olives and jams.  It's almost like going to Costco at lunchtime, but without the toaster ovens.

Rick fixed the lamb shanks we bought at the frozen food store for dinner.  They were falling-off-the-bone tender.  We watched the launches taking the cruisers back to the big ships for dinner.  The ships were lit up like Christmas trees as they left the harbor after dark.

Lamb shanks with veggies and pasta

The weather had improved greatly by the next day, Sunday.  The last thing on my list was a walk around Cap Ferrat  that Lynn McBride of the blog Southern Fried French talked about in one of her posts.  We headed over after breakfast.  Up near our bus stop yesterday's farmers' market was today an antique market.  As I've seen at the other antique markets, there was lots of silver, lots of china and crystal, and lots of junk.  Among the fun antiques at our apartment, I had begun to covet the chandelier, decorated with lots of heavy crystals.  We were tempted by one at the market, but would have had a hard time getting it home.  And if you remember my difficulty buying one stamp at the post office, I'm sure mailing a chandelier home would have been a daunting process.

The chandelier in our apartment won't fit in my luggage!

Le Tour du Cap Ferrat was described as being 7 kilometers long, with little or no elevation gain, and an easy walk.  Once again we didn't make it within the 1.5 hour estimated time.  Every single step of the way there was something to look at, so it probably wasn't a very aerobic walk!

The first thing we saw was scuba divers heading out to a raft.  I don't know if it was a club or a class, but the dog left behind on shore didn't like the idea of his owner going underwater one bit!

Dog barking as scuba-diving owner disappears in the water

Since it was Sunday, there seemed to be lots of activity on and around the water.  We watched a group of sailboats head out of the bay.   Rick enjoyed finally seeing some sails in use.

View of sailboat regatta in the bay

The trail was well-maintained, but sometimes there was no guard rail, and the cliffs were treacherous-looking below.  I didn't like seeing little kids along some of the more dangerous parts of the walk.  I don't know how to voice my grandma concerns in French, so I could only watch as they passed by, hoping the parents had the sense to hold on tight.

Along the trail, sometimes a rail or wall cliffside, sometimes nothing!

The trail with no guardrail and treacherous-looking steps down to the water

Dramatic rock wall along the path

The lighthouse on the point of Cap Ferrat

The trail goes through a moonscape of rocks at the point

House with moveable fabric shades along the path

View on the east side of Cap Ferrat.  You can just barely see the bridge up to Eze a bit left of center on the hillside.

We finished the walk and had lunch in St. Jean before catching the bus back to Villefranche.  The wind was picking up as the afternoon wore on.  By 5 o'clock it was pouring rain, thundering and lightening.  Rick's downspout fix seemed to be holding.


Rick fixed the duck breast we bought at the frozen food store for dinner, and once again, it was great.  We shared some tarts from the bakery for dessert.

Citron and cerise tarts (lemon and cherry)

In The Pink at Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild

We had some rain in the night, and a visit from our elderly downstairs neighbor in the morning.  He was surprised that there hadn't been any dripping in his bedroom during the night.  Rick showed him how he'd wrapped some plastic bags around a hole in the downspout, and he'd also reconnected it to the gutter.  All was well.  I'm sure this would be the talk of the neighborhood for a day or two.

Rick also did some research on the Internet and found the e-mail of the owner of our apartment.  We didn't feel like the management company had been too concerned about the problem, and thought the owner might be more inclined to fix it.  Rick e-mailed him and got a nice reply from him from England, and a request for a photo of the pipe, if possible.  He promised to have a local repairman take care of it.

The weather was still a little dodgy, but we decided to go over to Cap Ferrat to visit the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild.   Cap Ferrat doesn't have a train station, so we had to depend on the bus to get over there. At least we were now in the habit of checking the schedule, so we weren't wasting as much time waiting for our bus. 

The Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild was built in 1905, and might just be the biggest pink house I've ever seen.  The interior was decorated with antiques, many from the 18th century, and some that belonged to the French royal family.  The interior is described as being decorated in a belle époque style. 

Half of the front of the big pink house

Rick standing in front of the other half of the front of the villa

The wall of the curved alcove is upholstered with a tapestry

Little chairs upholstered in silk for the Baroness' two dogs

The house was very beautiful.  The rooms looked comfortable, yet were very elaborately decorated.  There were tapestries everywhere, beautiful carpets and a room just for the collection of china and porcelain.  The view from every window was stunning. 

Outside there were a series of 9 themed gardens.  We walked the length of the estate to see them all.  Since the property is perched on the highest point of Cap Ferrat, there is an amazing 360 degree view from there.

The French garden

Me, with the back of the house in view

The whole expanse of the French garden

Rick with a favorite statue

The rose garden still blooming in October

One wall of the stone garden

The pool in the Spanish garden

The grotto in the Spanish garden

We had lunch on the terrace of the tea room, and left the estate.  A short walk took us down to the beach, the Plage Passable.  Our view was across the bay toward Villefranche, and the cruise ship in the bay was much closer from here. 

Looking across the water to Villefranche and the cruiseship in port

Across the street from the bus stop in Villefranche we had seen a business that looked like a medical clinic, and I made an assumption based on the sign.  This  time we happened to see someone coming out the door with what looked like a bag of groceries.  I looked the word "surgelés" up in my menu translator and it means frozen food!  (Plus, I finally realized the poster in the window showed a box of macarons - the fancy French cookies.)  We thought we'd better check it out.

Medical clinic?  No, frozen foods!

All frozen foods in the Surgelés store

The inside was very stark and clinical, but no medical facility, this!  Every manner of fancy prepared cuisine could be found here, as well as the norm in our frozen food cases at home - meats, fish, potato products, waffles, etc.  We bought some lamb shanks and duck breast.

We stopped on the way home at the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.  Well, maybe not the candlestick maker.  I guess it was the épicerie - the little neighborhood grocery store.

We had a simple chicken dinner and went for a walk around the village.  The cafés were buzzing.  We stopped to have a drink at one.  We'd miss this at home!  There aren't any cafés for miles around our place on Camano Island!

Today we mention Menton

Question: How many chocolate-filled croissants did Rick and Kathy eat on their vacation?
Answer:  None of your business!

I hope we don't go through withdrawal when we get home!

Today we decided to take the train to Menton.  We looked up the train schedule online before we walked down to the station, which was luckily not far away.  Bus #100 is actually the recommended way to get to Menton, since the bus stops are closer to the part of town that tourists enjoy, but bus #100 is also the one that is always packed because it goes from Nice to Monaco, and on to Menton.  We'd rather walk from the train station than be crammed into another bus!

Menton is the French town just five miles away from the border of Italy, along the coast.  Monaco separates Menton from the rest of the towns on the French Riviera, and in fact Menton was part of Monaco up until 1860.  We expected a small, sleepy fishing village.  We were surprised to find a big, bustling city that some compare to Nice.  We didn't notice the kind of crazy traffic we'd seen in Nice though!

We happened past the post office, and I had a letter to mail, so we stopped in.  By now we were aware that people buy cellphones and minutes at the post office, and also deal with their utilities there.  I wasn't surprised when we were confronted by different counters on every side of the room, with signage meaning absolutely nothing to us.  I had no idea where to buy one stamp!  Luckily there was a customer service agent wandering around checking to see if people were lined up in the right place.  She extracted us from the line we were in and took us over to a special counter where she sold us one stamp.  It was unclear where we should mail the letter, so I had to go back to her for advice.  She directed me to the mail slot around the corner.  She didn't speak any English, so this was all done by pointing, nodding and shoulder shrugs.

If you're not from Menton, the Alpes-Maritimes, or France, you must be a stranger! 

We walked part of the pleasant promenade along the beach, and made our way to the Vieux Port - the old port. 

The promenade along the beach in Menton, the Bastion built in 1636 is now the Musee Jean Cocteau

View of the marina and the hills from the restaurant

We stopped at Gordon B, a restaurant overlooking the harbor, for lunch.  We knew we were having leftovers for dinner, so we went a bit overboard for lunch.  Rick had calamari to start, and then gorgonzola chicken for his main dish.  I had a seafood salad with scampi.  I tried the molten chocolate cake for dessert.

Molten chocolate cake with a hint of lemon

Lunch was great, and from there we headed into the center of town.  We found a pedestrian area full of cafés and shops.  I was surprised to find a few shops and a candy store devoted to products from the Brittany region of France, which is about as far away from Menton as you can get!

I've been following a blog by David Lebovitz, an American dessert chef now residing in Paris.  Not surprisingly, he often writes about pastries.  One of his blog posts was devoted to Kouign Amann (I think you pronounce it 'queen aman'), a buttery pastry from Brittany that caramelizes as it bakes.  It looked amazing and I hoped we might be able to taste one either in Paris or when we were in Brittany at Mont St. Michel.  We never happened across kouign amann, until now!  Here they were, all wrapped up and pretty, in a shop in Menton.  I had to try one.  It was indeed a buttery, caramelly, flaky wonder.  Read more about it on David's blog, here.

The mini kouignettes were dee-lish

Buttery, flaky, caramelly Kouign Amann

The display outside of a store specializing in honey products

Walking back to the train station we went through one of the garden areas in the middle of town.  There is so much more to see here that it'll be on our list for a future visit.

Gardens in the middle of Menton

We took the train back to Villefranche.  Rick, ever vigilant, noticed a rather large sailboat in the bay.  He was able to discern the name of the boat with my monocular, and looked it up on the internet.  It turned out that this boat, the Vertigo, was 220 feet long.  The mast looked as high as the boat was long.  It's the second largest privately owned sailboat in the world, with twelve staterooms.  The original owner was Leonardo DiCaprio, but he sold it to Rupert Murdoch.  After dark we could see the launch coming and going.  Who knows who might have been in the village for dinner that night?

The 220-foot Vertigo

All I know is that we had the same view, at a fraction of the cost!

Tomorrow we're off to the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Cap Ferrat.

The Water and A Walk

It was a beautiful day today.  Sunny, with a cool breeze.  We had our usual petite déjeuner of pain au chocolat, along with ham and eggs today.  A successful France/U.S. collaboration, I think.

One of the celebrities making a home in Villefranche is Tina Turner.  We'd been on the lookout for her at the market and around town, but no luck.  We checked the Internet for pictures of her house, and discovered that we could see it from our balcony.

Here's Rick taking a photo.

Stand on the roof tiles and peer around the privacy screen.  Easy!

Tina's house, just up the hill

We checked day and night to see if there was any activity at her place,  but she must have been out-of-town.  Next time we'll coordinate things better.

We spent the morning shopping and doing laundry.  Honestly, the view from our place is so wonderful we could just sit on the terrace and look at it all the time.  The water is turquoise, with sailboats bobbing gently in the waves.  Canoes and kayaks cut across the bay.  After dark the little power boats start bringing people from the sailboats in to shore for dinner.  There is always something to keep an eye on.

Harbormaster Rick, on duty

After lunch Rick was determined to swim in the Mediterranean, so we grabbed the beach towels and walked down to the beach.  On the way through town we walked by a group of three older ladies sitting on folding chairs in the cobblestone lane, enjoying the afternoon. 

The breeze was cool, but there were still people swimming, sunning, and playing in the sand.  We each took a turn in the water.  It was cool, but not icy cold.

Proof that Rick went swimming in the Med

My turn

 We decided to go out for dinner, to a little place we'd walked by a few times.  Le Serre seemed like it was busy every night, and had tables out on the little cobblestone street as well as inside.

I had a tomato mozzarella salad as my first course.  The tomato and cheese were stacked on toasted slices of baguette, and then warmed in the oven.  Beef stew with ravioli was the main course and then chocolate cake for dessert.  Rick had a pizza.  They've named all of their pizzas after states in the U.S., having nothing to do with the toppings on them!  The food was wonderful.  The entire restaurant is run by one woman in the kitchen and a younger woman waiting on all of the tables.  They were dealing with about 15 tables, and they were hustling!  Rick wanted to go into the kitchen and offer to help.

The next day dawned sunny, so our plan was to go to Cap Ferrat and walk another of the Sentiers du Littoral, the walking trails.  We finally got smart and checked the bus schedule online before going out.  We were early enough that the bus wasn't too crowded.

The harbor at St. Jean Cap Ferrat is full of fancy boats.  Rick's been frustrated looking at all of the sailboats in the harbor near our place, and never seeing any of them actually put their sails up.  I'll bet they have the same problem in St. Jean! 

We walked around the harbor and headed toward the shore, where we imagined the trail would start.  This time we did the Pointe Saint-Hospice walk, which was 3.8 kilometers, almost flat, and rated as easy.  Sainte-Hospice is a little peninsula off the east side of Cap Ferrat.  The trail was a paved pathway, all along the shore, sometimes at beach level and sometimes slightly above.  The shoreline is rocky for a good part of the coast.  There are lots of walls and fences on the inland side of the trail, since there are lots of very private estates on Cap Ferrat.  Paul Allen, formerly of Microsoft, has a place here.

Looking toward the mainland from the trail

Trail around Saint-Hospice

Rugged coastline on Saint-Hospice

After our walk we stopped in St. Jean for lunch at the Cadillac restaurant.  I had Salade Niçoise.  It was good, but we have such a great recipe at home, that nothing, even here in the area of its inception, compares. Here's the recipe, from one of our local papers, The Everett Herald.  We usually use seared fresh tuna, rather than the traditional canned tuna. 

My favorite part of any meal

 
Back at the apartment, all was well.  Everything in the harbor was operating smoothly, so Rick could turn his attention to dinner. 

We had a great pork roast.  It's amazing what Rick can do with the few seasonings we have here.  At home we have a kitchen full of spices, 8 different kinds of vinegar and fresh herbs from the yard.  Here we have salt, pepper, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, herbes de Provence and some thyme.  And every dinner tastes great!

We leave for home in 6 days, and we've got a few more things on our "to-do" list.  Stay tuned!

Rain and Eze-le-Village

Today we walked down to the waterfront and around the Citadel in Villefranche.  The Citadel was built in the 1500s by the Duke of Savoy as a defense against the French.  Currently it houses some city offices, a theater and two art galleries.  It's still a very imposing castle.

The Citadel in Villefranche

A wall of the Citadel

A different view of town from the Citadel side

We walked over to the more serious harbor and marina in town. 

Lots more boats!

The weather wasn't very nice.  It was windy and overcast, so we decided to go out for lunch.  We stopped at La Belle Epoque again, and I had moules frites (mussels and fries) again.  Rick tried the octopus salad, which he liked.  I know I swore off café gourmand after last time, but lunch wasn't too filling, so I had to see what they served here. 

Café gourmand, this time consisting of a mini chocolate cake, floating island, ice cream, and fromage blanc with raspberry sauce, and an espresso 

Aren't they cute?  It was so good too, but this is the LAST TIME I'm ordering this.

We picked up some lamb chops at the butcher for dinner and hunkered down to watch the storm coming in.

Before dawn the next morning, Rick saw two big cruise ships anchored in the bay.  At daylight the launches would start bringing visitors to shore for the day.  Tourists!  Yikes!

Two cruise ships anchored in the bay

During the night we had quite a thunderstorm and lots of rain.  About 8:30 the next morning an elderly gentleman knocked at our door.  He spoke no English, but we understood that there had been some water dripping next to his bed in the night.  Imagine him pantomiming sleeping, and then drip, drip, drip.  He was sure it was coming from a leak on our terrace and went out to take a look.  I gave him the phone number of the apartment management company so he could talk to them about it.  He was very nice to us, knowing that we were just visiting.  We also called the management company to let them know about the problem. 

The skies had cleared fairly early, so we decided to visit Eze-le-Village, way up on the hill above the coast.  There's also Eze-Bord-de-Mer, which is right on the water, but that isn't very picturesque.

They say that knowledge is power...oh, and it also saves lots of farting around with the buses too.  Though it's true that many local people don't even own a car, and depend on the bus to go everywhere, I'm sure their lives revolve around the bus schedule.  And, though it's true that there may be 16 buses per day from Point A to Point B, that doesn't equate to a bus going by every 15 minutes.

We walked up to the bus stop and realized that the next bus wouldn't arrive for 45 minutes, so we decided to walk from the old part of town, nearer the water, to the new part of town, up the hill.  This was the route our bus would take and surely we wouldn't have much of a wait at the top.  Our walk took 30 minutes, and when we got to the upper part of town we had to wait an hour for the next bus. We were disappointed!  We could have waited near the original bus stop and enjoyed a coffee at a café!  Oh, well.

We got to Eze-le-Village by the skin of our teeth.  The bus was packed with people.  I was holding on to the ticket machine right next to the driver for dear life.  Rick was standing on the lowest step at the front door.  We were sure the driver had just gotten off probation for reckless driving, and would soon be put back on.  He seemed to love squealing around corners, and there were plenty of them.  I was afraid Rick would be ejected through the doors and over the cliff. 

How many people can you fit on a bus?

The ride up to Eze was almost worth it.  It's a quaint and picturesque village (I'm trying not to use the word "cute" every day!)  The old part of the village is set on a hilltop

A street in Eze-le-Village

A doorway in Eze

At the top of the village is a garden of succulents, cacti, sculpture and castle ruins.  To get a view from the very top of the village, you need to visit the garden.



The Jardins d'Eze combined sculpture and 400 different succulents and cacti

A view of the Mediterranean from Eze

Another view of the Mediterranean from Eze

The bridge our bus drove over to get to the village of Eze

We had a good lunch at a café in the upper village, Restaurant le Nid d'Aigle, and walked down the hill to catch the bus.  OK, so I've admitted that we don't know the schedule, so of course we had a 45-minute to an hour wait for the next bus.  We probably missed the previous bus by just a few minutes.  We decided we'd walk down to Eze-Bord-de-Mer, on the water, and catch the train back home.  It was supposed to be a 45-minute walk.  All downhill.  How hard could it be? 

The views on the way down were incredible.  The walk was on a rocky and uneven trail, but it didn't seem treacherously steep.  It took longer than 45 minutes, but only because we stopped to look at the view so often.  It turned out that we had walked down 1,300 feet.  My knees were very upset by our choice. 

Here's me, still cheerful, at the top of the trail

We caught the train in Eze-Bord-de-Mer and got back to Villefranche in short order.  The cruise ships were gone, and the village was left to us, the locals.