France

Diamonds are Forever and A Niece in Nice

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Despite the fact I’m half English, we seem to have a lot of friends and family in France. I haven’t even mentioned that our AirBnb in Paris was very close to where T’s parents have an apartment. Then we saw K in Orleans. And the next part of our French adventure involved a visit to our niece, who conveniently lives just outside Nice.

After a brisk walk to the train station in Orleans where we caught the tram to the bus stop, we took a Flix bus to the Orly Airport in Paris. The Flixbus was a double decker, and unfortunately our seats, which we had reserved, were on the top level, and I could definitely feel it sway back and forth. We traveled back through flat agricultural fields straight to the L’Aeroport d’Orly. This is very much the domestic and non-glitzy airport, in contrast to Charles de Gaulle. We had a long wait, but a short flight to Nice, where our niece, F, met us at the airport.

We drove through winding wooded roads up to Chateauneuf de Grasse, where her apartment has a beautiful view of the Mediterranean and lots of olive trees. We had dinner at a local restaurant in Valbonne.

We slept late the next day and then drove into Nice. Despite the fact it was Monday, parking was very hard to come by but it did mean we got to see a lot of Nice in our quest for a place to park. We finally found a spot on a street where two gentil hommes sitting outside a bar helped F into a very tight parking place. Nice is filled with lots of old, orange apartment buildings (bourgeois buildings), and the promenade by the ocean sends one back decades in time. We visited a very old Baroque church (whose name I cannot locate anywhere), with lots of chapels dedicated to multiple saints, each of whom had a special prayer just for them. Lunch at an outdoor cafe, where I managed to make an international call and reach the vet to deal with the Kira and what to do with a dead cat issue. Yes, even on sabbatical these everyday issues do surface.

We wandered around Nice a bit more, and then drove to Villefranche to meet F’s friend at her friend’s father’s house. It was located in a gated community up on the cliffs with an amazing view. Her father spoke no English but he spoke French slowly so I was able to pick up at least some of the conversation. After coffee and biscuits, we drove even higher up the mountain, where we could see where much of the James Bond Never Say Never movie was filmed, as well as Tina Turner’s home. Quite an experience.

We had planned to go to Antibes the next day, despite the unsettled weather. Antibes is much smaller than Nice and has a great parking lot. Parking can be important. The Picasso museum was closed for lunch so we went to a much less ornate Romanesque church – all terracotta colors – poked about shops, and had a Lebanese lunch. We got bored waiting in the very long line for the Picasso museum, so instead walked about the harbor and looked at the huge, super luxury yachts, including one called Faith that, according to the internet, is up for charter.

After a trip to the Carefours market, we helped F prepare for her crepe party, and enjoyed meeting more of her friends. They also had some great suggestions for our upcoming trip to Tuscany.

The next morning we had to depart the south of France. For the first time, we couldn’t get our tickets to scan at the train station, but we did manage somehow to find an assistance booth where some automated function let us on. I’m still not sure how we managed it.

The train to Milan, our next stop, ran right along the Mediterranean. It was super crowded until Monaco, where everyone got off, presumably to go gamble. We ourselves disembarked at Ventimiglia, where our next train was waiting for us. Time for Italy, starting in Milan.

Friends in France – A Visit to Orleans

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All good things must come to an end, but our Paris visit definitely did so too soon. Nonetheless, we enjoyed le petit dejuner at Le Weekend (by the way, cafe crème is cafe au lait, and like London, all coffee is expensive). Walked to the St. Placide metro to the Austerlitz Gare, where we had quite a wait for our train. It’s not a great station, very low ceilings and not many amenities, but it was easy to find our train.

We reached Orleans in just over an hour, traveling through flat, agricultural countryside. Our long time family friend K met us at the station, and we made the brisk, 15 minute walk to her house, which is near the center of town. Her home was built around 1911, and has a huge yard, dominated by an ancient linden tree, and is filled with interesting items ranging from her days as a glass blower to antique furniture from her family to souvenirs of her days in Nepal, Senegal, and India.

Orleans is charming and quite lively. Very uniform, cream colored buildings line the straight boulevard that starts at the Cathedral, but other areas are filled with half timbered medieval structures, recently restored. The outdoor market was incredible – cheese, sausage, vegetables, seafood. K bought four different sorts of oysters for the next day.

We walked down to the Loire, but by then it was pouring (hence, a shortage of photos….). K cooked mussels in white wine for dinner, accompanied by a salad of mache and mushrooms.

The next day we awoke to a message from our house sitter that our cat, Kira, had passed away. While it wasn’t a total surprise, it was sad and K popped open a champagne bottle in her honor at breakfast (well, it was more like brunch time).

We took another walk to explore more parts of Orleans, and after the weather turned cold, we feasted on oysters (sizes 2, 3, and 4 from Brittany, Normandy, and Cler [?]), accompanied by radishes dipped in salt and bread and butter. Watching K shuck them was poetry in motion. (Besides being an artist, K is also a gourmet chef.)

After recovering from eating three dozen oysters between three people, we walked back into town. It was a Saturday night and a lively scene despite the rain. We eventually stopped at a Brittany creperie for galettes – crepes made from buckwheat. They are thicker than what we think of as a crepe in America, and folded at the corners to create a square. A Galette Complet includes a fried egg, jambon (ham), and Swiss cheese.

There’s nothing like a visit with friends in France.

Splurging in Paris

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I sum up Vienna versus Paris this way. In Vienna, all the pedestrians dutifully waited at crosswalks for the traffic lights to change, even if there were no cars in sight. In Paris, they didn’t.

It was now October 18, and we were back on Austrian Air, on a flight to Charles de Gaulle Airport. After taking a very local train (RER) from the airport to the city, we found the metro to Saint-Placide metro station. From there, it was a short walk to our AirBnB, in the 6th Arrondisement and right by Le Bon Marche.

It is a lovely neighborhood, with lots of cafes, high end clothing stores, and the like. It was cool and rainy. We did encounter a few issues getting into the apartment, which ranged from where the key was to how to unlock the second of the two front entrances to which of several doors was the actual one to the apartment. We ruled out the one with the barking dog behind it. We finally made it in, only to find the wi-fi advertised on the website was nonexistent. But despite all that, and a shower that tended to flood the bathroom, it was nicely done up inside, and the location made up for everything.

That night we went to Relais d’Entrecote, at the recommendation of T, daughter S’s boyfriend, who is half French and knows Paris well. All they serve is steak frites, and your only choices are the degree of doneness, your wine, and your dessert. Another contrast to Austria, where no one seems to order bottles of wine. You start off with a lovely lettuce and walnut salad, and then, after you finish your first serving of steak (thinly sliced, with a herb sauce) and frites, another is immediately plopped on your plate. We did choose a dessert, ice cream doused with Grand Mariner and whipped cream. It all made up for a cold and rainy walk back to the AirBnB.

The weather the next day was much better than we had feared. After breakfast at Le Bon Marche (where I had the best croissant I have ever eaten), we took a long walk through the Rive Gauche and Latin Quarter (remembering our stay there in 1985), to the under construction Notre Dame, which is still recovering from the fire in 2019. We passed by the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) and through the Marais to the free Musee Carnavalet (History of the City of Paris).

It is a marvelous museum. Housed in two palaces, it spans prehistoric and Roman times (when Paris was Lutetia) to the 19th century. The most amazing part was the recreation of rooms from various houses and hotels. So many of them, faux marble panels, painted walls of still lifes.

Once we were exhausted, we walked across the river and had lunch at a cafe facing Notre Dame from across the river. Police sirens were constant. It turned out there had been a spate of bomb hoaxes causing evacuations of the Louvres, the airport, Versailles, etc.

We walked back to the AirBnb, stopping at the Eglise Saint-Severin and the Bon Marche. After managing to make ourselves somewhat presentable in our by-then rather travel worn clothes, we walked to Le Deux Magots for a pre-dinner drink. It started to rain, but we were under an umbrella, and the weather didn’t daunt us from enjoying the free olives and the live jazz band. Apparently the current owner is trying to make the place less touristy.

We had dinner at Sevilla, again at T and S’s recommendation. Our reservation was “early” – at 9:30 p.m. – another contrast to Austria where the restaurants were closed by that time! Starters were sea bass, Ceviche, “piglet” and sweet potato main for J, and roast cod for me. Cocktails and wine and dessert. Actually I’m not totally sure what is pictured in the photo below.

It was all quite the splurge.