Villefranche-sur-mer 2019 - 2 Our Apartment

Dear Friends,

I think it is important for your enjoyment of our stay in Villefranche that you understand how wonderful the apartment we are staying in is.  I want it clear that I am not rubbing it in that I am here on the Côte d'Azur, and you are wherever you are that is not here.

I have described our apartment in detail in a post a few years ago here.  It is great. We are here each year for the month of January but unfortunately have to move to another apartment for February.

We have always had trouble spotting our apartment from the other side of the rade (harbor/bay) of Villefranche.  So the other day, I walked to the other side.  Here is what it looks like from our apartment using a telephoto lens.  It is about 0.4 miles from our apartment to the other shore shown below.

We put some colorful clothes on our balcony to help spot our apartment.  I then walked around to the other side, leaving Jane in the apartment.  She could see me, but it took a couple of phone calls and some handkerchief waving for me to spot her.  This picture shows our apartment but amongst many others.

As you can see we are right in the middle of the Vieille Ville just back up a steep hill from the water.

As I zoom in you can see our apartment more clearly.  We would normally move to the apartment on the right of the picture that appears to be shrink wrapped for the month of February.  Since the exterior needed to be redone and our landlady decided to take this opportunity to remodel the apartment, this year we will move to a smaller apartment that you cannot see in these pictures.

Here you can see Jane waving from the balcony.

Now that we have done this study, we can easily see our apartment without the help of a telephoto lens.  

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal

Democratic Candidate for President 2020 - 1

Dear Friends,

The number of people seeking the Democratic nomination for President in 2020 is huge, and we need to start winnowing it down.  I have yet to determine exactly what criteria I should use to decide for myself who to support.  There are, however, some criteria that are quite foundational for me.

The person must be able to motivate a broad electorate to participate in the process and to vote.  Democrats win elections when more people vote and especially people who do not traditionally vote. In order to have this appeal, the person must not be too old.

The person should not carry the baggage of being a member of the Democratic Party establishment.  Those people who have received the Democratic nomination who were from the Democratic Party establishment have lost time and time again.  Since Lyndon Johnson, the only Democrats to win the Presidency have been Jimmy Carter (a little known Georgia governor), Bill Clinton (a little known Arkansas governor) and Barack Obama (a one term Senator from Illinois); and the losers have all been candidates of the Democratic establishment-Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

The ticket must be diverse.  I am sympathetic to, but not yet persuaded by, the argument that the candidate should be a person of color.  I am, however, certain that the ticket must not consist solely of white men.

With these foundational criteria in mind, I am prepared to rule out the following potential candidates in alphabetical order:

Joe Biden
I like Joe Biden.  He is a very nice person and has for the most part served our country well.  However, he will be 78 in November 2020.  He is the epitome of the Democratic Party establishment and carries with him all of his and the Democratic Party's prior sins (think Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill, credit card companies, Iraq war, etc.).

Michael Bloomberg
Bloomberg will also be 78 in November 2020.  While he has not always been a Democrat, he is certainly establishment and if anything represents the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party establishment.  The last person we need as the nominee is a person who will self fund from his Wall Street gains and have the enthusiastic support of the 1%.

Andrew Cuomo
While Cuomo will only be 63 by the end of 2020, he has been around forever as a member of the Democratic Party establishment.  I cannot think of any good reason for him to the nominee.

Terry McAuliffe
Unless Hillary Clinton were to run again, there is no candidate more tied to the Clinton centrist wing of the Democratic Party establishment than McAuliffe.  He is at best a centrist and more like a center right candidate with all the baggage of the past and nothing for the future.

Bernie Sanders
As those of you who read this blog in the lead up to the 2016 Presidential election know, I was a big supporter of Bernie Sanders.  If it were not for the unfair intervention of the Democratic Party establishment, he would have been the Democratic nominee and would now be our President.  Nevertheless Bernie will be 79 by November 2020.  I still love his policies, but he is no longer the right candidate.  We need a person who supports the same policies but is younger and can avoid the issues that impacted Bernie's campaign last time.

Beto O'Rouke
Obviously, Beto is not too old.  I have two concerns about his candidacy.  First, his voting record is not at all progressive.  Second, he has never even won a statewide election and has little experience.  Even though he has demonstrated that he can motivate a broad electorate, I do not believe that he is yet capable of being on the national stage.  In his race for the Senate people saw in him what they wanted to see, not what his record actually shows.  That worked for Obama, but I doubt that he can do that on the national stage, and I certainly do not want a candidate that we don't really know.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Villefranche-sur-Mer 2019-1 Even in France

Dear Friends,

I can tell you now with absolute certainty that the world is about to come to an end, but you will have to wait until later in the post for the evidence.

We are back in Villefranche-sur-Mer once again.  We arrived just before New Years and were delighted to be back.  Just to remind you why we might prefer Villefranche to Minneapolis in the winter.  Here are a few photos that I took from the balcony of our apartment.

This photo is directly across the bay towards Cap Ferat.

You can see Nellcôte former onetime home of the 

Rolling Stones just on the left edge of the photo.

This photo is the lighthouse on Cap Ferat.

A few fishermen returning to port.  If you look very

closely you can see a single sea gull crossing the bow.

A sailor returning to his boat.

As you can see the weather is just like Minneapolis in January and the pace of life is rather hectic.  

We have been engaged in all of the regular activities that we pursue while we are here - eating good food, drinking French wines, walking, taking French lessons, catching up with old friends, playing pétanque and going from shop to shop to provision for dinner.

We have walked to Beaulieu twice to try to have lunch at the Gran Caffe one of our favorites.  While we were unsuccessful both times, we were able to get chocolat chaud at the Gran Caffe once which you may recall is the best in the world.  Anyway, the second time we failed, we went instead to have lunch at Le Fabuleux Destin. The name of the restaurant is taken from the movie which in the US is called just Amélie but in France was called le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (the fabulous/legendary destiny/fate of Amélie Poulain).  

It is a very nice restaurant located in the big and very fancy marina in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.  

Beaulieu is located just east of Villefranche and just west of Monaco.  It is about a 2 mile walk from our apartment when you meander as we do.  The restaurant is just a couple of doors down from the African Queen which was the subject of a post about a year ago.  It is very expensive and very pretentious.  I say all of this so that you know that Le Fabuleux Destin is considered a very nice French restaurant.  

Well, here is where both the title of this post and the evidence that the end of the world is very near come in.  While enjoying our lunch on a beautiful day in a wonderful setting and just as Jane was commenting on having a headache, we noticed in plain view the following:

Yes, that is right.  They were serving red, white and rosé wine out of boxes.  They didn't even bother to hide the boxes, and they couldn't even bother to put l'accent aigu on the "e" in rosé.  I am sure that many times when we have ordered just a pichet or carafe of house wine, it has come out of a box, but the boxes have always been hidden.  This experience was even worse than the time in Paris when we noticed a plastic pail (like a gallon sized plastic ice cream container) that contained the béarnaise sauce.  So there you have it proof positive that the world will come to an end when even in France at a very nice French restaurant you can be served wine from a box that is in plain sight.

Thanks for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal