Dear Friends,
We are back in Villefranche. Our first week has been full of adventures and recovery from jet lag.
We arrived on a beautiful Saturday. We got to bypass the worst part of our trip, carrying our bags up 40 steps to our apartment, because Danny a very nice, strong, younger man, appeared and did all the hard work. It was a perfect start to our stay.
We changed clothes and headed out for lunch. There is a small road that runs right along the shore of the bay where there are many restaurants. That day we chose Le Trastevere. We both had salads that were primarily a reason to eat a ton of burrata.
For dinner we went to our favorite restaurant, Le Serre, where we were greeted by the two fantastic servers. We felt like we were home.
As usual we slept later than planned on Sunday morning. There are many problems with doing this as many shops close at noonish on Sundays, and we needed to do a major shopping so we could eat. On the other hand, it was nice to sleep until we woke up and in the process we discovered that the very small Italian café, Bakaro, on our street has fantastic omelets in addition to great croissant, pain au chocolat, etc.
Fortunately, the amazing frozen food store, Picard, was open so we could get supplies, including dinner. All of this dinner is from frozen items at Picard, and they are very tasty.
Monday, we started our french lessons. We meet with our tutor for three hours a day for three days a week. On the fourth day, we spend five hours with her but go on an excursion (more about that later). Aude, our teacher, has a plan for us which sometimes is more ambitious than our plan, and fortunately her plan wins all the time. So each day after our lesson we have homework to do.
But on this day, we needed to go for a big shopping in the next town, Beaulieu. Normally we would walk the 2ish miles to get there, but it was on the verge of raining, we were tired, and we had to take a cart to get everything back. Also we wanted to try the new way of buying train tickets. It is all online and once you are registered it works well. The only problem is you need to say which train you are taking ahead of time. That worked fine on the way to Beaulieu, but on the way back the train arrived at the station before I bought the tickets, and it would not let me buy tickets for that train, so I bought them for the next train. We later found out that doesn't work if you get caught. It is basically an honor system, but you can get caught if the conductor decides he wants to see your ticket. Anyway, we escaped being caught and still felt like we were good people.
The shopping was very successful as we found everything we needed and discovered that the Super U, a large super market chain, had some good meat and produce as well. We ate well that night.
By Wednesday we had almost run out of Nespresso pods. We always leave a few here so we have some when we arrive. Our landlady wants us to use only real Nespresso pods so we do which means we have to go to Nice to get them at the Nespresso store. We are members of their loyalty program so we need to remember our Villefranche address to get credit for our purchases and for the promotions. We arrived at the store only to discover that it was being renovated. Fortunately, the temporary store was only a 10 minute walk away. We stocked up and by chance got a discount and an extra sleeve of 10 pods of a new coffee.
The other reason we need to go to Nice is that we have discovered there is a huge difference in the exchange rate and fees at various ATMs. The best way for us to pay for things in euros is with either our Visa or American Express cards. If we need to pay in cash, the best way for us to get cash is at the ATMs at the Bureau de Poste, the post office. In France the post office is also a bank. It charges virtually no fees for giving us euros from our dollar based American bank accounts and uses the official exchange rate. On the downside, they limit the amount of each withdrawal. We now know where some of these ATMs are in Nice, and we visited one to stock up on cash.
As long as we were in Nice, we decided to have lunch at one of our favorite little restaurants in the old town, Bar des Oiseaux.
Jane had the tuna.
I had the veal with eggplant.
We also had to find the new and hopefully permanent bus stop for the 15 bus to return to Villefranche. Between Nice and Villefranche you can take the 600 or the 15 bus. Depending on where you are in Nice one or the other of these bus lines will be closer, except at the port where they are only a block apart, and you can wait in between to see which one is coming first. The area where the 15 bus originates has been under demolition and reconstruction to expand a beautiful park for a couple of years and the stop has moved around. We think this new stop is permanent, but as they say in France "on verra" (we'll see).
On Thursday, Aude decided that our adventure would be a trip to Contes, a village preché. As you can see in the photo below it is perched on the top of a peak in the mountains. There are a lot of ville perchée in France. Around here Èze is probably the most famous.
The easiest way to get there is to go to Nice and up the valley of the river Paillon, but that way was full of traffic jams so Aude drove us over the mountain behind Villefranche via small and very curvy roads. She is very brave and fortunately a good driver.
You can of course walk up to the village top, but most people take the funicular which we did. There are actually two of them to get to the top. The first stop is for one of the town schools.
At the top there is of course a church, a beautiful square with a fountain, a very interesting museum and no tourists, except us.
We returned to Villefranche for a nice lunch at La Balienne Joyeuse (the joyful whale) in the working marina, La Darse, in Villefranche. We walked back to our apartment along the sea.
We enjoyed a wonderful evening at home where Jane started with a non-alcoholic beer on the balcony before making a wonderful dinner.
Friday was my birthday, but after so many it is not such big deal. It was a beautiful day, sunny with a little breeze and not very humid. The perfect day to do laundry. While we have a washing machine, like most local apartments we have no dryer. So once the load was done, I hung it out to dry on the clothes lines provided. The clothes are in clear view of the many people strolling by the sea so I have learned to be careful to hide some items from direct view.
You can see that we have a terrible view. If you turn a little bit to the east, you get this view.
If you look to the south it is to open water all the way to Africa.
You can also see that we are lucky enough to have a propane grill. The chicken, pork and beef here are really good and have actual great taste unlike at most stores at home. We really enjoy using the grill for dinner most nights.
It is something of a tradition for me to go for a swim on my birthday. Since it was such a beautiful day, and I had finished most of my chores, I went for a swim in the afternoon. During the summer months and until the middle of October there is a temporary restaurant that takes up a prime part of the beach. The owner must be a friend of the mayor. Of course that makes the rest of the prime area rather crowded even in October. Since I prefer less crowded areas, Jane and I walked all the way to the far end of the beach which is rocky. My feet are generally happy to walk in the sand, but the rocks are a different story. Nevertheless, I persisted.
We had a special birthday party dinner. Aude, our french tutor, and her family came to our apartment for dinner. They are, like most young families, very busy. Friday evenings can be even busier than other nights. On this night the 11 year old boy had football (our soccer) practice until about 7 and his 9 year old sister had rock climbing until 8. So our party started at about 8:30. We brought pizzas, salads and frites from Le Serre and they brought desserts from a wonderful pâtisserier/chocolaterie in Beaulieu, Mesiano.
As my grandchildren will tell you, at dinner each child must say something about school and respond to the questions of the adults. Since both of the parents teach french to english speakers, they both speak english very well. The children, however, speak french although the 11 year old studies both spanish and english in addition to french. So the evening was spent speaking french. The kids are pretty good at understanding our french as I think that they have gotten used to us over the years. We still have some problems following everything they say. The 11 year is very kind to us because he articulates his words. It turns out that unlike our grandchildren, Aude's children seemed to enjoy taking turns talking about school. They even told some stories that their parents did not know. It was a wonderful evening and great birthday party for me.
Since the next day was Saturday, that meant pétanque. It is a smaller group in the fall than in the winter, but we had a great time, particularly since Jean Paul and I won handily. Here you can see Monique being in awe of my form.
And here you can see how difficult it is to determine who gets how many points.
After pétanque and the usual stop at Chez Betty for a café, we had to find a place to have lunch because the cleaners were at our apartment. We went to the Bistro de l'étoile. It is not on the water but has a wonderful terrace, surrounded by beautiful flowers and very nice food.
By the time lunch was done, it was time for a nap and to get ready for dinner at La Turbie, a town about 30 minutes by car from Villefranche. We ate at a wonderful restaurant, Café de la Fountaine. Jean Paul and Melinda who live in Villefranche drove us and since it was my birthday also treated us. We solved most, but not all, of the world's problems and found time to catch up as well. It was a perfect evening.
So that is how our first week here was. How lucky we are to be here!
Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal
