I probably have posted this before but coudn't think of anything to post so thought I would think of those wonderful days. Of course, we did recently have 9/11 so it wasn't quite all wonderful in the world.
Carqueiranne, France Lettre de Provence #1 February/2002
Our first time arriving in Nice by airplane! It was a spectacular flight from Frankfurt after the usual mind numbing transatlantic ordeal. The sun was shining and the sky was clear as we flew over the various mountain ranges to finally sweep over the Alpes-Maritimes and make that breath taking descent over the azur blue of the Mediterranean.
It’s a wonderful way to enter the south of France...although nothing can quite beat stumbling bleary-eyed from your second class couchette compartment after tossing and turning all night on the overnight train from Paris to see the bluest of skies and the Mediterranean in all its glory and the familiar landscape of olives, palms and vines.
The flight from Vancouver was even more of an ordeal than usual since it was a matter of months after 9/ll and security was tight with a palpable tension everywhere. All this seemed to evaporate in the Frankfurt airport as we passed customs with narry a glance at our passports. We entered a different world as we boarded our plane for the south of France. The door to the pilot cabin was wide open throughout the flight and staff and passengers wandered freely in and out laughing and joking. .
The flight is just over an hour but drinks and a lunch were served. Flight attendants just barely got the third round of drinks offered before landing. We drank our pastis, that unique liqorice tasting aperitif that tastes absolutely right only in the south of France, while daydreaming of mussels and fries with Dijon mustard washed down with a rose wine of Provence in a “Restaurant Pieds dans l’Eau”. The French have this wonderful expression “Restaurants With Their Feet in the Water” to describe restaurants that really are located on the water...none of this sea glimpse sort of thing. They take their ocean and dining experiences seriously.
The plane landed with a thud and swayed in an inebriated manner along the runway. I guess the customs people in the Nice airport were still enjoying lunch as there was no one in the arrival area and we were delayed behind a metal barrier for a few minutes until the pilots arrived, broke through and let us all in.
Our luggage was ready in minutes and we got our car with relatively little trouble other than raised eyebrows that our rental period was for three months.
We couldn’t believe the weather on the 25th of January....sunny, blue blue skies and around 20 degrees. We sat on our hotel balcony overlooking the Promenade des Anglais and seriously thought of trying to find the shorts we had packed for April in Italy. Instead we cracked open a bottle of rosé of Provence from the mini-bar. We knew we could never last until the restaurants opened at 7pm so wandered the old town for a while and bought cheese, bread, and fruit for a picnic on our balcony before drifting off to sleep.
View from a balcony at the Hotel Suisse.
