Nice

Nice, December 22, 2014

After one week of living in Nice we have settled into a rather nice pattern.  We sleep late, walk long, stop for an espresso at one of two places we prefer, pick up some fresh bread and a pastry of some sort and come back to the apartment for breakfast.  We have been blessed with perfect weather. Yesterday, the first day of winter, our afternoon walk along the Promenade was in full bright sun with a temperature of 65!

Our apartment is just perfect for this six-week experience. It is relatively compact but large enough to have some space to spread out. The bed is comfortable and there is a lot of light in the apartment until the afternoon.  The kitchen requires a lot of flexibility when cooking but I’ve made several decent meals without issues.  Shopping is lots of fun here and for the first time I’ve used a French shopping cart, which is a big bag on wheels.  I, and my fellow old farts, walk around the market looking things for our dinner.  The Niçoise are not a very tall people and on numerous occasions Cindy and I have been stopped by other shoppers and asked to get something for them from one of the top shelves.  The inner city supermarkets do not have the same space as those in the suburbs so they pile things up high and hope for the best.

We are still exploring our neighborhood seeking out the best places for coffee, Kirs, oysters and wine. When stores are closed here, they are really closed and you could never tell there was a restaurant or café until they open again, and then we are greatly surprised that we didn’t notice it before.  Two nights ago we were wandering around looking for a place to have dinner.  We had walked to the old town to watch the light show and see the new Marché de Noël, which really was a bummer since it consisted of only two stalls selling homemade soap and a huge crèche, but at least it smelled nice.  Anyway the place we thought we would eat was closed, closed on a Saturday night before Christmas!

We had a very interesting Friday. As we were leaving the apartment to go on our walk along the water, we saw an electrician entering the foyer.  Upon our return we found out that we had no electricity.  Calls to the manager got us nowhere for three hours until everyone realized that the electric company had turned off our apartment instead of the one next to us that is unoccupied. Forty minutes after that someone came and pushed the right buttons to give us juice, which meant we could now use the Internet again, not to mention keeping our wine cold.  At lunch I made sandwiches, nothing fancy and certainly nothing that would cause my tooth to chip, but that is what it did. Luckily, it doesn’t appear to be anything but a minor annoyance and I’ll wait to get it repaired when we return.

We are now off to a concert at the Opera House, more later.  Best to all, Cindy and Wm