Monthly Archives: October 2013

Just a quick post to talk about our apartment in Nice, which was quite lovely. It was a little far from downtown, but who cares when you have this view:

Also the shower head in the bathtub didn’t work so we got to test our flexibility when washing our hair in the tub and rinsing it under the faucet, but we made it work and the rest of the apartment was functional and super cute:

The owner, who is American and rents out the apartment for most of the year, left us a baguette, which we ate, and duck liver pate, which we did not, plus a half bottle of champagne, which we…well, I’ll leave you to guess what we did with it 🙂

After our oh-so-fancy trip to Monaco, we thought we’d head over to a more low-key town that, according to several of our friends, had killer views – the mountaintop town of Eze.

Eze is between Monaco and Nice, so we thought we’d just drop by on our way back. The bus stopped at the Eze train station, so it seemed pretty easy. What we didn’t realize was that while the train station was at the bottom of the hill/mountain, the town of Eze was ALL the way at the top.

Upon our arrival at the Eze train station, the bus schedule told us that we’d have to wait over an hour for a bus to come to take us up the hill/mountain. Our guidebook said we could walk up in 45 minutes. The train station sign said we could walk up in 1.5 hours. We figured, how bad could it be? Well, it was about an hour of climbing pretty much straight up. The two of us experienced varying levels of happiness with the situation. The bottom line is, the climb was TOTALLY worth it. Eze is an adorable town with cute little rabbit-warren streets and, yes, a killer view at the top, although weirdly, the highest point involves a cactus garden with cacti that mostly came from Central and South America. Not clear on that one, but we didn’t dwell on it because it was SO gorgeous.

Then we rewarded ourselves for making it up the hill/mountain with the most expensive drinks either of us had ever paid for, but it was totally worth it because it was champagne cocktails, nibbles and a view from the top of the world overlooking the stunningly azure water that leaves no doubt as to where the region got its name.

As you can see, TOTALLY worth it.

I’m not a fan of buses. They’re inconsistent, they get stuck in traffic, they are rarely on time. Even the school bus that I was forced to ride for a while my freshman year in high school was never on time. BUT, we braved the Cote d’Azur bus system and it was…OK.

But let’s back up a second. Our morning got off to a lovely start. I walked down to the main street near our apartment and picked up some coffee, croissants, and pains au chocolat for breakfast while my jetlagged friend got up and ready. When I returned, we made coffee in the french press in our apartment and had a fabulous breakfast on the balcony.

After breakfast, our bus adventure began. We had looked up the route to Monaco, which is not far from Nice, and there was a bus stop right outside our apartment that was to take us there. A bus was supposed to leave every 15 minutes. 35 minutes later a bus showed up that was full and not picking up passengers. Finally an emptier bus rolled along and we got on it, eventually making it to Monaco! Whew! Totally worth it, though. Monaco is gorgeous, and we could not have picked a more beautiful day to go. Here I am on Princess Grace Walkway that wraps around behind the Monte Carlo Casino:

We had a fabulous, if overpriced, lunch on the Casino square, ducked into the super fancy casino which, to my great disappointment, had some pretty tacky slot machines that completely clashed with the snazzy surroundings (they make you leave your camera at coat check, so no pictures – you’ll just have to go see for yourself), then made our way back to the bus stop to head back down the coast.

I am writing this as I sit on the train from Marseille to Nice. I completely forgot that I had decided to book a first class ticket because I’m 30, dammit, and I can. I made my reservation a while ago and forgot about it, so when I arrived at the train station, printed my ticket, and saw “Classe 1” printed on it, it was kind of exciting!

It’s also really nice to have the freedom to just hop on a train and go somewhere. That kind of freedom is something you don’t truly appreciate until you don’t have it anymore!

Anyway, the sky is bright blue, the weather is crisp (making it all the more tragic that I forgot to bring my classy trench coat), I’m taking a trip along the coast of southern France, life is pretty good!

Also the cold, train station croissants in France are still better than croissants in any other country. I think French bakers must be magic.

—————————–

OK! made it to Nice, met up with my fellow 30-birthday celebrator, had a lovely lunch on the port and took a walk around while waiting to be able to check in to the apartment we rented:

Now we’re back at the apartment, one of us is napping away the jet lag after flying all night from NYC, and the other one of us is admiring the view from our balcony:

When I got to Algiers everyone told me that I’d need to plan at least a long weekend away every 2-3 months. That I would need a break from our relatively restricted environment and, frankly, we’re so close to Europe, why the hell not?

I was always on board with the “take vacations to Europe” plan, but didn’t really believe that I’d NEED it. But, sure enough, I was really counting down the days this week. I think the mindset is partly due to our restricted movement throughout Algiers and the hoops we have to jump through to leave the city limits. I understand there are legitimate security reasons behind all of it and that’s fine (I’m comfortable with being a “better safe than sorry” person when it comes to personal safety), but when you combine that with the fact that we’re a small embassy and therefore you pretty much see the same people a LOT (as great as most of them are), a break from it all can be nice 🙂

All of that is to lead up to the fact that…I AM IN MARSEILLE!! The last time I was here was 10-plus years ago. CRAZY. 19-year-old me was nervous enough going to France alone – she never would have considered that moving to Africa was something that would happen to her. Ever.

The flight from Algiers took a little over an hour on Aigle Azur, which was not nearly as sketchy as I thought it would be. It’s leaps and bounds better than Air Algerie, in case anyone’s keeping track. Once I arrived, I realized how truly amazing it is that two places separated by a little strip of sea and an hour plane ride can be so different. Marseille and Algiers are very similar in theory; they’re both port cities on the same body of water, they both have similar-ish climates (although it is definitely fall in Marseille and it still feels like summer in Algiers right now), and they both even have fancy cathedrals that face each other across the water on opposing hills. But infrastructure and a desire to attract tourists (Marseille), give the place a completely different atmosphere than Algiers, where the priority of the government to maintain control outweighs pretty much anything else. Turns out if your country has enough oil, tourism is significantly less of a concern!

ANYWAY, after a VERY expensive cab ride to downtown Marseille, which I opted for instead of waiting an hour for the bus at 10:30 at night, I made it to my wifi-equipped hotel where I will spend what will hopefully be a restful 9 hours before getting on a train to Nice in the morning.

For my first actual vacation since last Christmas, we’re off to a good start!

1,900 lbs of stuff I haven’t seen in almost a year and a half! Now where to put it all…

Only one more shipment to go!