Author Archives: notinnyc

Our final day in France and we finally made it to the old town section of the city. As I’ve previously mentioned, our apartment was a bit far from the center of town and even further from the old town, which, combined with our day trips along the coast, meant we didn’t make it down there until our final day. Which was fine; it is small enough that a half day was sufficient for us to get our fill of the tiny, rabbit warren-style streets.

I actually got a preview of the area alone in the morning, while my friend slept in. I walked downtown, intending to grab a couple of croissants and pains au chocolat and head back to the apartment, but decided to keep walking over to the old part of town first. I got a bit lost among the streets (no map, since I was just going to walk to the boulangerie), but ultimately I found the water, which meant I knew where I was again!

I ultimately did make it to the bakery, after getting slightly damp as the sky started spitting rain, and got back to the apartment with little ado.

A little while later, full of apple-stuffed croissants, both of us left the apartment and made our way back down the hill to the old town. The rain had stopped by this point, much to our delight. So we took advantage of an afternoon with no specific plan and moseyed around the streets, stopping to relax on the stoney Nice beach.

Our energy restored, we returned to explore more of the vieille ville. Somehow our wanderings took us through this square about 4 times – all roads seemed to ultimately lead to it:

It’s a pretty square, I suppose. Although the kneeling guys on the poles are a little strange. Left me wondering what the story was behind it. Our guidebook did not shed any light on the situation.

We did finally tire of wandering around and ducking in and out of stores that ranged from cute to tacky. So it became time for another cocktail. We wanted to visit the bar of the swanky Hotel Negresco. Sadly, when we arrived, the door was closed and a sign indicated that only hotel guests were allowed in. Sad times.

But not that sad because there was another hotel bar that welcomed us just down the Promenade des Anglais. Kir Royal and nibbles were had and enjoyed.

Happy ending after all.

Another day trip from Nice took us the opposite direction from Monaco to a little town called Cannes. Yep, the one with the festival. Now, I had been there 10 years ago for the film festival, which was a very different experience than going there at a time when screaming fans and fancy movie stars are kept to a minimum.

This trip started with us getting completely turned around on the way from the train station to the port. We looked at a map, evaluated where we thought we were, and marched confidently off into the complete opposite direction from our intended destination. Which meant we missed the boat we had hoped to take at noon to Ile St. Margeurite, a small island off the coast of Cannes. The next boat wasn’t until 2, so we had to kill a couple of hours roaming around Cannes. Tough life.

We wandered around and found a very cute little place to grab a panini and salad with a very sweet old lady who was very concerned that my friend did not eat her tomatoes, then was very sympathetic to find out about her tomato allergy.

After lunch, it was back to the port and aboard the boat to Ile St. Marguerite.

View of Ile St. Marguerite

Looking back at Cannes from the boat to Ile St. Marguerite

Ile St. Marguerite is the site of a really old fort/prison complex where the Man in the Iron Mask was locked up for a while, as well as a bunch of Protestant priests when the Catholic French king wasn’t wild about having them around in the late 1600s. Today the fort/prison area is a museum and the rest of the island is a forested nature preserve-type thing with some nice views.

After a look around and a tour of the fort/prison, where we learned that no one still knows who the man in the iron mask was, and realized that neither of us had either read the book or seen the movie and therefore didn’t even know the fictional version, we headed back to Cannes, took a stroll past the Palais des Festivals, and hopped a train home to Nice.

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.

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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!

I kicked off my 20s with friends, food and booze in the south of France. I finished them off with friends, food and booze just across the water in Algeria, with an almost-full moon rising over the water. Life’s not too bad, folks!

It’s always weird to know what to do for my birthday, especially when I’m in a new place with new people. So I sent out an email to a handful of fun people (OK, maybe a couple of handfuls of people), suggesting a low-key evening of drinks on my balcony.

Then I find out that it’s ALSO the birthday of the other American who lives in my building, and his friend was going to throw him a small party too. So obviously the only logical conclusion is to combine our “small” parties and create one big party! Mission accomplished. The punch was flowing, which apparently led to a dance-off on the landing (I missed this, sadly, while I was entertaining guests outside). Turns out when people have a dance-off without putting their cups of punch down, you end up with a really sticky floor.

Despite the stickiness, it was a lovely evening, with only minimal consequences the next morning. 🙂 Here’s to hoping for the same enthusiasm, friends, and frivolity when “the big 4-0” rolls around. (Or “the big 3-7” or “the big 3-3”)!

Concluding thought: milestone birthdays are what you want them to be. For me, it’s not about the number, but rather about my degree of satisfaction in life at the time “the big X-X” is reached. If I’m feeling negative about my life in general around the time of a birthday, then the fact that I’m getting older seems like something to be concerned about. If I’m relatively content with the trajectory I’m on, getting older just doesn’t matter. 28, for example, was eh. The job was fine, but completely lacked any forward momentum, and I found out the day before my birthday that I didn’t get invited to my second crack at the Foreign Service Oral Assessment. So that made 28 kinda blech.

BUT, cut to 5 months later, I get an offer from my FIRST crack at the Foreign Service test, forward momentum skyrockets, and suddenly 28 doesn’t seem so old.

2 years later, and I’m still riding high on the Foreign Service thing, which promises a plethora of options and too many potential career trajectories to count. Throw in a crowd of good people, lots of love from back home, and “the big 3-0” is pretty great!

Today was a good day. Not only did I learn I’ll be going on several consular outreach trips to various cities around Algeria over the next few months, but I had two very exciting deliveries today!

The first I was expecting – there is a guy here in Algiers who has made quite the business for himself delivering alcohol to expats. I placed my first order and it was delivered today. Basically what happens is you order wine/beer/liquor from a list he sends out and it appears at your door, usually within 24 hours. Very convenient and not actually all that expensive in the grand scheme of things. The only bummer was that I managed to drop a bottle of wine on my dining room floor as I was putting the bottles away. It looked like I murdered someone. Fortunately it’s a tile floor so it was, relatively speaking, easy(ish) to clean up.

On to the second delivery! At about 9:30 this morning I got a notification that my UAB (unaccompanied air baggage) had been released from customs and was ready to appear at my house! Hooray! The majority of my stuff is still on its way/in customs limbo, BUT for today I’m happy. And so are my Harrods Christmas bears, who were finally released from their cardboard box prison of the last 2.5 months:

Another huge bonus of receiving my UAB is that I put several framed photos in there – which makes my apartment less impersonal, which is awesome. I was particularly amused by this blast from the past, which I did NOT remember having in my UAB and which, actually, brings the title of this post full circle: