Nom d'un chien!

The trip to the French Riviera was my first Shannon/Annaless trip, but I was in good company with Adham and Annelise. It all came together in one night. And it was the least stressful one I’d organized. This trip came at a critical time for me. I was in a rut; I hadn’t seen the sun in two weeks and language classes, my purpose for being there, had concluded among other things. I had a bad case of cabin fever.

Our trek to Nice took us along the southern border of France, running parallel to the foothills of the Pyrénées. Not even a rainy, overcast day can take any of the grandeur away from the mountains. Wisps of clouds and fog tried to smother the Pyrénées, but they would not be denied. The tops of the mountains were snow-covered and at their highest point, the white blended into the clouds and I could not find their peaks. There were so many points where I wanted the train to stop, because the views deserved much more than a two-second glance. The train’s speed rendered our cameras useless, too.

A child on a tricycle pedaled by our cart. I think we fascinated him more than he fascinated us, because he stayed for five or so minutes before he continued on his merry way.

As soon as we left Toulouse, the weather changed. Everything was so green. My head was on a constant pivot; there was so much to see outside the window on either side of the train. Vineyards and windmills stretched all the way to the mountains. Eventually we were along the Mediterranean coastline and apparently the sun had been hiding here for the last two weeks. The last leg of the train ride (from Marseille to Nice) had us cutting through the Alps in long and winding tunnels. It was strangely beautiful dangling over cliffs looking down into deep blue of the Mediterranean Sea. I was so grateful that we didn’t take two night trains on this trip.

We made it to Nice around 7:30 that night. After dealing with a missing reservation at the front desk of our hotel, we went out in search of food. A woman that looked very similar to Giant Portable Music Box Lady from Bordeaux (minus the giant portable music box) stood outside the restaurant we had chosen to eat at and sang a capella, horribly. Her dancing skills weren’t redeeming, either. After a meal of Carbonara and Riesling wine at this Italian tavern, we made a failed attempt to locate alcohol. So we returned to the hotel to retrieve a bottle of Sidi Brahim, a unique Algerian wine introduced to us by Annelise’s crazy host father, Louis. We then made friends with a nearby bartender since we were without a corkscrew. It was the first of many encounters with our friend from the bar down the street.

We took our wine to the rocky beaches of Nice, and skipped rocks over the waves, splashed with silver light from the moon. As we left for nightlife on the promenade, I tripped on a bum and his dogs that were sleeping at the base of the steps. Scared the hell out of me. Them too, probably.

We strolled into Nice’s finest casino only to ask for Nice’s finest bar. We were directed to “bar Jean Wentz.” We were given a general direction but were told to ask other locals for its specific location. And we did that. Over and over again. No one had ever heard of a “bar Jean Wentz.” Hopeless, we settled on a bottle of rum at the liquor store. We started to head back to the hotel, but we noticed a herd of people standing outside of a bar called “bar John Wayne.” Hmmm. Well, “bar Jean Wentz” was too crowded for us anyways, but we decided to head inside to the bar next door. We bought a four euro twenty ounce bottle of coke and slipped our rum in. And that’s when we met Ikam, a friendly local who said he would take us to Monaco on Saturday. The hip-hop cliché came true; we did, in fact, party till six in tha mornin’. Afterwards, we restlessly wandered around the beach, lost in engaging conversation. We learned a lot about each other, and ourselves, that night.

We obviously got a late start the next day. Adham had a brilliant idea to rent scooters to ride to Monaco. Unfortunately, they were all lent out for the day. So we walked over to the gare and bought tickets to Cannes for the day. We had two minutes before departure, so we ran to the platform and jumped on the train as the doors closed behind us.

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