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Published: October 10th 2005
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Opening Band
A crazy French band who was a mix of punk and the 1950s.... I have so much to update you on that I am going to divide it into three blogs so that way if you have time to read one you know where to go back to when you have time again. Please forgive me if they are a bit long or disjoint, or even full of errors, fatigue has settled in but I want to share my adventures with you all! Enjoy!
A week ago on Wednesday a friend of Winnie’s invited her to come see her band play here in Pairs and set aside two tickets so off we went to explore that scene. It is really amazing to get to say: “there are two tickets under this name, I’m a friend of the drummer,” so cool. The venue was really fun and the concert was not my kind of music but was fun nonetheless.
It was sad to finish my Intensive Language Program on Friday because I loved my teacher so much. She was such a great help while still being very French and intimidating. Oh well, I can hope for more of the same in my new classes which start on Monday.
Now for our Southern
Race in front of Theole
As I said, it was hard to take a good photo at that speed France Adventure!
Saturday morning came a bit too early but was not too bad as we hauled our stuff to the metro and boarded our train. The train is really fun! I feared that I had a skewed romantic view of the train and was going to in fact become impatient, but I loved seeing the countryside roll by and we arrived in Cannes in five short hours. Winnie’s father’s cousin met us at the train station and off we went to Theole-sur-mer, a ten-minute drive outside of Cannes. Their house is perched high up on a hill overlooking the bay and we had a room to ourselves! The woman Cindy was raised in Colorado and met her husband Alain when she decided to crew for his sailboat off the coast of Africa! She went to CU and studied Art History, are you catching the similarities?! They have two kids who went to international schools and are fluent in English, which is what they speak with their mom. The oldest is my age and is in her third year of law school in Nice so we stayed in her room.
After a quick lunch we headed off to their
motorboat, which is moored in the bay their house overlooks. It was a beautiful day and it was nice to get some fresh air after our trip, but the most impressive part of our boat ride was there was a sailing regatta in Cannes that day! They are making their way along the southern coast of France and happened to be out the day we arrived! There were a lot of antique boats and sloops with great rigging, needless to say I was in heaven! It was tough to get a decent picture of this event because the French like speed, in their cars and on the water. The boat was so light and the water so choppy that most of my pictures are of the sky or the sea and not really of the boats, alas.
We ate almost every night with them around their dinner table, which was really a treat. The food was fresh and well prepared and it was fun to help in the kitchen and then have family conversation at the table. We were very well fed and they were so kind and interested that the conversation flowed very well.
Sunday morning we
View from the terrace
I'd be relaxed too if this was what I woke up to daily! awoke to yummy coffee and amazing nut bread and then headed out with Cindy and Alain for a hike in the hills around the bay. It was a beautiful day and we were able to watch the boats in the race leave Cannes on their way to St. Tropez for more races. It was really cathartic and also nice to get to move our legs after sitting for all of Saturday. For lunch Cindy created a wonderful lunch of pesto pasta, salad and wine-quite a lunch and all out on their terrace with a view! Then Winnie and I then walked from their house to the beach, about 10 or 15 min. on the way (it is downhill) and 20 or so on the way back. We got to go swimming in the Mediterranean! How cool is that?! We didn’t hang out more than an hour or so because the day was very windy and we were getting natural exfoliation from the blowing sand. Ouch.
Monday Winnie and I set out solo on the train to a little town called Antibes, which is home to a Picasso museum and is mainly a port town. As with all things this
Hike
Winnie and our host Alain on our hike was a learning trip and we arrived to the Picasso museum and it was closed, both our tour books addressed this but did we bother to read the fine print? So we wandered about a bit until our toes started to freeze in the cold rainy day. We also did not dress well for the weather and the bathing suit and towel in my backpack seemed a bit uncalled for since I really needed socks and mittens! We did enjoy the small windy roads and red tiled roofs and enjoyed a few hours of reading in a café as we waited out the storm. We thought maybe a trip to Monaco would be in order since we were not able to enjoy Antibes so we got back on the train and went a bit further to the principality of Monaco. We had three hours before our return train left so we headed up first to the old part of Monaco where we saw the palace, the view, and Grace Kelly’s grave. The area was horrendously tacky and touristy and we did not really enjoy our stay. We did walk around a bit and found a garden of sorts which overlooked
Antibes
A stormy day, why did I wear a tanktop and flipflops?! the casino there which was made by the architect who made the Paris opera house, but I have no interest in ever going back to Monaco.
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