Grasse - Never be afraid to find an adventure

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We woke up pondering where our travels should take us today. We had a lovely time in Antibes by the sea and a challenging time driving to Ventimiglia, we thought today would be a great day to visit Cannes the next town West of Antibes. Yes Cannes, home of the international film festival in June. It's another town by the sea and the weather is still hot and very humid so off shore breezes won out.

We've become fond of traveling by the local train. We hike down to the Villefranche-sur-Mer Gare, buy our tickets and hop on. While my French in general suffers from lack of proper accent plus the fact that I only know very bare basic words, one area I do exceed in is ordering red wine from the St Emilion region AND buying train tickets. I got my start in train ticket lingo from all our trips to Paris. We are the basic metro rats and I became happily proficient in sauntering up to the Station Agent behind the glass and asking for a day pass metro tickets without ever uttering a word in English. "Bon jour, sil vous plait Je voudrais deux billets pour le métro pour toute la jour, merci a vous!" (Good day, please I would like 2 tickets for the metro for the whole day, Thank you!) (peacock feathers spreading proudly here....) That's right, just 24 trips to France and I have that sentence DOWN!

Today I saunter up to the train Station Agent and ask (in French) for 2 tickets to Cannes with return tickets please. He looks at me and says in English "it's much cheaper to get a day pass....then he tells me the total. (The local train runs from Ventimillia, Italy to Grasse, France and like the metro you go to the appropriate platform traveling in the direction of whatever the end of the line is.) I had no idea you could get a day pass for a train. All my French is now out the window and I must revert to my native tongue, "You mean we can get off and on this train all day anywhere we want on this line?" "Oui" he answered. I couldn't believe with all my metro experience that it never occurred to me to ask for an all day pass. Well live and learn.

I just love sitting by the train window staring at the seashore as we chug along. The sky is azure blue and dotted with a few lazy clouds, umbrellas in beautiful pastel colors are crowded together along the sandy beaches looking like those dot candies we used to buy on a strip of paper. Skimpy suited sunbathers (Yikes speedos for men of all sizes) laying on towels or playing in the sea can be seen for miles. There is so much to look at, food kiosks selling ice creams, pizzas, burgers and salads, lovely summer homes, and of course the yachts cruising along deciding where they might want to drop anchor on this hot August Summer day. It is mesmerizing and peaceful. I will never take this view for granted.

I turn my attention to Tom and say "You know we were just at the beach the other day. We can actually take this train up in the hills to Grasse if we want."

Just like that we decide to stay on the train and head to Grasse an inland Town/City, why not?

Here we are again in a new place, no guide book no map and really no idea what this town has to offer. The only thing about Grasse that we are sure of was that it sits just below Mougins where Picasso lived for a while (we have been there several times looking down at Grasse) and it is also the world capital for perfumes. People come here from all over the world to mix their own concoction of various scents and come up with the perfect unique fragrance one can truly call their own. The biggest company here in France is called Fragonard. There's even a Fragonard museum in Grasse, I didn't go in but assume it is full of historical perfume bottles and maybe famous people like Coco Channel memorabilia as she created Channel #5 right here.

The train pulls into the Grasse station, Tom and I emerge and look around. Hmmmmm I guess we sort of forgot Grasse wasn't a seaside community. The train station is in a, how can I put it, very gritty part of town, lots of dilapidated buildings scribbled with graffiti. We felt a little lost and weren't sure in which direction we should walk as there were no signs indicating where the "Vielle Ville" was. We looked around like lost puppies while everyone else that got off the train were either picked up by someone or got on a bus. There was a small group looking like they were at a taxi stand but there weren't any taxis. I walked back into the station and asked the agent where "Center ville" (the town center) was. She pointed straight up the mountain, "and how can we get there" I asked. Then she pointed straight ahead and said "autobus," which by the way had just left. So Plan B, Tom starts looking for an Uber. There were none around this podunk town. Plan C presented itself when Tom saw a phone number on the taxi sign and calls to order a taxi. They seemed a little confused at where the gare was but said they would be here in ten minutes anyway. We are now 25 minutes into our adventure which has yet to start. It is 20 minutes later when Plan D arrives......the bus going uphill (autobus) Tom is still hoping the taxi will come and is holding out until every passenger has boarded. We are next, Tom is looking in every direction for non-existent cab because he doesn't really care to go for a ride on a bus. I ask the driver if he goes to Center ville and in a cranky voice and hand gestures say oui, oui..........times up Tom reluctantly gets in the bus and we figure once we are in the center of town there will be a cab to bring us back to the station.

The roads here are no different than where we are staying. This full size bus began to take us around the hairpin turns and steep inclines to get to the center of town. Every time he stopped I hoped the trip was over and I kept asking if this was the center of town. He kept shaking his finger at me "no." I didn't know the area and thought he might forget to tell me as everyone else on this bus seem to know where they are going. People were looking at us probably wondering what alien spacecraft let these two loose into their community. I'm sure they were inwardly laughing at us Americans who had the nerve to board a bus without knowing where they were going. Up we climbed past important churches, parks, mansions and several perfume factories. Finally we were told to "get off" which we happily did.

While the area of Grasse is large and spread out the center of town is small and condensed. It was already the noon hour by the time we were in the center of town, unfazed by a few set backs we took off looking for lunch. We went down this beautiful staircase and ran right into the town square. It was already filled with locals and tourists alike. On one side of the square were a few outdoor restaurants. Normally you just sit down at these outdoor cafes, however, at the first restaurant we saw some tables but the host told us 45 minutes so my thought was that we should ask first. At the next restaurant I saw a very busy man and in my politest French sweetly asked if he might have a table for us. At first he shook his head no but then took pity on us and held up his hand to wait five minutes. Someone grabbed a table from indoors and walked it across the street. He put it down, then 3 other people came with chairs, a tablecloth, menus and water. It was awesome.

Our waitress was just a delight. She came right away and took our order. We were surprised because she was really busy. Service was a little slow but she was doing her best, she kept coming over saying "sorry" "sorry" I finally said "no sorry, you're doing a wonderful job. She was working so hard. She smiled and said "No my middle name "sorry" and we both burst into laughter. She was wonderful and a terrifically happy person she even said to me in her broken English "you/me we are zee same, we like be happy." then she started dancing in the square. Well what was I supposed to do??? Of course I joined her. Afterwards she smiled at Tom and told him he was "zen." Then she decided she really liked us and brought out some Limoncello shots and said "for all my sorrys" It was a great lunch and her friendly personality certainly made our day. We stood up I gave her a kiss on both cheeks and waved good-bye.

After lunch we strolled around the shopping area and I noticed there where pink umbrellas above our heads strung across the streets. When we first arrived I saw a few strung and thought it was cute. As we approached the center of the shopping are the umbrellas covered the entire street from end to end. It was really quite beautiful.

It was the usual hot and humid weather, we didn't feel like walking around too much so we headed to the main drag where the bus dropped us off. No taxis were there so we thought we'd just take a bus down the hill but we weren't sure where to catch the bus.

We saw these three policemen hanging out together in deep conversation and I asked them where we would to catch the bus down to the Gare (train station) so we could catch the next train to Villefranche-sur -Mer. They each gave me a different answer and then they proceeded to argue with each other about the directions. They were pointing fingers uphill and pointing fingers downhill. It was a rather lively repartee. We waited for them to work it out but they were so engrossed in their new conversation that I think they forgot we were standing there. One of them was trying to tell us where to catch a bus to Nice but he didn't think they were running today, sigh..............

Hot and exasperated at their confusion we said "Hey, can we just walk to the Gare from here?" "How do we do that?" They all stopped talking, looked over at me and repeated my question. "Walk to zee Gare?" "Oui" one said surprised, and then added "You can just walk downhill, it ees at zee bottom only two kilometers." All three were in agreement and proud of themselves for solving our problem.

Fine, great Merci for the help. so we walked, it was a long walk but it wasn't horrible and we just made the next train out. All in all another fine adventurous day in France for Tom and Roberta.

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