Epilogue.

I'm back. I can tell because the jackhammer outside my window started at exactly 8 am and has been going since. (Joke's on him - jet lag had me up at 6:30.)

I spent my last day in France at the Bristol airport, not feeling very well and worse with each announced delay. I had planned to spend that day shopping in Antibes and having coffee with Jacqueline. I straggled off the bus in the town center just as the shops were closing up. So, no French clothes for me, no French gifts for you.

The upshot? I still like France. I still think I'd like to live there someday. (Jane and I agreed it would be lovely to retire around there, but neither of us was sure what we'd do in the intervening thirty years.) I still seem to speak some French, though horribly corrupted by Japanese. Like I left them sitting next to each other in the basement and the Japanese leaked all over the French and got soaked in.

The trip partially fulfilled last year's vow of never spending another winter in NYC.
It raised my standards for cheese, pastry, bread, and men.
I'm no closer to a suitable job. I have the seed of an idea for a book, though I'm not sure I'm the person to write it.
I made some nice friends who I would be thrilled (and not surprised) to see again.
I made it to four countries (two for a day each only) and managed not to lose my passport, camera, or credit cards - that almost qualifies alone as a successful trip.

I wanted to buy perfume, but my nose was too stuffed to make a good choice. I did not meet a millionaire yacht owner. Despite gazing at it every day, I did not swim in the Mediterranean. I didn't get to spend enough time with Jacqueline. I wish I'd spent a little more time studying French.

I might just have to go back.

Thanks for reading.

Spent the day in Bristol seeing the sights in the city - the cathedral, Cabot's tower, H&M. Watched part Two of an interesting trilogy called Trilogy at a yuppie cinema/bar. Monday was two beautiful ruins in sunny Wales (which Jim tried to convince me is a whole different country): a damn solid castle built hanging over a river and a delicate abbey in a valley. Followed by a two-scone cream tea. Homemade roast pork for dinner and good british telly for dessert.
Back to Antibes tomorrow, Wed, for a final 18 hours or so, then on to NYC Thursday.

Blimey! I'm in Blighty! National arboretum yesterday, Wales today, it's all happening now!

20:00 4 March 2004 Thursday evening
I showed this head cold who’s boss. Just because I woke up feeling hit by a truck, just because every time I sit I want to never stand again, does that mean I will not go to Monte Carlo? No, sir. It might mean that I make every small decision wrong – drop five euros at the tiny casino at the Hotel Monte Carlo instead of at the beautiful game room of Hotel de Paris, that I walk back through a parking garage underpass instead of along a seaside terrace, that I wait for the rush hour train at the door that doesn’t open while the car fills. That I drop my breakfast potato and ham quiche face-down on the train platform. And sit down facing backwards because I can’t remember which direction the train that just pulled into the station seconds earlier was going. I walked down streets that sounded picturesque and probably of the vielle ville: rue des oliviers, rue des orangeres, but they were ugly deserted little alleys in a housing development, really, with the few shops’ gates pulled down.
But it’s ok. I went. I had a coffee at the Café de Paris, facing the circly thing that grand prix cars go around at some point. The beginning? The end? The middle? Who knows. My ears remained clogged, keeping me in that underwater realm where the sound of the sea and the highway blend into one. I saw one of Alain Ducasse’s famous restaurants with a truffle menu where the dishes start at 60-euro appetizers and go up to three hundred for 50 grams of caviar. The lobby of the Hotel de Paris was plush, with carved marble turtle dragons on the ceiling and flowery blue carpet and mahogany everywhere. I followed signs for the Bains Thermins (?) just to see, and ended up walking down a low corridor that was polished pale marble and chrome on all four faces. It felt like the jetway to a spaceship. A lot of long empty spaces like this, the underpass (much darker) and from there an empty green and pink marble corridor to get to an elevator that went back up above ground.
The city is a mix of old and seventies, warped wooden shutters near curly cast iron, and concrete slabs with canvas awnings. And very, very steep, with public elevators and escalators in a few places to get from one street level to the next. A constant stream of people on motorbikes, big ones and scooters.
You had to pay 10 euros to walk inside the hotel monte carlo so I didn’t. My waiter’s name at the café outside was Sebastien, according to the receipt. I tried to get a croissant but he said they are only for the morning. I couldn’t find the old town.
I did walk through the Japanese gardens, pretty, and the first I’ve seen with a manicured olive tree at the entrance.
Third (and final) attempt at going to Italy today, the end of the train line goes just over the border to Vintimiglia.

Also, some from St. Paul de Vence with Jane and I am now out the door for Monaco.

The new pictures, Walk Through Antibes: piles of them, and they're meant to just be flipped through quickly on the slideshow option. No single one is particularly for looking at, or necessarily in focus, thought it would be fun to walk along for fifteen minutes and snap here and there. Hopefully they give some sense of what it's like to pop down the street here late on a sunny Wednesday morning in early March, that's the only idea. Allons-y?

Tuesday, I dropped my laundry off with the old lady at the laverie down the street. No need to come up with any words, really, I held the bag out and started to try to formulate a sentence and she took it and said ok, wash and dry? Done.
Jane and I went to St. Paul de Vence, another old village perched on a mountain, but more inland. I didn't know tropical plants could grow so high? Oranges, aloe, palm? I don't understand it. A lot of galleries with some shockingly tacky art. A lot of clown-themed work, and quite a few artists seem to be working in the classical medium of sliced up violins. Beautiful golden late-afternoon mountain vistas, we had coffee and a warm nutella and almond crepe on a terrace looking out. It was the first place I've seen here with Japanese on all the signs. Must have made it into the Arukikata guidebook. It's the place I was supposed to go with David, who was never heard from again after dinner in Cannes with the Finns. So glad it was with Jane!
She made delicious thai curry from scratch, then we went to see Mona Lisa Smile - they show a movie in the V.O (non-dubbed) version Tuesday evenings. Headed home around ten, then popped into Xtreme for a quick drink before bed. Turned out to be long before bed - there was a raucous crew of military police divers (I'm slightly unclear on it still too), and one of them turned out to be the naked guy from Golden Gate last Friday, and one was someone else I'd talked to there, and they brought me along to a nightclub in Cannes that they were on their way to. Stephane, who goes by Hugo, speaks english quite well and the rest of them were very good-natured, and they had Outkast in the car's CD player, so we all had a good time. It ended with four of them in the ocean. And no, it is not remotely warm enough for that. Some girls from Cannes who'd joined us by then stood on the beach with me and said Zey are crazy buoys. Indeed. May be photos to come...

19:30 1 March 2004
Vast beauty. First sunny day in about a week, perfect for our trip to Eze. Washed down two Tylenol colds with Ricora instant coffee/chicory and the last drops of milk and met Jane at the Cybercafe. Chilly, but crisp and blue. We drove about half an hour north and up, I think dipping in and out of Monaco. Eze has a castle at the tip of a mountain and little winding rocky roads of touristy art shops leading up to it. Stunning views of the sea and the sandy mountain face, as well as bright red and pale orange villas slapped across it. It was quiet and almost empty the short walk up to the top where there is a wide painted ceramic tile pointing out surrounding sights – the island of Corsica, Nice – in a steeply terraced cactus garden. What medieval castle didn’t have a cactus garden? There were stubbly workers with ladders doing refurbishing all over – there were a few three and four star hotels and restaurants tucked into the mountain top that had signs saying they opened for the season in the next few weeks – one today, a few on April first. One had photos of the different posh rooms – Medieval, Romantic, Panoramic.
There were beautiful terraces we could see from above with curving ornamented walls and manicured lawns, but we couldn’t tell how you would get to them, if they were the yards of homes or hotels somehow tucked into the mountain below. Definitely looked like a movie setting, or a perfume commercial.
We looked down on a cemetery behind the church from the overlook, and Jane said she hadn’t been before, even though Eze is a standard stop on her tour of the area when friends come to visit. (I bet friends come to visit a lot when you live here.[I guess I’m exhibit A.]) A lot of the graves were relatively recent, from the nineties, and one was conspicuously waiting for Jeanne Floch, 1916 - . A lot of them, mostly vaults above ground, had glass-covered oval photographs of the dead mounted on garish ceramic frames. They were in French, and a few in English, but some of the names looked Italian. It was a nice view of the mountains (not the sea), and since it was freezing then in the shade, probably cool in summer. Not a bad place to be buried. The church was smooth square yellow stucco outside, and much fancier, smaller, and darker inside than it looked like it would be, with oil paintings and curly gilt. I put a euro into a slot in the wall and lit a votive in blue glass in front of a painting of St. Rita, who was married against her will to a brutal husband. Jesus gave her a thorn prick on her forehead, which was somehow a positive thing in her miserable life, and she struggled on bravely. Why didn’t he give her husband a heart attack while he was doling out maladies? She was the only saint with no candles lit and I wanted to leave something up there. I think they might have put her in a draft.
The outdoor café on the way back down was packed with picture snapping Italians, could imagine the entire place overrun with tourists and very hot and not fun at all in the summer. We were both really hungry and headed on to Ville Franche for lunch. As we pulled onto the car-commercial cliffside highway, Lovely Day came on the radio. Indeed! It wasn’t far, back south and toward the sea. It is the home of an annual naval flower battle, and Jane said Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was filmed there. We walked between a tall sandstone wall and a harbor a little ways and passed a row of very expensive restaurants with a few fur-clad ladies at tables just across the cobblestone road from the water. Went down a little further to a sunflower-yellow place called Carpaccio that looked just as nice, but was full of people and more reasonable. Slightly. We had an amazing long lunch of fish, in bright sunshine, and wine, with a few sailboats and a lot of dinghies bobbing nearby in incredibly clear water. And nougat glace in raspberry sauce for dessert. The people next to us had big steamers of mussels – I wish I liked them, since they seem to be the go here. When the waiter collected their piles of shells he said, I think, that it’s one food where you end up with more when you’re finished than when you started. I thought he seemed friendly. But then he made fun of Jane to the other waiter when she said Une the. Instead of un the. I bet lots of visitors just say Hey, I’ll have a tea. She tried. She has understandably very mixed feelings about going back to England next month after living here. She misses friends and more substantial work, but the life here is hard to argue against. She’s really cool.
We walked over to the beach, where a good handful of people were lying fully dressed on blankets and newspapers. A few kids had their shoes and socks off and were running in the gentle wake on the wet pebbles, and one Mediterranean man was soaking up the rays with nothing to bar the cold wind but a speedo.
We headed back through Nice, into bad traffic and storm clouds. We were planning on going up to St. Paul de Vence, but it was a little late and cloudy and Jane had an appointment at seven. We spent about an hour at Carrefour instead. It was drizzling when we parked. It’s amazing how fast and completely the weather changes. Lots of whole families there, a surprising number of men of all ages grocery shopping. There’s a huge produce section where the origins of all the fruits and vegetables are marked on chalkboards above them with the price. You have to put what you want in plastic bags and get it all weighed and price-stickered by a woman who perches in the middle of the two broad aisles behind a crescent of digital scales, printing out stickers and slapping them on in all directions like a club dj as people gather and toss their produce on. Even the grocery store was fun – we had a really good day, and might go to St. Paul tomorrow.
We drove past the Antiboulenc, and the French for Etrangers group was just ending. I felt sorry I’d missed it, and dropped my groceries on the kitchen counter and ran back out to see if I could catch anyone to tell them I’d wanted to go but had been away for the day. They were all gone by then. I returned Shakespeare and got two more videos from the library.

Sunday, 29 Feb Midnight

I went back to Lavoie today to take a picture of the face in light. When I looked over from the street, I couldn’t believe what I saw – three faces clear as day! Seb had said there were others, but we couldn't find them head on in the dark. From a different angle, in the sun, they jumped out from far back. It was so beautiful and strange, to think they had been there and I hadn’t seen them at all, and wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been looking. Some people passed by and looked at me strangely while I was photographing the stone wall.

I have the radio on some French talk station. I have no idea what they're talking about. It's a man and a woman and they sound engaged but not impassioned. The radio is on the floor and nothing is moving, but the station just started retuning itself, to someone who's not Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah.

try this photos?