FAQs

How was your trip?

Great.

Really? You're hardly tan at all.

I know, I know. Right before I left, I read this big article in the New York Times about how very, very bad the sun is for you and how it instantly ages you twenty years and then you get wrinkles and cancer and die. Then my roommate, who was born in Costa Rica, finished it off by insisting that I wear sun block there at all times, especially between noon and three pm, when I should also stay inside, just to be safe. I was in fact in an open kayak for a few brilliant midday hours and resigned to getting cooked to a crisp despite layers of SPF 30, but I guess the stuff works.

You went during rainy season. How bad was the weather?

Not bad at all, considering. It started pouring just as the hostel shuttle started the 45 minute drive from the airport, and continued for a few hours. I thought I might have made a horrible mistake. It didn’t rain much again until the last day, halfway through a three-hour horseback ride, which was definitely a mistake. But that’s another story.

As we sometimes get a few warm days or weeks of “Indian summer” in the winter, they sometimes have “little summer,” a patch of nice weather during rainy season. It seems like I caught that.

Where did you stay?

In eight days, five hotels, from an $11 a night dorm room in a hostel near the volcano, to a gorgeous $70 dollar room with a hammock and an amazing view. It averaged to about 40 bucks a night. I could have gone much, much cheaper or infinitely more expensive. I liked how it worked out.

A hostel? Aren’t you getting a little old for that?

I planned to spend the first few nights in hostels just to save money, but traveling alone in a place where I don’t know anyone, I’d do it again for the sake of meeting people and exchanging advice. Over breakfast, some guy from Italy plopped down at the table next to me and a girl from Canada, and sketched in my notebook a little map showing the way to some free hot springs in La Fortuna, the next city I was visiting. I exchanged email addresses with a guy from Brooklyn who promised a report from the Caribbean coast, as I was still unsure if I should go there or not.

Why Costa Rica?

A few friends recommended it as a great spot, and a little reading suggested it was a relatively easy place to travel solo. Sounded like a good combination of interesting culture, active activities, and relaxing beach. Also, I’d never been to Latin America, and it seemed like a gentle introduction.

It also seemed like, and was, a nice compromise between a boring beach vacation and a hardcore backpacker journey.

Who were you traveling with?
Just me.

Really? Weren’t you lonely?

Hardly at all. I found myself wishing for a little more solitude more times than for more company. The only thing I worried would be quite lonely was meals, especially dinner. In eight nights, I ended up eating alone… once. And a couple from Idaho invited me to join them halfway through. Once people realized that I was traveling alone, they were quick to invite me to join in for dinner, drinks, and even a zip line tour.

So why were you by yourself, anyway?

It wasn’t my first choice. I’d been hoping for a long time for a romantic getaway, and had put off taking a vacation for at least a year, because I thought it would be too depressing to travel alone when what I wanted was to be with somebody. But after a while, I thought it would be even more depressing not to travel because of that. Friends who would have been fun to go with couldn’t coordinate schedules with my typical last minute (lack of) planning.

What were the other tourists like?

The people I ran across were a very nice crowd. Almost all Americans – I saw one French couple, one Dutch, and a Japanese girl. Quite a few honeymooners. Most probably between 25 and 35, and - I may be projecting – looking for a vacation that was culturally interesting but not a constant challenge. People were quick to strike up conversations about where they’d been and what they were doing.

Were there many ex-pats?

A few. The retired couple from Idaho, who had sold everything and moved there to buy a restaurant and a house. A gay couple who’d lost their stuff when the roof blew off their house in New Orleans. They had fixed the house, tossed the wrecked contents, and rented the place out while they live by the beach for a year. A friend of a friend from Spain who’s working at a development NGO because his girlfriend’s job moved them there. Lots of Spaniards and an Irish woman living in San Jose.

Will you keep in touch with people you met there?

I hope a few. Especially Kevin and Kurt, and the exchange student Lindsay I met on the plane on the way back. I can’t find the paper with the email addresses of the girls from California I spent a long day with, hoping it turns up. Also Jo, who lives in NY.

How was the food? Did you get sick?

The food was mostly salty and simple, but good. I wonder how long it would take to get bored, but for one week I liked the predictability of rice plus beans plus something else – scrambled eggs at breakfast; chicken, beef or fish later. I poured Lizano salsa on everything, and asked for it if it wasn’t on the table – it was always within the waiter’s reach, in small bottles or poured from a white five-gallon jug into pretty dispensers. Long slices of fried plantains were and wedges of avocado were nice on the side, and the mangos and pineapple were delicious. I see why my roommate says she doesn’t even bother eating mangos outside of Costa Rica – they were as sweet and tender as canned peaches, like a different fruit from the hard cut pieces you get here sometimes. I didn’t crave or miss other sweets at all, though I suddenly wanted one of everything when I wandered into an Au Bon Pain back in New York.

No digestive distress whatsoever, since you asked.

How did you get around?

By tourist shuttle. Interbus has a very easy system. For somewhere around thirty bucks, minibuses with TURISMO stickers on the back would pick you up at any hotel in just about any town that had one, and take you directly to any other. It seemed like the ride between any two points was about four hours. On one bus, there was just one other couple on my route, and once I was the only person. Both times I sat in the front seat and chatted with the driver about the country in general and what we were passing. (One, who had a seven ball keychain, explained a pool game to me that I’d never heard of called fifteens.)

I did the last leg back by small plane, I think it was about fifty dollars and 25 minutes to get back to the capital from Quepos, my last destination.

If you had a lot more time and patience than money, public buses go everywhere for almost no money – fares from a quarter to six dollars, though you don’t get the door to door service, and lots of stops make the trips take much longer.

And if your feet never touch the ground, you could charter a private driver or even flight to go almost anywhere, at your convenience.

How about the packing. Did you bring too much, too little?

Just about right. I brought one Gravis backpack with lots of pockets, which I bought the day before I left when I tore up the apartment and realized that mine is MIA.

Did you bring stuff you didn’t need?

I never unfolded the longsleeve button down, only used my fancy new raincoat once, and wore only one of the three pairs of socks, on the airplane.

What were you glad you had, that you weren’t sure you’d need?

Mosquito bite itch stick, ginger candies, travel alarm clock (though I woke up at six almost every day without it), a few plastic bags to wrap around my camera and cell phone, face wipes, sarong.

What should you have brought, but didn’t?

I could have used one more t-shirt. I ended up wearing one a time or two past its freshness date. I forgot a hair rubber band, and really should have brought a nail file. I bought bug spray at the grocery store there, as planned.

Back it up – you got up at six every day?

Yep. The time difference, two hours back, was on my side, but it also got dark by six every night, and light by five am. I was pretty active every day between doing stuff and walking up and down steep hills, and mostly fell asleep by eleven, with almost no drinking. I woke up ready to get up every day, and hope that carries through into post-vacation life. Though the time difference and 31 years of bad sleep habits, are stacked against me.

Did your camera hold up ok?

Yes, but I think it’s on its way out. It got very hot with the display window on, and wouldn’t delete. The battery light seemed to start flashing earlier each day, but I did manage to remember to take the charger along each time I moved hotels, to charge the battery each night, and then to put the battery in the camera, etc. The memory card, 1 Gig, held up. I didn’t drop it into any rivers or swimming pools, as two friends there did. There’s a lot that can go wrong, but none of it did.

Are you happy with the pictures?

I was shy about taking them at first, so there are things I would have liked to include, like the sheets of rain we kicked up on the highway from the airport, and the driver with his nickname – Marito - spelled out in letter beads hanging from his rear view mirror, and the people I met the first night in San Jose. And the wide stone gutters running thick with fallen mangos along the side of the road near Manuel Antonio. I also wish the metering was better. The pictures only seemed to come out good in bright, even daylight.

What was that one song that you heard over and over? Every vacation seems to have one.

None, actually. Daddy Yankee, who had just played in Costa Rica, was on the radio when we first got in the pickup truck from the airport. I heard Sean Paul, Temperature, once or twice. Lots of forgotten American soft rock hits of the eighties. There was a lot of reggaeton, which has been popular there for years, but no one song stood out. After hearing it ten million times at home, I kept waiting to hear Shakira’s song. But not once.

On the way to the last little airplane to San Jose, I heard a Spanish version of How Deep is Your Love? Which I found kind of funny and sweet.

What did you enjoy most?

In no order: The volcano, sea kayaking, Baldi hotsprings, the drives. Climbing the waterfall. The dog who befriended me at the hotel in Santa Elena.

Least?

Horseback riding, hands down. Ouch.

What would you have done differently?

That’s a tough one. Because who knows what else would have gone differently if something were changed? It would have saved a little worry to know where I was staying each night, but it also would have cut out the flexibility I was glad to have. It’s so hard to pick something just out of a book, and even with the website. And if I’d done that, maybe I wouldn't have met Kevin and Kurt and gone sea kayaking, etc.

I could have gotten a later flight to San Jose and had one more morning on the beach instead of an afternoon in the airport. But the little planes get canceled a lot, and I didn’t want to risk missing my flight back home.

What didn’t you get to do that you wanted to?

White water rafting was the only big thing. I tried to join an afternoon outing, but they said they needed a minimum of two. I asked around on the beach to see if anyone wanted to go – people were really friendly about it and said they’d be into it the next day, but no one was ready to head out then.

I also never did a night hike, which is supposed to be neat. My feet and I were usually pretty tired by evening, though.

How was the nightlife?

Couldn’t say. The only nights I went out were to a party at someone’s home in San Jose, and to gay night with Frank and Michael at a restaurant that pulls down its shutters and pumps up the Madonna and Erasure for a local crowd of pretty young boy-things. The other tourists I met all said they were crashing out really early, too.

What animals did you see?

A bat buzzing the hotsprings. A giant fat frog in a swimming pool. Three kinds of monkeys, all over the place. Horses, donkeys, an aguti, toucans, vultures, orioles, parrots, centipedes, beetles, big iguanas, chirping geckos, tiny frogs, mosquitoes – normal, and giant, wasps, red crabs, tropical fish, restaurant cats, hotel dogs, butterflies, crocodiles, and streams of cutter ants carrying leaves.

What did you do that was dumb?

At La Guardia on the way out, I left my tabbed and marked-up Lonely Planet at the airport check in counter. Found it a few minutes later, but it seemed like an inauspicious start.

I hiked alone up and down a steep muddy jungle trail in pretty flip flops, because I’d been assured they were fine shoes for the national park. Later, it turned out they were talking about a short, easy path.

Ditto a steep, isolated, rocky road down to the beach.

I checked into a hotel I didn’t really like, because I felt some pressure to decide quickly, which was really self-imposed. (I checked out the next day, and found a place I loved.)

I stepped on a slimy looking embankment, which was every bit as slick as it looked, and slid right down, scraping my arm and banging my hip. I thought my ‘water shoes’ would grip, somehow.

I misremembered pick-up times twice. Once I sat around for a wasted half hour, and once I had to scramble to pack in a hurry.

I ordered a large plastic bottle of water in a restaurant to take with me for the afternoon, then forgot it there after a sip.

I lost my sunglasses – some time between landing at LaGuardia and my apartment.

Did you miss having a phone?

Not at all. I did think I heard it vibrating for the first few days, though – and a lot of others said they kept thinking they heard their own rings.

It felt funny making plans by agreeing on a time and a place, and a backup time and place in case it was raining. There was a lot more anticipation waiting for people to show up, knowing that if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be an immediate way to find out where they were or how long they’d be. So, it felt like almost an accomplishment in and of itself when everyone made it to a meeting point.

To confirm a breakfast we’d sort of planned for my last day, I sent a note with Michael one evening to take to Kevin and Kurt, since I knew they’d all be out together. I reminded him what happened in Romeo and Juliet when someone didn’t deliver a letter the way he was supposed to. (Everybody died, of course.) I was delighted to find that they’d had the same idea and slipped an almost identical note onto my balcony while I was out. (I ended up borrowing the restaurant phone the next morning and calling their house when they didn’t show up, victims of a Guaro hangover. Michael had delivered my note, but then proceeded to get them incapacitated on the local sugarcane hooch.)

How about TV and the internet? Did you see much news?

I made a semi-deliberate attempt to avoid the news. There were tape-bound photocopies of a few US newspapers available at news stands. I glanced at the headlines to make sure Brooklyn was still there and all, but didn’t go beyond that. And I had a TV in my room in a few places but never turned it on. I checked email a few times, and looked at Yahoo news just long enough to see that someone had been stabbed in my daily subway station. Oh, right – that’s why I wasn’t reading it! Away from the concrete jungle, and back to the actual one, where there are more bugs, but fewer stabbings. It was… what’s that saying? Bliss.

How did you do with the language?

As in most places where tourism is a huge part of the economy, people spoke English widely. I felt like I was starting to pick up a little Spanish, and it really made me want to learn to speak it – I think it’s weird that I don’t, like there’s almost no excuse not to. An immersion program there seemed like a fantastic idea.

How did the money work out?

The money was interesting – they really accept dollars almost everywhere. And like a bilingual family that slips back and forth between languages mid-sentence, they’d give and accept combinations of dollars and Colones coins and bills. I’ve never been to a place like that.

Quite a few places took Visa, but not MasterCard, which is how I realized that my bankcard is a MasterCard (never even thought about it) and my backup platinum Visa had in fact expired 10 days before I left. After the day of horseback riding joy, the guide had to drive me to an ATM, because I’d planned to pay with my MasterCard. (At some point while the rain was running down the smelly, heavy rubber poncho draped over me and every step was torquing my knee, abrading my thighs, and bruising my ass, I realized that I was paying for this delight – and then even that turned out to be a hassle.)

Overall, the money held up ok, though there was a point where I had to scrimp a little til the next town because the lone ATM wouldn't take my card and I was very low on cash – after dinner, while the other girls were stocking up on road trip snacks, I had just enough left for a bottle of water. Which was about all I needed.

A driver taught me slang for the money – thousands were counted as “rojas” he said, since the bills were red. Hundred colone coins were counted in “tejas,” though he couldn't really explain why. Something to do with a dome. Hm.

Sounds friendly. How were other Ticos?

Mostly friendly, though of course most of the people I met were in the tourism industry. A few were more frostily polite than friendly, like the girl at a grocery store and one surly waitress. Overall, people just seemed really laid back, low drama. One woman, the hostess at Barba Roja restaurant, stood out to me as much more dramatic than everyone else with blonde hair, arched eyebrows, and a low-cut shirt. Michal and Frank referred to her as “him,” and said Felicia used to be a he.

Okay, okay. Cut to the chase. Did you meet anyone? Hot latin lover? Built surfer? Dreamy traveler?

No and no. Sigh. No romance at all.

Really? Don’t you think that’s weird? Were you avoiding guys?
Not at all. One guy seemed cool and decent looking, a surfing tourist, but he got bent out of shape when someone said “Si, Claro” to him and he didn’t understand. The third time the person said it, I said, “it means ‘of course.’” That’s one of the three Spanish phrases I know – it was the title of the text book in our eighth grade exploratory Spanish text book, and I said so. But he wouldn't let it drop. The rest of the night, out with a bunch of people, he kept saying, “well, YOU’re the one who knows Spanish.” I couldn't deal with that for even one night.

There was a tall, dark Swiss guy in a wife beater who I thought would fit the bill, but he left me alone to die in the jungle, so that was a no.

Everyone else was gay or a decade younger.

Wow. Do you think that maybe if you can’t find a fling in a week alone in a Latin country that maybe there really is no hope for you?
Um, shut up?

Ok, sorry. So. Do you feel silly now that you were so nervous before you left?

Nah. I think that’s part of it all. It was a relief that it was all as easy as it was. I’d definitely go again. I wish I’d had more time, like weeks more, and learned a little Spanish before I went.

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?

re: Friday Feb 27, written 20:00 Saturday night

Friday afternoon, I ran into Jane at the cyber café. We ended up spending the rest of the day together, a café then the yacht quais, then les jardins for drinks, then some food at my place with Martyn, then Xtreme. It was really nice. They were supposed to go skiing today, so left early. I was finishing my drink and up popped the other people I know here, Dino and Albert, and Allen (who I'd introduce my mother to in a parallel universe) and Greg (the expert on French women). Shook Greg and his unlikely promises of a motorbike tour of the coast, and went on to Golden Gate with Dino and Albert. It was packed and fun. This time some guy actually did strip and jump in the pool, an event that owner Maxou announced on the mic so no one would miss it. Home very late.

[partially from notebook, 3 pm Saturday Feb 28, Negresco hotel in Nice, then expanded upon later] Did I think to see how much a coffee cost before I ordered it? Oh, no. But it's alright. Included in the six euros for this wee cup of café au lait is soft piano music (Les Mis, Heal the World, Sinatra) that sounds live but isn’t; antique velvet couches; three types of sugar, and a square of dark, dark chocolate all with the royal Negresco logo; and a suspiciously polite French waiter. I just café coffee possible? And he says back in French without wincing visibly, but of course! As if not only is it possible, but why on earth would anyone do anything but just that? It’s windy and threatening a cold drizzle out along the Med on the Promenade Anglais and my whole body just wants to sink and be warm. I realize I can sit here for a while, and there’s no place I’d rather be. I wonder how long they’ll let me stay? The tall, tapestried oak room is almost empty. The white-jacketed waiter just cut and lit a cigar for a frail old man who he greeted like an old friend.
I tried to go to Monte Carlo, but by a stroke of mechanical luck, the ticket machine wouldn’t take my card (even after I figured out how to use the knob and stopped poking at the ahem non-touch screen), and I saw the train pull up on the opposite track while I was banging on it. Next one not for an hour, too late, so, Nice it was. And I realized right away it wasn’t the right day for a snazzy casino and hilly old town. I accidentally bought a ticket for the TGV. Still only 7 euros for a round trip, no stops along the way. Is it a maglev train? I thought those were science fiction? It’s quieter than I remember the bullet train. Eerily quiet. I wanted to bite the end off my baguette, but I could imagine the sound echoing through the hushed car and decided to wait. (why I thought bread and a goaty camembert would be a good choice of brunch after last night is one for the ages.)
It was raining for real when I left an hour later. But the sea, instead of looking dark and stormy, looked all the brighter aqua blue. I saw an old man standing at the rail of the promenade facing the ocean, holding one of the rainbow umbrellas everyone seems to have, and I stood behind him and took a half dozen pictures. It was transcendent, I hope just one turns out as good as it looked then. It lifted my spirits so much (and the cold meds?) that I happily set off for the old town’s pedestrian shopping district. Nothing great, mostly French chain stores. Headed back to the train when it started to rain in earnest. Sniffling, fingers numb, bag squeezed under my arm to keep the rain out, I felt strangely happy, even as a pedestrian waving a shopping bag yelled at a honking driver and two teenagers cursed each other in passing.
Hopped on a train back that was already at the tracks when I got there – was like a faded orange and yellow cattle car compared to the tgv. I’m sure it should have been cheaper, too. But I just wanted to get back. Walked in right near the smoking car, and people were packed in sitting at all angles. It made all the stops, but pretty scenery, didn’t mind at all.

Can I possibly still be stuck on GMT –6 biorhythms? Is it the chill in the room? It is hard to get out of bed when it’s the only warm place.

I wrote some things about yesterday*, but I think they were even less interesting than usual. It was chilly and grey, and I read the paper in a cafe and bought a needle and thread. Got a CD-R so I can maybe get some photos up. Not without trial, of course - they thought I was asking for a "CD Art." I skipped french one and never learned to say the alphabet. Apparently R is pronounced Airrrre. They were very nice and we all had a good laugh.
Went to a bar at night and talked to some people I didn't want to, and didn't talk to some other people I did want to. Borrowed Shakespeare in Love from the library. See? Not so interesting, is it?

*Browsed the shoe shops. Saw the pointy-toed stiletto leather boots with white racing stripes I’d seen a gramma balancing on the other day. Went by the theatre before four, but another rainy line and nothing I wanted to see. Decided to make an evening of cooking, and looked through the cookbooks in the apartment for a quiche recipe. Is it unknown in England? A different name, maybe? Nothing. So set out for the bookstore then the grocery store. Got a cooking magazine with a simple enough recipe. Went to Champion because I hadn’t been before. A woman in the cheese aisle asked if I could tell her the expiration date on a camembert because she’d forgotten her glasses at home. I got stressed a little trying to figure out which was the day and which was the month, then what the fourth month might be called. But Avril saved the day. Decided on a recipe for spinach quiche on the back of a goat cheese package. Spent a long time in the grocery store, not unusual. Got some tea called tilleul, I feel like the meaning will come to me, but even looking it up, the English meant nothing. Tea of the lime (blossom), linden. Linden tea? Do we have that? American English, please. I’ve seen it in perfumes, too, it’s certainly a subtle tea. Drinking it now with honey for the throat which seems to be a bit worse.
The spinach thing took longer than expected and turned out not bad, mildly lacking? I had some red wine with it, three bucks for the bottle! Got Shakespeare in love from the library and started watching it, then wanted to get out, and walked to Xtreme. There were kids being noisy in the alley, even younger than the ones who were out there before. I wonder why that particular alley corner is so popular for sitting around? These couldn’t have been more than thirteen.
Awkward as ever, sat at the empty table in the corner near the fireplace and the flat screen tv with the snowboard video. A drunk, chubby, weasly guy who said his name was Johann (and later Druvi) started talking, and I didn’t want to talk to him. He offered a drink, and I said no thanks. Soon the waitress brought over another glass of wine. I felt like I had no right to refuse to hang out with him, but tried to anyway. He invited me to go to another bar with his friends. I wished I wanted to, but I didn’t. He said he was from Brazil, his friend said he was from Sri Lanka. I didn’t care either way. He said he worked on the biggest yacht in the port, the Kingdom 5. He made me uncomfortable. He came back later, while I was still writing postcards and wishing one of the younger less sketchy people would talk to me. He sat down and asked again if I’d go to another bar with him, or then, if he could just have a beer there with me. I said no to both. He invited me to meet him for lunch tomorrow on the yacht – we don’t have to go to a restaurant, I have an apartment on the boat. How tempting. I said I wanted to be alone. Is that wrong? All he had to say for himself, and leeringly, was that he liked my smile. That bores me. If I’d liked him, maybe that would be enough, but I didn’t. Why do I feel like I should apologize for not liking someone? He finally went.
I left when they pulled down the gate over the window. People were still sitting around.

I talked to an antique book dealer today, looking for an old Proust for a friend . She said Proust would be impossible to find anywhere, but recommended a Maupassant that was ‘better.’ She said, inexplicably, that Proust was for children. I said, Marcel Proust?
Do French children read 2,000-page books?