Vacation in France, part 1

On 31st of July we left Florence at 15.00 and went directly to San Remo, a small town by the sea (famous for the national music festival that takes place every year in March if I am not mistaken) near the French border. Since we arrived at 20.00 after two episodes of Sander vomiting in the car (only a few hundreds of meters away from our friends' house) we couldn't see the town center but watched the beautiful sea from the terrace of the house instead. The house was quite strange, built on a hill right by the sea, with many levels and stairs everywhere inside and outside. The rooms were maybe biggish but fitted on a strange plan, the workmanship not good, kitchen too little for the size of the house etc. Anyway, the view of the terrace was beautiful, and we were there only for the night, with no intention of buying the house ;-)

Before I tell about our next day I should mention one of the dishes that was served by our friends that night: raw tuna fish. I was skeptical at first but then I thought about sushi and said 'why not'. It was delicious and very easy to prepare (I prepared it for the first time two days ago).


Raw tuna fish
Cut the fish in (roughly) 3 mm thick squares of 3 cm long edges. Then place the fish pieces in very salty water, salty like the sea-water, for about 15-20 minutes. Afterwards take the pieces out of the water and let all the water run out. Season with extra virgin olive oil only (no lemon juice!). The fish prepared this way is to be served with freshly diced tomatoes and basil. Absolutely finger-licking delicious :-)

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OK, going back to our trip. On the morning of 1st of August we woke up, got ready, had a cup of coffee and some cookies, thanked for the hospitality of our friends and set out for France. We tried to choose the less curvy roads on the navigator so that the little one didn't vomit and the mother (that would be me) didn't get all dizzy and sick in the stomach, but my husband also bought some anti-seasickness chewing gum and syrup 'just in case' (which proved to be very helpful all through the vacation, in fact).

Our first stop was Monte Carlo. If you are traveling to France from Italy following the sea you cannot (and should not) avoid a stop in Monte Carlo. When you enter the city you begin breathing in 'money'. The luxury cars, the buildings, casino signs here and there... You also get the feeling that the space is scarce seeing all the tall buildings glued to each other, parking places all underground, streets quite narrow.. Then you slowly swirl down the hill following the Formula 1 tracks. I felt like I was in the Monte Carlo car race simulator when I recognized most of the streets, the buildings, the tunnels.. While I was turning my head continuously to the right and left trying not to miss anything I noticed that I had lost the chance of taking the picture of the famous casino building :-( But then we were already in the harbor area and we decided to park the car so that we could take a walk and get a bite; it was already noon and we had two hungry monsters in the back.



The boats, well yachts (or 'floating villas' might be the right description of what we saw), in the harbor were amazing.. We even witnessed some rich guy being delivered his new yacht. Not that we want a floating skyscraper, but an 11ft sailboat wouldn't be bad to own one day ;-) Anyway, dreams aside, Monte Carlo is a beautiful rich city, a vision to the eyes, a nightmare for your pocket.. We sat at a cafe in the harbor area, ordered a toast, a crepe and a hot-dog (see the size of that hot-dog in the photo below!) and some things to drink, ending up paying as if we had eaten at a restaurant in Italy. The parking bill was of the same caliber as well. So, we ran out of Monte Carlo before finishing all our money in the first 48 hours of our vacation and got back to France.



Our target for the day was Grasse. We decided not to take the highway so that we can see around, hence we took the road that runs parallel to the sea line. The next city on our route was Nice. When we entered the city from the suburbs I was shocked, to tell the truth. It was far from my imaginations... no different than the suburbs of any other big city, lots of road work here and there, a lot of foreigners, quite ordinary architecture... We rushed through Nice without getting out of the car, but of course we went all the way to the esplanade, driving slowly, watched the beautiful buildings, the beaches, the prestigious hotels, people walking lazily under the sun.



The thing that I began noticing everywhere we went in France was the flowers on and off the streets. There were flowers hanging down light poles, there were flowers in the middle of the large avenues, there were flowers at the intersections.. everywhere... really beautiful.



After Nice we continued on the seaside road and decided to stop at Antibes. It was nothing special. We just went for a walk in the town and by the sea for an hour or so and had to go back to the car and go directly to Grasse since it was already afternoon and we had no place to stay for the night. We drove inland this time and arrived at Grasse, but continued driving in order to find a hotel. After a few inquiries at the hotels we found on the road we chose to stay in St. Vallier, at a little hotel. Our room was on the top floor, with two French beds (my God, how little those beds are). We had to sleep each with one kid that night.

Our day ended at a restaurant, well a small dining place which I wouldn't know how to call, in the village. We took a table outside, under a huge tree and did eat quite well but we were dying of laughter when we were first given the menu. Why? Because there were 'lawyers with shrimp sauce cocktail' and 'ice children' :-) These were the exact words written in the English language menu, believe me! I tried to take the photo of the menu but partly because it was covered with a plastic layer and partly because the waiter took it away from me fast when she noticed what I was doing, that it didn't come out very well. Look below :-)


It turns out that both 'lawyer' and 'avocado' are 'avocat' in French, and whoever had translated the French menu into English must have just gotten the French-English dictionary, looked for 'avocat' and wrote the first word that appeared next to it: lawyer. 'Ice children' was the English for 'ice cream for children' by the way :-)

More about France soon...