Off the Couch and On the Road

Despite the obvious, ‘I am grateful for a roof over my head and food to eat’ basics, nothing makes me happier than a hot, sunny day and beautiful boulevards of shops, parks and cafes by the beach. The soft, yellow sand beach, I should say. Which is why I couldn’t live anywhere else but home.

And Cannes.

Because Cannes is the perfect beachside town and small city combined – Louis Vuitton and Prada overlooking the beach, down the street from gelaterias and cheap shoe stores. There were yachts parked like private school girls lining up for roll call, and families playing ball games on the sand. The soft, yellow sand, I should say.

I loved Cannes. I walked the stretch of coast from one end of the film and arts obsessed town to the other, and made a desicion to bypass an expensive cruise to St Tropez and return to Cannes the following day. After paying on the beach, I discovered the most amazing chocolatier, which displayed homemade french chocolates in all flavour and sizes – and if Australian customs were any less stringent I would have spent a fortune.

But I settled on tasting the fresh hot chocolate, which arrived with two small samples of the chocolates and fresh cream. And I looked skywards into the endless blue and racked my brain to work out a way to stay longer, but I had already booked my flight and accomodation, damn it. And so I had to go.

The trainride home that second afternoon was a somber one. ‘I never wanted to leave,’ I confessed to the girls sitting opposite, nodding my head toward the coastline.

‘Me neither,’ she replied glumly, and we rode back in silence as I prepared myself to say goodbye to France. Until next time, of course.

-Sarah

Monaco, one of the most veautiful and prestigious countries in the world, and the second smallest (the smallest being the Vatican) was in fact a touch more normal than I expected. But still fantastic – a good looking royal family will do that every time (you wait until William’s King, everyone will love the British Monarchy).

As I only had a day in Monaco I made my way up to the Royal Palace first thing to watch the changing of the guard, then through the tiny alleys of the old quarter down to the National Aquarium, built in 1912 by Prince Rainier I to continue his life’s work in marine science and exploration.

Following the aquarium, tired from being pushed around by a million kids wanting to see ‘Nemo’, I took a hlaf-hour mini-train ride tour around Monaco, seeing the famous casino, gardens and city centre. Apparently one of the safest countries in the world, every street is covered in video surveillance and the world reknown police force has one officer for every 15 residents.

The cathedral, just bear the palace and aquarium, had tourists lining up outside the door – mystefying until I realised it was the burial place of Princess Grace Kelly. It was a lovely church, adorned with flowers from fans, and held the tombs of every prince of Monaco scince it’s inception.

A final walk back past all the yacht and Ferrari workshops, and a detour to visit the church of Sainte Devote, built in 304AD, and I arrived back at the station to take the 20 minute train ride back to Nice, wondering whether Price Albert had any hot sons. He does, doesn’t he?

-Sarah

I arrived in Nice with my scarf, jacket and three layers of clothing to what was most definitely a hot summers day on le Cote d’Azur – peeling off layers as I walked the 100m to my hotel.

My heart then sank, there was construction as far as I could see, piles of concrete, jackhammers and dirt covering the main and adjacent streets close to the station. French Riviera indeed.

It turned out the construction work was more completecloser to the beach, old slabs of concrete replaced by new tiles, and I cheered up once I began to explore the wide streets filled with restaurants, cafes and hops surrounding the new ‘Place Messena’. I had a cheap meal of ‘all you can eat mussels’ – so fresh you could still taste the salt water – and wandered around before the journey through the construction back up to the hotel.

The following morning was Sunday and therefore nothing was open except the food markets – the fresh fruit so amazing – and church. So with a lack of anything else to do, I attended both and went to the beach for the afternoon, a relaxing Sunday.

-Sarah

I left early for the Louvre, a good thing, and paid tribute to Mona Lisa first, a very good thing, as the tourist rush arrived soon after and people were nudging each other out of the way like paparazzi at a Paris Hilton court appearance. She, like the Eiffel Tower, wasn’t beautiful so much as powerful, hundreds of years of mystery and guarded protection in the very place I stood (I was having, as a friend who came back from Europe called it, a ‘Robert Langdon moment’).

The Louvre has to be the single biggest building I have ever seen, let alone tried to make my way through – apparently as long as 3 Eiffel Towers laying end to end. It was tough to choose a few indivual sections of the four massive floors to see – if you wandered around aimlessly you would be there for weeks.

So I stuck with the old favourites, large format French and Italian paintings from 13-17 century, paintings of the Renaissance, middle-ages and 19c, and Napoleon III’s apartments, which rivalled any paace I had seen to date.

I wandered past 16-19c Italian sculptures and marvelled at the ruins in the medieval Louvre section. I spent time seeing everything on the Ancient Egypt floor – pitying those who would join me on my Egypt tour later this year only to hear the familiar words ‘…and the rest of the artifacts are on display in the Louvre…’.

Close to mid-afternoon, I found myself walking slowly, my calves aching, staring at the parquet floors absentmindedly like some kind of Louvre ghost, not even looking at the galleries of masterpieces I was passing. It was time to leave.

I was revived by the riverside walk to the cathedral of Notre Dame, and used the church as an overdue excuse to rest my legs and admire the stunning stained-glass windows and impossibly high domed roof. By the time I caught the metro back to the hostel and caught up on laundry, I was so tired I could barely reply to roommates who asked what I’d done that day.

‘Louvre….so big,’ I mumbled, ‘tired…’. They nodded with understanding eyes as I stumbled into bed, dreams of cherubs and marble warriers filling my head before it even reached the pillow.

-Sarah

There was a slight apprehension about visiting Paris – expectations of a million references in books, movies, conversations with friends and of course a lack of anything resembling french vocabulary, one which would apparently horrify the stubborn french who would refuse, in my imagination, to speak english.

I had, it turned out, nothing to worry about. My hostel was in a lovely area filled with typically french amazing specialty stores – cheese, fruit, poultry, chocolate – filled with slightly serious but friendly french faces happy to speak english when ‘yes, please’ came out as ‘ja, danke’.

The weather wasn’t quite so pleasant. Admittedly I expected bitterly cold winds and rain in Scotland, but certainly not France in summer. C’est La Vie. After a quiet afternoon wandering the local area and an early night, I saved my eneregy for the three days I had to squeeze in the spectacles of Paris.

The following day I walked to the Eiffel Tower, past amazing food and clothes markets, and once I saw the steel monstrocity  it hit me – I was in Paris, at the Eiffel Tower – wow. True, it is ugly, as the Harbour Bridge is, full of steel crossbars and bolts, but it is such a powerful image you don’t care and the view is amazing, a jigsaw of boulevards and old buildings, that bizzare combination of grey and green only truly old cities have.

After returning to street level, I caught the metro to the Arc de Triomphe, which was beautiful and surrounded by the infamous traffic of the giant roundabout surrounding it. Not as bad as Asia, but not something to navigate if you valued your life, certainly. The rain had stopped and I was able to walk down the Avenue Des Champs-Elysees all the way, past the biggest Louis Vuitton store in the world (sigh), window shopping with thousands of others across the Seine to the Musee D’Orsay.

The museum was amazing – not so big that you couldn’t wander through it entirely, but with enough rooms to keep you busy for the afternoon. Seeing Monet’s blue waterlillies was like being starstruck again – wow – and I, who doesn’t usually appreciate it, was lost in art for hours.

-Sarah