Aliways and Ulice

 Because I have martyr tendencies and I like a challenge, I decided to get to the airport for my flight to Corsica on the public transport (options were to take uber or the taxi. Flight was at 9, needed to be there two hours before that, needed to take line 1 to Jean Medecin, and then cross over to take line 2 to Terminal 2...  I did a walk through the night before to make sure I knew where the elevator was down to line 2 and decided I could do it. This meant waking at 4:30 to get showered etc to get to the tram station (Opera) by 6 - the mystery bit to this game is that at that time of the morning, it wasn't clear whether the trams would be every 10 minutes or every 30 minutes.  It was still dark when I left my hotel, I momentarily wondered if I was crazy (was it safe wandering around in the dark?) plunged on, just missed a tram, decided to walk to line 2, passed lots of drunk young teens, down the escalator and voila! made it with time to spare. There were only about 20 people on

My last day in Nice and I realised that I had forgotten to take my own advise - do some sort of a walking tour to get the lay of the land - only in this case the land was well and truly laid - the tram line was sussed, the buses  and trains, sussed.  So I quickly looked on line and found a No Diet Club tour, run by Constance who is passionate about Nicoise food. I am embarrassed to admit that until a light switch came on in my head yesterday before the tour, I hadn't clicked that the good old classic Nicoise salad is indeed a classic from Nice. People from Nice are Nicoise. Anyone else want to admit they hadn't clicked to that? anyone? Ok, just me then. In fact, Nicoise had there own language - Nissart which is from the occitane language - a mixture of French and that ancient language. The language is mainly remembered by grandparents, but there is a concerted effort to bring it back to life. Constance pointed out that Nicoise do not like to be asked if they are Italian. They a

Sorry, I'm running a day or so late with my updates - :) it's been busy. Monday was officially Monaco Cousin Day!!  Rain was coming again (I caved and bought an umbrella) and I had complex instructions to take the 10:20 train to get to Monaco to meet our cousin Diana who lived /worked in Monaco, but now lives in the hills behind Roqueburne and Menton. She has lived in France for about 35 years, still has a strong English accent. And crazily, our other cousin Gaye (and her husband Grant) are also travelling and were arriving on the 28th of August!! Very exciting - and the plan was that we would all meet at the train station and would go to the Monet Exhibition. Monet lived on the Cote d'Azur and so many of the places in the pictures are identifiable (to Diana - not to the tourists). I had to empty out my handbag and hand over my lipsticks and pens - I must have had that graffiti look about me. Gaye got to keep hers... Monaco seems to be a flash car yard - show rooms for all

One of the reasons that I came to Nice was that I had been told about a hilltop village called Eze - picturesque, isolated, not yet on the tourist route. Well, most of that was true! The day started with a huge thunderstorm and whilst my cunning plan had been to hire a scooter to get there, in the interest of safety (imagine!) I decided to take the bus. This meant a complex use of public transport even before I found the bus station. When I finally found the station, the ticket office was locked (France closes on a Sunday) and not a soul to be found  - mind you, I had peaked a bit soon, the online information told me the bus was at 2 and it was only 1:30, always allowing for time to get lost. People started trickling to the bus stop. On the dot of 2, the driver pulled up, we piled on with a lot of confusion about the ticket buying/ card  scanning thing, with a lot of frustration and loud words on the part of the driver. To my amusement, this same conversation happened at the next three