Thursday, November 10, 2005
Saturday 5 November 2005
Back from Italy! We went by metro to La Gare d'Austerlitz last Wednesday week in time for the departure of Le Train Bleu at 9.15 pm. I had never been to the main line station, only the suburban lines, and a very odd mismatched untidy station it was too; I don't think Napoleon would have approved at all, especially in its bi-centenary year. The wagon lit was rather cramped, with a bunk on each side high up under the roof with a ladder (made up with clean sheets and pillows and tartan rugs), a coat rack, a seat by the window, a table which became a washbasin, towels, mirrors and a cupboard, free magazines, bottles of water, soap, toothbrushes, and the famous chamber pot in its cupboard under the window. (And yes, we did use it - very useful but rather small. And, disappointingly not blue, nor inscribed SNCF)
Going out of Paris we passed through several stations I knew well from when I lived in the southern suburbs in the early 1970's; Juvisy-sur-Orge, Viry-Châtillon, Choisy le Roi, Ris Orangis. Once we were past Melun there was little to see so we pulled down the blind and got ready for bed, one at a time as there was only room for one person upright in the middle of the cabin and the other up on their bunk. Once "in bed" it was fairly comfortable, apart from a strange sensation once the train gathered speed of one's head then toes being pulled in opposite directions. I abandoned my Don Camillo book in favour of the free magazines in French. In the middle of the night we came to halt, so I climbed down the ladder to see where we were : Lyon. I watched for a few minutes as we went through the city, much the same view I had seen as the last time I passed through it, during the night by bus on my way to Florence in 1994. It was difficult to get back to sleep; but necessary to wake early so as not to miss the sunrise as we went along the Côte d'Azur. Once again many familiar stations, this time from holidays in the 1970's and 1980's: Cannes, Juan les Pins, Antibes. We were not due to have breakfast until we arrived at Nice, so much to N's surprise and astonishment I had equipped myself with a croissant the day before, which was very welcome. My overnight bag was now quite heavy with the remains of the bottles of water, the magazines and the free toiletries, but we made our way to the Buffet de la Gare at Nice for breakfast, along with others from the train, some of whom had spent the night in couchettes, and as N said, looked it. (He was feeling superior having successfully managed to shave in the train)
We then embarked on a very long wait for the car. N had done this many times before, and had explained that although we finished breakfast at about 8.45 the cars would not probably arrive before 10.00, and we might not be able to get away before 10.30. In the event we did not leave until 12.00, so it was just as well that Nice station is a very elegant place, with palm trees both inside and out, with well-maintained toilets, newspaper stall and beautiful flowers, and as the morning wore on the weather became very warm and we abandoned our coats. We caught up with Italian newspapers, one of which had a beautiful cartoon of Saint Francis of Assisi in bed with 'flu, and another monk saying to him "I told you not to go talking to the birds"! Fortunately, unlike some of our fellow travellers who were getting increasingly impatient, we were not in a hurry, and it just meant starting the journey to Italy a little later.
Much of the journey was on the coastal motorway, and through wonderfully constructed tunnels. France gradually blended into Italy; and there was just a little notice to tell us when we crossed the border. We stopped for a late lunch at a very superior Italian motorway restaurant; they were cooking risotto at the self service counter, gradually ladling in the stock before our very eyes, but it was not ready yet! So we ate some beautiful roast vegetables instead, N's with chicken.
After lunch and the interrupted night's sleep, I kept dozing off and being reprimanded by N for missing the spectacular scenery, so we stopped at another motorway café and did something I have never done before in Italy or anywhere – drank an espresso coffee standing up at the bar. Very strong, very bitter and very small, it did the trick and I was much more alert for the rest of the journey. On arriving at Aulla, our nearest small town, we stopped at our favourite supermarket Conad, and stocked up. It seemed so familiar and normal, just as though we had never been away, so full of good things and we hadn't even needed to change the money in our purses!
The apartment which N has owned for nearly four years now is on the first floor of a sixteenth-century palazzo in a small village called Soliera. I have been several times in all sorts of different seasons and weather, including at the end of October two years ago when it rained non stop for three days, so I was prepared for the worst. This time we were lucky: apart from the last day the mornings started foggy and the days were dry and very sunny, about 24 degrees. In the past there have sometimes been young goats on the piece of land outside the bathroom window, but not this time; as N said, it had become a no-goat area.
We started by doing a lot of cleaning, airing and removing cobwebs as the place had not been visited since July, and N did "gardening" on the terrace, tidying the terra cotta pots full of oleanders, geraniums and magnificent herbs, which I used several times during the week for cooking. There is a lovely large partly new kitchen in which I love cooking, using all the good ingredients from Conad. We caught up with Italian TV news again too, watching it on two different channels one after the other, so as not to miss anything. There is the same collection of politicians looking much the same although slightly older (they might well think the same about me) all still reciting the relevant merits of Centro sinistro and Centro destra.
I discovered the book by Moravia in my bedside cupboard was not the one made into the film seen recently, but one called Il Disprezzo; very enjoyable and well-written, with the result that Don Camillo did not get opened during the entire visit.
We visited Fivizzano - the nearest small town in the other direction - better known to us than Aulla as N's first Italian house, Il Prato, was a few kilometres away up in the mountains. As we arrived at siesta time nearly everything was closed, but N managed to buy some wonderful packets of vegetable seeds – including green, yellow and red beans - ready for the garden in Normandy. We fared better at Aulla, arriving on market day, and I bought myself some slippers for 6 euros. Our favourite place of all though is Lerici, on the coast, where usually we lunch in an excellent fish restaurant perched on the cliff, but on this occasion we arrived in the afternoon, and a very warm afternoon it was too. Two years ago at the end of October there had been many people walking up and down in the sunshine warmly wrapped up in their coats; this time they were in t-shirts and shirt-sleeves. There were even a few bathing in the sea, even though the last sun beds and parasols had long since been removed. Even the TV news regarded the weather as eccezionale, and commented on the numbers of cars on the road; because All Saints Day Tuesday 1 November is a public holiday many were " making the bridge" as they say in French and Italian and taking the Monday as holiday too, thereby making a four-day weekend. At Lerici I bought an exercise mat at a beach shop; this made exercises with the Pilates video much more comfortable on the stone floor of the apartment.
1 November is traditionally the day on which to lay chrysanthemums on family graves, so there were many on sale in markets and by the roadside, even before we left Saint-Denis. The other seasonal commodity much in evidence was chestnuts; we stopped by the side of a mountain road where the ground was thick with them and gathered some to take home; sometimes just picking them up and at others carefully prising them out of their prickly cases, and roasted them on the stove to eat after dinner. On Saturday evening there was a Castagnata, a kind of chestnut celebration up in the old part of Soliera; the outsides of many houses were decorated with twigs, leaves and chestnut cases; there was seasonal produce and crafts, and we bought local wine and chestnut honey. Hot chestnuts were on sale in cornets of paper, and the ground was thick with their skins.
On Sunday afternoon we went to an antiques fair at Filetto, a medieval walled town which we had visited once before for an evening medieval market with music and flag throwing. This time it was a little less formal, but there was still entertainment in the form of yet more chestnuts roasted in huge holed pans suspended over large fires, and shaken from time to time by the men in charge, with smoke and sparks flying in the wind, and more chestnuts in paper cornets. Apart from our purchases – N bought a book of old postcards of the area, and I bought an oil/vinegar/salt/pepper/olive set in coarse yellow pottery – we were extremely interested to see many things on sale very like those in the apartment in Soliera, all included when N bought it. These ranged from large items of furniture like chests of drawers, often with marble tops because of the local proximity to Carrara, to linens and china, and small things like tin trays, bottles and baskets which would never have occurred to us to try and sell to anybody, but were all on sale on various stalls. The journey back to Soliera was long and dark, because of the holiday traffic and because the clocks had changed the night before and this was the first dark afternoon. Having seen the prices of some things similar to those in the apartment, we began to discuss the possibility of keeping some of the furniture and taking it to the house in Normandy, a discussion which continued on and off until the end of our stay. The Soliera apartment has been on sale for some time, offered completely furnished, but N now began to come round to the idea of offering it partly furnished, and to take the more interesting items to Normandy. If not required immediately they could be housed in the many outbuildings, and we had noted an antique shop a few doors way from the house which could prove useful.
Monday was the last day of October; rain was finally forecast for Tuesday, and in the event Monday was the last day of autumn sunshine. We started off for Aulla in the morning merely for a few things from the post office and supermarket, intending to have lunch in the only good restaurant, but it was closed on Mondays. Still enthused from the day before by the apparent desirability and value of our possessions, we set off on a whim for Sarzana, a town well-known for the large number of its antique dealers. In the event most were closed, but we looked through many shop windows and admired the pretty town in the emptiness of an out-of-season Monday. We found the last free table in a very good little restaurant, just before 1.30, and enjoyed excellent pesto, salmon, pork à l'orange and moist granary bread, which N said was like chocolate cake, together with interesting décor and fellow guests. At the end of our meal, when only we and one other couple were left at table, we were given their bill in error, much to the confusion of the proprietress and the amusement of everybody else. The pleasure of the lunch and visit to Sarzana was all the more because we had no plan whatsoever to go there when we had set out that morning. In the evening we visited N's local contact Lindsay and her mother for apéritifs; they had been unable to come for lunch on Sunday as planned as they were too busy.
We hadn't planned to go out on Tuesday as it was a public holiday and heavy rain was forecast. N was still spending a lot of time measuring pieces of furniture due to go to Normandy, and making an inventory for Traslochi, the local moving and storage company he had dealt with before, when he sold Il Prato and had furniture moved to Paris, some of which is still in the cellar and already promised for the house in Normandy. We also sorted and looked at a large trunk full of bed covers, and numerous baskets, tools, pans and other oddments in a large glory-hole near the entrance of the apartment, and packed some to go to Normandy with the furniture, and put others in the car to take with us, in particular a large iron fire grate, chimney plate and fire irons. During the morning there was a violent thunderstorm as promised, with lightning and such strong winds that a sheet drying on the terrace pulled the washing line right out of the wall, and ended up in a sad wet pile on top of the watering can and the pot of herbs. It needed much untangling, and re-washing, and only dried just in time before we left the next morning.
After leaving the place very clean and tidy on Wednesday morning, hoping that many potential purchasers would come and view (something of which I have had much experience of late) we left at about 10.00 am and with plenty of time took the road back towards Nice, having lunch at the same motorway restaurant, risotto still not ready, nor the pasta. We also bought local delicacies to eat at the shop, then came off the motorway, rejoining the coast road at San Remo. This time the border crossing was at Ventimiglia, where there was an abandoned redundant customs house. We got out of the car for a short break at Menton which as N said was a clean, expensive place, and where the men putting up Christmas lights were working in their shirtsleeves; After sitting for a while on the sea front we set off again, arriving in Nice at about 4.30 and giving us plenty of time to put the car on the train, eat, and possibly fill in some time at the cinema before the train left at 8.45 pm.
N said to the man at the station gate as he drove in "C'est pour Paris ce soir", and the man replied "Il n'y a pas de Paris ce soir", and after much checking of tickets and dates it transpired that we had come a day early! On taking stock of the situation, we decided things could have been a lot worse; we would just have to spend an extra 24 hours in Nice. The only disadvantage was that I had been hoping to be back on Thursday evening for a chorale rehearsal leading to a concert on Saturday, and that we had a bag of left-over food in the back of the car containing ham, salami and cheese, which might have lasted one day out of the refrigerator but not two.
Fortunately right next to the station there was a multi-storey car park and an Ibis Hotel, so we checked the car into the one and ourselves into the other, and looked forward to a less rushed evening and a better night's sleep than originally planned.
The main street between the station and the sea was being remade, and was difficult to navigate. We looked at the cinema and discovered that the new version of Oliver Twist was showing the next day, and eventually found a suitable restaurant for dinner. It was named L'Angleterre, and had thus attracted various American and Irish clients. The portions were enormous, and we felt we wouldn't need to eat again all week.
The next morning we managed some breakfast however, checked out of the hotel, put our overnight bags into the left luggage office at the station, and set out for our day in Nice. Having read some helpful literature at the hotel, we visited the Chagall Museum, along with many Japanese tourists, then took the open-air bus, stopped at the Matisse Museum, decided that was enough museums for one day, and stayed on the bus all round the city centre and along the Promenade des Anglais. It was very cold and windy on the bus but, as N said, very warm when it stopped, and there were wonderful views of ornate white villas, hotels, casinos and palm trees. After a few showers earlier the sun came out just as we reached the sea, and we made our way into the old town, originally looking for sandwiches but ending up having a delightful lunch outside a little café opposite the flower market. It was a wonderful feeling to be eating outside in the sunshine in November. We each had salad and a glass of rosé; I watched a woman at the market make up a bouquet of pink flowers, and finished my meal with a thé gourmand; tea with two tiny biscuits and a minute square of cake, just enough. We spent the afternoon looking round tourist shops in le vieux Nice, and then realised it was nearly time to be putting the car on the train. After we had walked a very long way in the wrong direction, N went to deliver the car and we eventually met at the cinema just in time to see Oliver Twist, very relieved to sit down after all the walking. It was very well made, not entirely true to Dickens, but very enjoyable. Afterwards there was just enough time to eat at the Buffet de la Gare where we had had breakfast the week before, get our bags from Left Luggage, buy my croissant for the morning - again with much adverse comment from N - and wait a few minutes for the train.
The carriage and compartment were the same as before and once again I felt that perhaps we should see James Bond or Hercule Poirot, but no. This time we saw the beaches of Cannes and Juan les Pins in the dusk, and then pulled down the blind and got ready for bed, a little more practised this time. In the middle of the night there was a screech of brakes and we stopped suddenly, seemingly in a tunnel, but we never knew why: N favoured the theory of a cow on the line. On opening the blind in the morning a very different sight met our eyes; Paris suburbs with grey skies, rain and commuters running for a bus wrapped up in their winter coats. We got off the train and walked along to the Buffet de la Gare at Austerlitz for breakfast, and I noticed that several dogs had been with us in the train overnight; unfortunately they were not entitled to breakfast and eyed each other warily from under their owners' tables. On the wall of the Buffet was a large mural depicting the Battle of Austerlitz, and we tried to guess the identities of the principal protagonists.
The arrangements for fetching the car were the complete opposite of those at Nice; instead of waiting hours in warm sunshine we collected it very promptly in the rain. We reached the Gare de Bercy in a little shuttle bus – a little like an airport bus – dogs included, and then walked up to a roof-top car park where all the cars were waiting.
The journey back to Saint-Denis took us through central Paris the morning rush hour in mist and rain, but in spite of thinking that from now on this was winter, I was pleased to feel that I had come "home".
Back from Italy! We went by metro to La Gare d'Austerlitz last Wednesday week in time for the departure of Le Train Bleu at 9.15 pm. I had never been to the main line station, only the suburban lines, and a very odd mismatched untidy station it was too; I don't think Napoleon would have approved at all, especially in its bi-centenary year. The wagon lit was rather cramped, with a bunk on each side high up under the roof with a ladder (made up with clean sheets and pillows and tartan rugs), a coat rack, a seat by the window, a table which became a washbasin, towels, mirrors and a cupboard, free magazines, bottles of water, soap, toothbrushes, and the famous chamber pot in its cupboard under the window. (And yes, we did use it - very useful but rather small. And, disappointingly not blue, nor inscribed SNCF)
Going out of Paris we passed through several stations I knew well from when I lived in the southern suburbs in the early 1970's; Juvisy-sur-Orge, Viry-Châtillon, Choisy le Roi, Ris Orangis. Once we were past Melun there was little to see so we pulled down the blind and got ready for bed, one at a time as there was only room for one person upright in the middle of the cabin and the other up on their bunk. Once "in bed" it was fairly comfortable, apart from a strange sensation once the train gathered speed of one's head then toes being pulled in opposite directions. I abandoned my Don Camillo book in favour of the free magazines in French. In the middle of the night we came to halt, so I climbed down the ladder to see where we were : Lyon. I watched for a few minutes as we went through the city, much the same view I had seen as the last time I passed through it, during the night by bus on my way to Florence in 1994. It was difficult to get back to sleep; but necessary to wake early so as not to miss the sunrise as we went along the Côte d'Azur. Once again many familiar stations, this time from holidays in the 1970's and 1980's: Cannes, Juan les Pins, Antibes. We were not due to have breakfast until we arrived at Nice, so much to N's surprise and astonishment I had equipped myself with a croissant the day before, which was very welcome. My overnight bag was now quite heavy with the remains of the bottles of water, the magazines and the free toiletries, but we made our way to the Buffet de la Gare at Nice for breakfast, along with others from the train, some of whom had spent the night in couchettes, and as N said, looked it. (He was feeling superior having successfully managed to shave in the train)
We then embarked on a very long wait for the car. N had done this many times before, and had explained that although we finished breakfast at about 8.45 the cars would not probably arrive before 10.00, and we might not be able to get away before 10.30. In the event we did not leave until 12.00, so it was just as well that Nice station is a very elegant place, with palm trees both inside and out, with well-maintained toilets, newspaper stall and beautiful flowers, and as the morning wore on the weather became very warm and we abandoned our coats. We caught up with Italian newspapers, one of which had a beautiful cartoon of Saint Francis of Assisi in bed with 'flu, and another monk saying to him "I told you not to go talking to the birds"! Fortunately, unlike some of our fellow travellers who were getting increasingly impatient, we were not in a hurry, and it just meant starting the journey to Italy a little later.
Much of the journey was on the coastal motorway, and through wonderfully constructed tunnels. France gradually blended into Italy; and there was just a little notice to tell us when we crossed the border. We stopped for a late lunch at a very superior Italian motorway restaurant; they were cooking risotto at the self service counter, gradually ladling in the stock before our very eyes, but it was not ready yet! So we ate some beautiful roast vegetables instead, N's with chicken.
After lunch and the interrupted night's sleep, I kept dozing off and being reprimanded by N for missing the spectacular scenery, so we stopped at another motorway café and did something I have never done before in Italy or anywhere – drank an espresso coffee standing up at the bar. Very strong, very bitter and very small, it did the trick and I was much more alert for the rest of the journey. On arriving at Aulla, our nearest small town, we stopped at our favourite supermarket Conad, and stocked up. It seemed so familiar and normal, just as though we had never been away, so full of good things and we hadn't even needed to change the money in our purses!
The apartment which N has owned for nearly four years now is on the first floor of a sixteenth-century palazzo in a small village called Soliera. I have been several times in all sorts of different seasons and weather, including at the end of October two years ago when it rained non stop for three days, so I was prepared for the worst. This time we were lucky: apart from the last day the mornings started foggy and the days were dry and very sunny, about 24 degrees. In the past there have sometimes been young goats on the piece of land outside the bathroom window, but not this time; as N said, it had become a no-goat area.
We started by doing a lot of cleaning, airing and removing cobwebs as the place had not been visited since July, and N did "gardening" on the terrace, tidying the terra cotta pots full of oleanders, geraniums and magnificent herbs, which I used several times during the week for cooking. There is a lovely large partly new kitchen in which I love cooking, using all the good ingredients from Conad. We caught up with Italian TV news again too, watching it on two different channels one after the other, so as not to miss anything. There is the same collection of politicians looking much the same although slightly older (they might well think the same about me) all still reciting the relevant merits of Centro sinistro and Centro destra.
I discovered the book by Moravia in my bedside cupboard was not the one made into the film seen recently, but one called Il Disprezzo; very enjoyable and well-written, with the result that Don Camillo did not get opened during the entire visit.
We visited Fivizzano - the nearest small town in the other direction - better known to us than Aulla as N's first Italian house, Il Prato, was a few kilometres away up in the mountains. As we arrived at siesta time nearly everything was closed, but N managed to buy some wonderful packets of vegetable seeds – including green, yellow and red beans - ready for the garden in Normandy. We fared better at Aulla, arriving on market day, and I bought myself some slippers for 6 euros. Our favourite place of all though is Lerici, on the coast, where usually we lunch in an excellent fish restaurant perched on the cliff, but on this occasion we arrived in the afternoon, and a very warm afternoon it was too. Two years ago at the end of October there had been many people walking up and down in the sunshine warmly wrapped up in their coats; this time they were in t-shirts and shirt-sleeves. There were even a few bathing in the sea, even though the last sun beds and parasols had long since been removed. Even the TV news regarded the weather as eccezionale, and commented on the numbers of cars on the road; because All Saints Day Tuesday 1 November is a public holiday many were " making the bridge" as they say in French and Italian and taking the Monday as holiday too, thereby making a four-day weekend. At Lerici I bought an exercise mat at a beach shop; this made exercises with the Pilates video much more comfortable on the stone floor of the apartment.
1 November is traditionally the day on which to lay chrysanthemums on family graves, so there were many on sale in markets and by the roadside, even before we left Saint-Denis. The other seasonal commodity much in evidence was chestnuts; we stopped by the side of a mountain road where the ground was thick with them and gathered some to take home; sometimes just picking them up and at others carefully prising them out of their prickly cases, and roasted them on the stove to eat after dinner. On Saturday evening there was a Castagnata, a kind of chestnut celebration up in the old part of Soliera; the outsides of many houses were decorated with twigs, leaves and chestnut cases; there was seasonal produce and crafts, and we bought local wine and chestnut honey. Hot chestnuts were on sale in cornets of paper, and the ground was thick with their skins.
On Sunday afternoon we went to an antiques fair at Filetto, a medieval walled town which we had visited once before for an evening medieval market with music and flag throwing. This time it was a little less formal, but there was still entertainment in the form of yet more chestnuts roasted in huge holed pans suspended over large fires, and shaken from time to time by the men in charge, with smoke and sparks flying in the wind, and more chestnuts in paper cornets. Apart from our purchases – N bought a book of old postcards of the area, and I bought an oil/vinegar/salt/pepper/olive set in coarse yellow pottery – we were extremely interested to see many things on sale very like those in the apartment in Soliera, all included when N bought it. These ranged from large items of furniture like chests of drawers, often with marble tops because of the local proximity to Carrara, to linens and china, and small things like tin trays, bottles and baskets which would never have occurred to us to try and sell to anybody, but were all on sale on various stalls. The journey back to Soliera was long and dark, because of the holiday traffic and because the clocks had changed the night before and this was the first dark afternoon. Having seen the prices of some things similar to those in the apartment, we began to discuss the possibility of keeping some of the furniture and taking it to the house in Normandy, a discussion which continued on and off until the end of our stay. The Soliera apartment has been on sale for some time, offered completely furnished, but N now began to come round to the idea of offering it partly furnished, and to take the more interesting items to Normandy. If not required immediately they could be housed in the many outbuildings, and we had noted an antique shop a few doors way from the house which could prove useful.
Monday was the last day of October; rain was finally forecast for Tuesday, and in the event Monday was the last day of autumn sunshine. We started off for Aulla in the morning merely for a few things from the post office and supermarket, intending to have lunch in the only good restaurant, but it was closed on Mondays. Still enthused from the day before by the apparent desirability and value of our possessions, we set off on a whim for Sarzana, a town well-known for the large number of its antique dealers. In the event most were closed, but we looked through many shop windows and admired the pretty town in the emptiness of an out-of-season Monday. We found the last free table in a very good little restaurant, just before 1.30, and enjoyed excellent pesto, salmon, pork à l'orange and moist granary bread, which N said was like chocolate cake, together with interesting décor and fellow guests. At the end of our meal, when only we and one other couple were left at table, we were given their bill in error, much to the confusion of the proprietress and the amusement of everybody else. The pleasure of the lunch and visit to Sarzana was all the more because we had no plan whatsoever to go there when we had set out that morning. In the evening we visited N's local contact Lindsay and her mother for apéritifs; they had been unable to come for lunch on Sunday as planned as they were too busy.
We hadn't planned to go out on Tuesday as it was a public holiday and heavy rain was forecast. N was still spending a lot of time measuring pieces of furniture due to go to Normandy, and making an inventory for Traslochi, the local moving and storage company he had dealt with before, when he sold Il Prato and had furniture moved to Paris, some of which is still in the cellar and already promised for the house in Normandy. We also sorted and looked at a large trunk full of bed covers, and numerous baskets, tools, pans and other oddments in a large glory-hole near the entrance of the apartment, and packed some to go to Normandy with the furniture, and put others in the car to take with us, in particular a large iron fire grate, chimney plate and fire irons. During the morning there was a violent thunderstorm as promised, with lightning and such strong winds that a sheet drying on the terrace pulled the washing line right out of the wall, and ended up in a sad wet pile on top of the watering can and the pot of herbs. It needed much untangling, and re-washing, and only dried just in time before we left the next morning.
After leaving the place very clean and tidy on Wednesday morning, hoping that many potential purchasers would come and view (something of which I have had much experience of late) we left at about 10.00 am and with plenty of time took the road back towards Nice, having lunch at the same motorway restaurant, risotto still not ready, nor the pasta. We also bought local delicacies to eat at the shop, then came off the motorway, rejoining the coast road at San Remo. This time the border crossing was at Ventimiglia, where there was an abandoned redundant customs house. We got out of the car for a short break at Menton which as N said was a clean, expensive place, and where the men putting up Christmas lights were working in their shirtsleeves; After sitting for a while on the sea front we set off again, arriving in Nice at about 4.30 and giving us plenty of time to put the car on the train, eat, and possibly fill in some time at the cinema before the train left at 8.45 pm.
N said to the man at the station gate as he drove in "C'est pour Paris ce soir", and the man replied "Il n'y a pas de Paris ce soir", and after much checking of tickets and dates it transpired that we had come a day early! On taking stock of the situation, we decided things could have been a lot worse; we would just have to spend an extra 24 hours in Nice. The only disadvantage was that I had been hoping to be back on Thursday evening for a chorale rehearsal leading to a concert on Saturday, and that we had a bag of left-over food in the back of the car containing ham, salami and cheese, which might have lasted one day out of the refrigerator but not two.
Fortunately right next to the station there was a multi-storey car park and an Ibis Hotel, so we checked the car into the one and ourselves into the other, and looked forward to a less rushed evening and a better night's sleep than originally planned.
The main street between the station and the sea was being remade, and was difficult to navigate. We looked at the cinema and discovered that the new version of Oliver Twist was showing the next day, and eventually found a suitable restaurant for dinner. It was named L'Angleterre, and had thus attracted various American and Irish clients. The portions were enormous, and we felt we wouldn't need to eat again all week.
The next morning we managed some breakfast however, checked out of the hotel, put our overnight bags into the left luggage office at the station, and set out for our day in Nice. Having read some helpful literature at the hotel, we visited the Chagall Museum, along with many Japanese tourists, then took the open-air bus, stopped at the Matisse Museum, decided that was enough museums for one day, and stayed on the bus all round the city centre and along the Promenade des Anglais. It was very cold and windy on the bus but, as N said, very warm when it stopped, and there were wonderful views of ornate white villas, hotels, casinos and palm trees. After a few showers earlier the sun came out just as we reached the sea, and we made our way into the old town, originally looking for sandwiches but ending up having a delightful lunch outside a little café opposite the flower market. It was a wonderful feeling to be eating outside in the sunshine in November. We each had salad and a glass of rosé; I watched a woman at the market make up a bouquet of pink flowers, and finished my meal with a thé gourmand; tea with two tiny biscuits and a minute square of cake, just enough. We spent the afternoon looking round tourist shops in le vieux Nice, and then realised it was nearly time to be putting the car on the train. After we had walked a very long way in the wrong direction, N went to deliver the car and we eventually met at the cinema just in time to see Oliver Twist, very relieved to sit down after all the walking. It was very well made, not entirely true to Dickens, but very enjoyable. Afterwards there was just enough time to eat at the Buffet de la Gare where we had had breakfast the week before, get our bags from Left Luggage, buy my croissant for the morning - again with much adverse comment from N - and wait a few minutes for the train.
The carriage and compartment were the same as before and once again I felt that perhaps we should see James Bond or Hercule Poirot, but no. This time we saw the beaches of Cannes and Juan les Pins in the dusk, and then pulled down the blind and got ready for bed, a little more practised this time. In the middle of the night there was a screech of brakes and we stopped suddenly, seemingly in a tunnel, but we never knew why: N favoured the theory of a cow on the line. On opening the blind in the morning a very different sight met our eyes; Paris suburbs with grey skies, rain and commuters running for a bus wrapped up in their winter coats. We got off the train and walked along to the Buffet de la Gare at Austerlitz for breakfast, and I noticed that several dogs had been with us in the train overnight; unfortunately they were not entitled to breakfast and eyed each other warily from under their owners' tables. On the wall of the Buffet was a large mural depicting the Battle of Austerlitz, and we tried to guess the identities of the principal protagonists.
The arrangements for fetching the car were the complete opposite of those at Nice; instead of waiting hours in warm sunshine we collected it very promptly in the rain. We reached the Gare de Bercy in a little shuttle bus – a little like an airport bus – dogs included, and then walked up to a roof-top car park where all the cars were waiting.
The journey back to Saint-Denis took us through central Paris the morning rush hour in mist and rain, but in spite of thinking that from now on this was winter, I was pleased to feel that I had come "home".
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 4:00 PM 
