I am on a plane, chasing the sun to San Francisco. Kelly is still in Marseilles.
I don’t want to come across as overly maudlin, but it’s almost physical, this missing of each other.
We were lucky in the extreme to have been able to head to France for three weeks, and I will never be anything but grateful that we had the chance, however, I had made a previous engagement to attend the memorial of the passing of my best friends husband, and it coincided with our trip to the south of France. So I have departed at noon the 10th, and won’t be back until 1800 the 13th. I’m currently over Greenland, and I miss my lover so much!
We enjoyed Nice almost immeasurably, to the point of thinking strongly of moving there. The restaurant culture is superb, and it’s difficult not eating a three course meal for lunch and dinner each day! There’s leftover bread and butter and jam for breakfast, exploring our surroundings until around 2, enjoying lunch, exploring more, perhaps resting, heading out to have an apertif between 5 and 8, and then dinner, followed by a perambulation and perhaps a digestif. There is a low roar of conversation at all of these times, as everyone in France it seems is out doing the same, and talking and laughing, and the clinking of the glasses of rose and silverware on plates is the continuoline of the entire country during all of these times. It is romantic in the extreme.
We spent each night in our BnB, and headed out to a new place each day. Despite most of my pictures being of food, I swear we saw so much! We headed to Monte Carlo by train, and dressed up to gamble a pittance in the casino memorialized by James Bond (we broke even).
We took the train (always the train) to Cannes, and window shopped, and had a superb lunch in the old city, and decided to leave early and take a nap.
We traveled to Grasse, and enjoyed the perfume museum and a hike in the heat up the steep slopes of that city (THERE ARE NO CABS!!!). We spent the day in Antibes, and shopped in their lovely market, and existed for a moment in the atelier of Pablo Picasso, and saw a small sampling of his works, including the pottery that until that moment I had no idea he’d created.
We wandered the streets of Old Nice, and fell in love with that city and it’s myriad ways, which all seem to lead either home and the cooing of the pigeons over a soft breeze, or to the next cafe, where the gentle roar of conversation was punctuated by the bells of the many cathedrals or the fluttering flight of those selfsame pigeons, omnipresent and delightful. In a word, it was all pure pleasure.
Our time there passed as if in a dream, and all too soon we boarded our train to Marseilles, and the second portion of our voyage. Marseilles will be our base, and from it (and our fifth floor garret), we will see Avignon, and Aix en Provence, and Arles, and whatever else catches our fancy, whether that be flamingos in the Parc naturel regional de Camargue, or a simple afternoon at the market…
I miss her…
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