Gingy goes to Nice

In the movie Amelie, one of the characters kidnaps a garden gnome and takes pictures of him all over the world and mails them back to the owner. I liked that idea, but garden gnomes are too big to carry in my purse. But Gingy isn't, so this is Gingy's trip to Nice.

The first leg of the journey was a train from Ottawa to Toronto to Windsor.  It was a long day.

 

Here is Gingy the next day, checking his luggage at Detroit International airport:

 

 

The trip did not go exactly as planned.  We flew from Detroit to New York's JFK airport.  We were delayed almost an hour leaving JFK, and so here's Gingy killing time with the boys in Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris, waiting to get on a new flight since the delay meant we missed our connection to Nice.

 

Finally we arrived in Nice with most of our luggage.  Gingy collapsed on a chair on the balcony of the villa.  He was very jet-lagged and in need of a glass of wine.

 

Soon he headed for bed. In the movie star bedroom of the villa.

 

The next day, we went into downtown Nice.  The Port is pretty cool.

 

We went into the Old Town (Vielle Ville) and stopped for lunch and a drink in the K'fe Cayenne in Place du Palais:

 

Cafe au lait hit the spot:

 

Later we stopped for lunch. You kind of have to order Salade Nicoise when you're in Nice.
 

 

 After all that food, cafe au lait wasn't going to cut it. It was time for espresso!

 

 

Christmas Eve we made a special feast of cheese and crackers and prosciutto and pineapple and salami and shrimp and champagne.  We even tried lumpfish roe that we bought by accident, thinking it was seafood sauce.  It was salty and fishy.  No one had seconds.

 

 

We took turns having our pictures taken in the jacuzzi tub in my Dad's bedroom.

 

Gingy hit the champagne a bit too hard and decided to wear the wire thingy that came on the bottle.

 

After Christmas dinner, we had Buche Noel for dessert.

Sadly, Gingy got into an altercation with some locals.

 

Hopefully, his New Year's will be better!

 

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!!

Why the world needs translation editors: "But sometimes the mistakes make me happy, especially when I'm drinking beer with lunch" edition

I was looking through my photos from France this summer, looking for a suitable profile picture for Facebook, and man, I took a lot of pictures of us sitting around tables eating and drinking.



I found a couple of photos that I took of not-quite-right translations that I found in menus. (I warned you that you'd be hearing about my trip to France for way longer than you were going to want to.  Promise kept.)

The first one was from the Restaurant L'estragon in Monaco-Ville, Monaco, where we stopped for lunch:



"Assorted Pork-butchery"

Okaaaay.

I'm sure that they meant this:



Rather than this:



It might be kind of hard to bring an entire butchery to the table. At any rate, none of us were brave or curious enough to order the butchery -- we settled for warm goat-cheese salads and omelettes.




Then there was this, on the menu at the Nid d'Aigle in Eze village:

"Grilled Lamb Shops"

Again, I'm sure they meant this:

Rather than this:

But, hey,  you never know.

I ended up ordering this:




and two of these:

Which may explain why I found the menu so funny.

Nice (n-ee-ce) was pretty nice (n-eye-ce)

Yes, I know I'm home, but you'll just have to put up with a couple more posts about what was the best vacation ever. No, wait. BEST. VACATION. EVER.

Nice (or maybe all of France, or all of Europe for that matter, I don't know for sure) is very different from Canada. Here are some random things I noticed:

• Things are smaller (apartments, washing machines, refrigerators, supermarkets), and despite the crazy traffic and bus drivers who think they're driving in a Formula One race, life is slower paced.

• Walking down the Promenade des Anglais, day or night, was the thing I liked to do best.

• Best. Croissants. Ever.
  
  Seriously.
  
  

Considering the above bullet point, it's strange that there are no overweight people here. Also, I have never seen so many attractive people in one place in my entire life.

• Skin cancer does not seem to be a major concern in Nice. Everyone seems to be tanned to a deep toasty brown. Including the one woman we saw on several days down on the beach, clad only in a teeny yellow thong, a gold chain around her waist, and a Gilligan hat. Reading Emile Zola and eating nectarines, no less.

A real Nicoise Salad doesn't have any green beans or potatoes in it. But it does have lots of tuna, olives, radishes, tomatoes, hardboiled eggs and some anchovies.

Even though the Mediterranean Sea is salty and easy to float in


I couldn't smell the sea the way you usually do at the seaside. But swimming in it will leave you all salty and with a bad case of Med Head until you shower.

Parking is a sport in Nice. People will park anywhere. On sidewalks. On corners. Double parking. You name it.

If you order anything with prawns (gambas) or shrimp (crevettes), be prepared to do some dissection. Most of the time in North America, shrimp are little pink commas of flesh when they're served to you. In Nice, they are cooked to a rosy red, but not peeled. Even in a curry sauce, you'll still see little eyes peering out at you, and little leg things waving.


The upside is, that when you take the time to peel them, they taste better than any North American shrimp.

The Hotel Negresco is a truly fascinating place. The gorgeous architecture and eclectic art make it a place not to miss.

Wine there is really cheap and really good.


Mostly we drank local varieties of rosé by the bottle, but we couldn't resist these single-serving glasses we found in the grocery store. Vive la France!

The default music type in any public space is jazz. It was playing on the tour boat we took to Monaco, and in those restaurants that had music playing. It was so nice. How nice was brought home rather forcefully when, on the long trip home, we ate lunch in a 'seafood' restaurant in the Newark airport and the soundtrack was Taylor Swift's greatest hits. Yeah.

You WILL gain weight in Nice (And Villefranche Sur Mer, and Monaco).

Oh. Yes. You. Will.

Banana split crepes. O.M.G.

Warm goat cheese salad!!

Moules et frites!!!

Calamari!!!!!!

I seem to have used up all my exclamation points.

[I don't know why this is all different colours and underlined. HTML coding and I are not friends.]




I think I would like to be dropped in a vat of Chantilly whipped cream. And left there

Lettuces, mangoes and nectarines from the greengrocers are ENORMOUS. And delicious. Really, really delicious.

The transit system -- the trains, trams and buses -- are clean and efficient and cheap. You can go a long way on the bus for a euro.

Even as far as Eze, which is probably the most picturesque place I've ever been.

This picture was taken from the boat from Nice to Monaco. You can see that Eze is perched right at the top of the mountain.

So, to sum it all up, I can see why people retire to the South of France. Thanks, Dad, I'll never forget that trip.

I can't wait to go back. Come on Lotto 649.